Food History of Honolulu

Key eras

Pre-contact Hawaiian foodways, before 1778

Native Hawaiians cultivated kalo (taro), uala (sweet potato) and ulu (breadfruit) in irrigated lo'i terraces, fished the reef with kapa nets, and pounded poi as the daily starch. Hogs were raised in pens and the imu, an underground oven of hot stones, slow-roasted kalua pig and laulau in ti leaves.

Plantation era, 1850s to 1959

Sugar barons imported Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Filipino and Puerto Rican labour, each carrying a kitchen with them. The plate lunch was born in the cane fields when workers shared bento boxes; two scoops rice, mac salad and a meat became the lunch grammar. Portuguese workers brought malasada and pao doce sweet bread.

Saimin and the noodle bowl, 1900s

Saimin emerged in the plantation camps as a local fusion of Japanese udon, Chinese mein and Filipino pancit. Palace Saimin in Kalihi has slung the shrimp-and-pork-dashi bowl since 1946. The custom-order Sun Noodle is thicker than ramen; the broth runs lighter. Saimin became Hawaii's noodle soup.

Loco moco invented in Hilo, 1949

A gang of teenagers called the Lincoln Wreckers in Hilo asked Lincoln Grill in 1949 for a quick dish; rice, hamburger patty, egg and gravy. The first boy nicknamed Loco gave the dish its name. Cafe 100 in Hilo, opened in 1946 by 442nd Infantry veteran Richard Miyashiro, now sells 29 variations.

Poke moves from beach catch to counter staple, 1960s to 1990s

Poke (Hawaiian for 'to cut crosswise') was historically reef-fish scraps tossed with seaweed and limu salt at the shoreline. Tamashiro Market in Kalihi was one of the first retailers to sell prepared poke from the 1970s. Foodland deli counters scaled it. Poke became a daily-grocery item by the 1990s.

Lunch wagon culture, post-WWII

Plantation workers laid off after the cane mills closed bought trucks and parked them at beaches and worksites, selling plate lunches. The post-war lunch wagon became canonical: Rainbow Drive-In opened in Kapahulu in 1961 with the same plate-lunch model as a stationary counter.

Spam musubi in the war and after, 1940s

Spam was rationed to Hawaiian markets during World War II when fresh meat shipments stopped. Japanese-Hawaiian cooks layered a slice of pan-fried Spam onto rice, wrapped it in nori, and a portable snack was born. Musubi Cafe Iyasume in Waikiki opened in 2000 to formalize the handheld.

The Halekulani and resort fine dining, 1980s

La Mer opened at the Halekulani in 1985 with French chef Philippe Padovani and became Hawaii's first AAA Five Diamond restaurant in 1990. Resort hotels began importing classically trained European chefs who started using Hawaiian fish and vegetables, setting the table for the next decade.

Hawaiian Regional Cuisine founded, August 1991

Twelve chefs (Roy Yamaguchi, Alan Wong, Sam Choy, Peter Merriman, Mark Ellman, Jean-Marie Josselin, George Mavrothalassitis, Beverly Gannon, Amy Ferguson Ota, Roger Dikon, Philippe Padovani and Gary Strehl) launched Hawaiian Regional Cuisine to source ingredients locally and reject the continental import model. The movement transformed how Hawaii ate.

Third-wave coffee and Kona, 2000s to now

Honolulu Coffee Co. opened in 1992 as a farm-to-cup Kona estate operation. Kona Coffee Purveyors at the International Marketplace formalized the single-estate Kona shot in 2016 with b. patisserie pastries. Lonohana Estate Chocolate launched a tree-to-bar craft chocolate operation on the North Shore in 2009.

Modern Honolulu, 2010s and 2020s

Senia, opened 2016 by Chris Kajioka and Anthony Rush in Chinatown, became the city's tasting-menu flagship. Fete (Robynne Maii, 2016) won the 2022 James Beard for Best Chef Northwest and Pacific, Hawaii's first in 19 years. Mud Hen Water and The Pig and The Lady made Kaimuki the new restaurant row.

Immigrant influences

• Native Hawaiian: The kalua imu (underground oven), poi from kalo, laulau wrapping in ti and luau leaves, lomi salmon and pre-contact reef fishing all anchor the modern Hawaiian table.
• Chinese (Cantonese): Chinese labourers arrived from 1852 with stir-frying, char siu, manapua (a Cantonese bao adapted in Hawaii) and Chinatown's century-old marketplace tradition still on Maunakea Street.
• Japanese (Issei and Nisei): Japanese workers brought soy sauce, mirin, the bento format that became the plate lunch, sushi, saimin, mochi-pounding for New Year's, and the Hawaii-style teriyaki invented by Toshi Kasahara in Seattle in 1976 but echoing earlier Hawaiian practice.
• Portuguese (Madeiran): Portuguese plantation workers brought malasadas (Leonard's Bakery, 1952), pao doce sweet bread (Liliha Bakery coco puff genealogy) and Portuguese sausage that became a breakfast plate-lunch staple.
• Korean: Kalbi short ribs marinated in soy, sugar and sesame became a plate-lunch entree by the 1960s. Korean-Hawaiian operators opened the first teriyaki-and-kalbi counters across Honolulu.
• Filipino: Filipino cane workers brought adobo, lechon (whole-roasted pig that paralleled kalua pig), pancit noodles that fed into saimin, and the lumpia roll that now appears on every plate-lunch tray.
• Puerto Rican: Puerto Rican labourers arrived in 1900 and contributed pasteles, gandule rice (yellow rice with pigeon peas) and a tradition of slow-pork-roasting that overlapped the imu kalua method.
• Okinawan: Okinawan immigrants brought andagi doughnuts, pork-and-bittermelon goya stir-fries and the andagi-versus-malasada bake-off that still runs at the Okinawan Festival every September in Kapiolani Park.
• Vietnamese: Vietnamese refugees post-1975 opened pho counters across Chinatown and Kalihi. The Pig and The Lady (Andrew Le, 2013) made modern Vietnamese the city's most-discussed cuisine of the 2010s.

Signature innovations

• The plate lunch as a multicultural format born in the plantation cane fields
• Hawaiian Regional Cuisine, the 1991 chef-led local-sourcing movement
• The shave ice as a Japanese-American snack tradition since 1951
• Spam musubi as a wartime ration turned everyday handheld breakfast
• Loco moco invented in Hilo in 1949, now ubiquitous statewide
• Saimin as Hawaii's plantation-camp noodle soup, unique to the islands
• The lunch wagon, post-war mobile plate lunch, predates mainland food trucks
• Tree-to-bar Hawaiian craft chocolate from Lonohana and Manoa Chocolate
• Single-estate Kona coffee shot, the Big Island farm-to-cup tradition