WAIMEA, Hawaii — I’ve always avoided Hawaii. If I’m flying this far to an island, I want a different culture, not just a different time zone. I want to wake up every day and see something I’ve never seen before. I don’t want to look up on a beach and see Golden Arches over a palm tree and some accountant from Orange County asking me about University of Colorado football coach Dan Hawkins.
I’d been to Hawaii six times and completely overlooked one of the most underrated aspects of this tourist trap. The cuisine is among the most exotic, different and delicious in the world.
It helped that I came here to the Big Island, which gets only 1.7 million visitors a year, compared with 7 million in Oahu. In other words, on the Big Island you don’t have to go to a schlocky luau to see real locals. I spent last week here on a travel-writing assignment — a major payback after two nights in Indianapolis — and dived head first into Hawaiian cuisine.
Considering the portions they serve you, I dived in with my scuba gear.
The first thing you should know about Hawaiian food is there are things you probably have never tried before: lilikoi, furikake, lychee, ponzu, ono, kampachi. No, those aren’t stations on Tokyo’s Ginza line. They’re ingredients in restaurants I visited.
Save a few bucks by getting out of the resorts. I was assigned to write about the Kohala coast, a beautiful, 60-mile stretch along the northwest shore that seems perpetually stuck at 80 degrees with brilliant blue sky and 75-degree water. It gets about 6 inches of rain a year.
Yet drive 30 minutes toward the Hilo coast, and you get about 300 inches a year. Place the Amazon rain forest next to San Diego, eradicate the anacondas, and you’ve got the Big Island.
The problem is much of the Kohala coast is dominated by these lavish, five-star resorts catering to business people on deep-pocketed expense accounts and some of your more minor oil sheiks.
I wound up frequenting a local hangout, a bright, cozy place near the northwest tip called the Seafood Bar. I knew it wasn’t pretentious or expensive when I pulled into the parking lot and across the street wasn’t an ocean, a back-lit swimming pool or a line of palm trees. It was the port of Kawaihae.
Nothing says romantic dining like oil tankers.
But the Seafood Bar is where the locals go pau hana, Hawaiian for “off work.” It’s where you get a read on the local real estate market and learn the best dive sites from the regulars at the bar. It’s also where you get real local food.
I ordered a Lychee Lemonade, a dangerous concoction made with Absolute Citron vodka, lychee liqueur, 7-Up and fresh lemon. Like a chianti with pasta amatriciana, the Lychee Lemonade is the perfect complement to furikake- crusted ahi. That’s a Hawaiian seaweed that encases the fish, which is then seared. Served with a miso reduction and mixed greens, it was a unique combination of crisp spinach with a sweet fish without the sour.
Different, delicious and reasonably priced at $16.
However, Hawaiian cuisine isn’t just about quality. It’s also about quantity, along the lines of a sumo wrestler’s training table.
Here’s the best description: “Hawaiian-style diet is when you go into people’s homes here, the portions are always big. At local parties, food is so plentiful, people eat and eat and eat.”
This culinary philosophy comes from Guy Kaoo, owner of the most local restaurant on the Big Island. The Hawaiian Style Cafe is in a strip mall in Waimea, about a 10-minute drive inland from the coast, and boasts the Big Island’s signature dish.
It’s called the loco moco. I believe that’s Hawaiian for heart attack. My Hawaiian-style loco moco consisted of — sit down when you read this — a giant plate covered with white rice topped with two thick hamburger patties, sauteed onions, a fried egg and brown gravy. Oh, it could’ve been worse. The big mok is rice topped with Spam, Portuguese sausage, two pork sausage patties, an egg and gravy.
While neither recipe will land in Bon Appetit, it’s terrific for soaking up the remnants of the four vicious mai tais I insanely drank the night before. I managed to eat three-quarters of it and a regular sitting next to me said, “Wow! You did pretty good. I’ve never seen anyone eat the whole thing. One time I ate the big moc and friends played a trick on me and hit me in the stomach. I almost threw up.”
To step up in class I had to step back exactly one block. Merriman’s is top-end Hawaiian cuisine. It has won Honolulu magazine’s best Big Island restaurant award 11 straight years, and Gourmet named it one of the state’s five best restaurants.
Awards don’t impress me. Local cuisine does, and 90 percent of Merriman’s products are locally grown or raised.
From the fresh Loeffler corn grown over the hill to the Kahua Ranch-raised lamb, everything you eat was walking or growing a short drive away the day before. Peter Merriman is a Pennsylvania native who came to the Big Island in 1983 and was a three-time finalist in the James Beard awards for best chef. He’s so environment friendly he refused to fish for opaca paca, even after a ban had lifted, until the Hawaiian snapper’s population returned to normal.
I had ponzu-marinated mahi mahi, the famous Hawaiian fish topped with a Japanese citrus dipping sauce. It’s a sweet tang added to a mild flaky white fish for $34.95. Yeah, it’s expensive. But some things in Hawaii, I finally learned, are worth experiencing.
Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson @denverpost.com.
If you go:
Seafood Bar, 61-3642 Kawaihae Road, Kawaihae, Hawaii, 808-882-1368
Hawaiian Style Cafe, 64-1290 Kawaihae Road, Waimea, Hawaii, 808-885-4295
Merriman’s, 65-1227 Opelo Road, Waimea, Hawaii, 808-885-6822
If you don’t go:
Okole Maluna Hawaiian Grill, 431 Main St., Windsor, 970-686-8844
Iwayama Sushi and Da Big Kahuna Bistro, 5500 S. Simms St., Littleton, 303-948-1199
