Pork (sometimes butterfish or chicken) wrapped in taro leaves and ti leaves, steamed for hours until the leaves are tender and the meat falls apart. Earthy, salty, the canonical luau small plate.
Laulau is pre-contact Hawaiian. The traditional dish wrapped pork, salt, and sometimes butterfish in luau (kalo) leaves, then in ti leaves, and steamed it in the imu underground oven alongside the kalua pig. The luau leaves cook into a spinach-like wrap and the wrap absorbs the smoke. Highway Inn Kakaako and Helena's Hawaiian Food both run canonical laulau plates with butterfish and pork. Modern home cooks steam them in a stove-top pot rather than the imu; the result is similar though missing the smoke notes.
2 editor picks for Laulau in Honolulu, ranked by editorial score. All Honolulu signature dishes · Laulau across every city.
Helena's Hawaiian Food ★ 4.7
kalihi · 1240 North School Street, Honolulu, HI 96817
Helena's Hawaiian Food on North School Street has served traditional Hawaiian plates in Kalihi Honolulu since 1946, now run by the founder's grandson Craig Katsuyoshi.
Highway Inn Kakaako ★ 4.3
kakaako · 680 Ala Moana Boulevard, Honolulu, HI 96813
Highway Inn Kakaako is the 2013 Honolulu outpost of the Toguchi family's 1947 Waipahu original, serving the same kalua pork, laulau and combo plates inside the SALT block of Kakaako.