Hawaiian Food Disappearing?
by Latoya Peterson
In the April/May issue of Audrey Magazine, Susan Soon He Stanton takes a look at the decline of Hawaiian family-run restaurants in her piece “The Closing of Tradition.”
The article opens on a sad note:
A disappointed woman shakes her head as she reads the out-of-business sign in the window of the Flamingo Restaurant in Honolulu, Hawaii, a 49-year local favorite. “I don’t know how much more I can take,” she says before moving on.
The Flamingo Restaurant, along with other Honolulu landmarks such as Columbia Inn, McCully Chop Sui and Wisteria, joins a growing number of Hawaii’s family-owned restaurants – some owned for two generations or more – that have closed for good. Locally owned mom and pop restaurants forced to close has become a nationwide occurrence. However, the loss of these types of restaurants is felt acutely in the islands where a restaurant-goer’s loyalty goes beyond a casual devotion. One man, once the doors of his favorite watering hole closed for good put it succinctly: “You’ve heard of a man without a country? I’m a man without a bar.”
The article goes on to note that the emergence of chain restaurants overtaking local establishments isn’t just bad for business – it’s a direct blow to Hawaii’s own native culture. Chef Alan Wong notes “These local restaurants run by generations of families have always been the backbone of our industry – an offshoot of our plantation heritage.”
The Library of Congress provides some background on Hawaii’s past, and how forced labor and migration patterns shaped the population of the islands:
In the 1880s, Hawaii was still decades away from becoming a state, and would not officially become a U.S. territory until 1900. However, much of its economy and the daily life of its residents were controlled by powerful U.S.-based businesses, many of them large fruit and sugar plantations. Unlike in the mainland U.S., in Hawaii business owners actively recruited Japanese immigrants, often sending agents to Japan to sign long-term contracts with young men who’d never before laid eyes on a stalk of sugar cane. The influx of Japanese workers, along with the Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Portuguese, and African American laborers that the plantation owners recruited, permanently changed the face of Hawaii. In 1853, indigenous Hawaiians made up 97% of the islands’ population. By 1923, their numbers had dwindled to 16%, and the largest percentage of Hawaii’s population was Japanese.
Plantation-era Hawaii was a society unlike any that could be found in the United States, and the Japanese immigrant experience there was unique. The islands were governed as an oligarchy, not a democracy, and the Japanese immigrants struggled to make lives for themselves in a land controlled almost exclusively by large commercial interests. Most Japanese immigrants were put to work chopping and weeding sugar cane on vast plantations, many of which were far larger than any single village in Japan. The workday was long, the labor exhausting, and, both on the job and off, the workers’ lives were strictly controlled by the plantation owners. Each planter had a private army of European American overseers to enforce company rules, and they imposed harsh fines, or even whippings, for such offenses as talking, smoking, or pausing to stretch in the fields. Workers shopped at company stores and lived in company housing, much of which was meager and unsanitary. Until 1900, plantation workers were legally bound by 3- to 5-year contracts, and “deserters” could be jailed. For many Japanese immigrants, most of whom had worked their own family farms back home, the relentless toil and impersonal scale of industrial agriculture was unbearable, and thousands fled to the mainland before their contracts were up.
Plantation life was also rigidly stratified by national origin, with Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino laborers paid at different rates for the same work, while all positions of authority were reserved for European Americans. Plantation owners often pitted one nationality against the other in labor disputes, and riots broke out between Japanese and Chinese workers.
During this tumultuous time, many different types of people began to learn to live and work together, and that was ultimately reflected in Hawaiian food culture. Stanton writes,
Local food carries great cultural importance because it is one of the foremost experiences that the diverse population of Hawaii has in common. […] All of these ethnic groups have left an indelible mark on local cuisine , infusing their cultural flavors with such Hawaiian ingredients as taro root and native fish.
While Stanton’s article goes on to discuss two family run businesses where the children have decided to preserve the family heritage. Helena’s Hawaiian Foods was taken over by the owner’s grandson. The Highway Inn, owned by the Toguchi family, was passed down for three generations, and the current owners are working to create a family constitution to alleviate pressures dealing with the restaurant.
Still, these two success stories are still small stop gaps against the wave of change that may take Hawaiian food to brink of culinary extinction.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
ElleDee wrote:
I can’t find this article on Audrey’s website so I can’t go back and check the source myself, but is this article about Hawaiian food meaning stuff like plate lunch culture that people who live in Hawaii eat or about ethnic Hawaiian food? Who are we calling “native” here, locals (meaning people who live in Hawaii and include people from many races and nations) or people who are descendants of the actual native Hawaiians? Because those are two totally different meanings.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 11:06 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
1. Not plate lunch culture (that apparently lives in chains like Zippys) but family run restaurants. One of the big quotes from the article was “This type of family restaurant is becoming an anachronism. It’s either getting to be fast food or fine dining, with nothing in between.”
2. Native Hawaiian cuisine, as described in the article, seems to mean local food. However, this is a bit difficult to parse. Take the following passage:
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 11:20 am ¶
ElleDee wrote:
A lot of plate lunch places *are* family run businesses though, Zippy’s notwithstanding, so those two categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe these small plate lunch places are part of the loss that’s being decried in the article? It’s hard for me to tell without having read the article.
(My parents grew up in Hawaii and my family goes back as frequently as possible. It like going back to the homeland. I’m not local though, so my understanding is limited.)
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 11:46 am ¶
JC wrote:
I can’t believe there are “national chains” willing to serve Spam and Eggs or Spam Musubi. Hawaiians are not going to just suddenly start eating Whoppers every day. I think Hawaiian food will survive just fine, perhaps not just with the same batch of restaurants. New places will open and the same food will be served.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 4:08 pm ¶
Violet wrote:
To separate restaurants that serve Hawaiian food and those that serve local food is really hard to do. This post seems to be about a local food vanishing because some restaurants owned by the same family for generations have closed down. But neither Hawaiian nor local foods are going anywhere in Hawaii. Multi-generation-run and mom-and-pop stores are vanishing all over America, but that includes shops owned by people of all races, serving food and products and services that could be claimed by many cultures… It is a product of capitalism (which may use racism as a tool to keep people fighting one another, but which is not the same thing).
Hawaiian food like taro and poi are available in every supermarket and in the food court of large shopping malls. In the grocery stores the fish counters display every kind of poke imaginable. Kalua pig can be found in little tubs at the meat counter. Go to Chinatown for the reef fish, no problem. If a concern is the traditional way of life of indigenous people dying out, that’s different. But Hawaiian food is not going anywhere.
The photo used to represent Hawaiian food above argues the point that what we are referring to is not actually Hawaiian food, anyway. Local food is different from true Hawaiian food: yes the kalua pig in the photo is Hawaiian, but the lomi-lomi is Polynesian, the rice is Japanese, the mac salad is probably just… Haole. The shoyu on the table just out of the shot? Japanese.
Flamingo and Columbia Inn were not what you would call mom-and-pop, even if generations of a family owned them through the years. They had far more non-family employees than family. In just one neighborhood: Ono Hawaiian Food (ethnic Hawaiian) and Rainbow Drive-In (local) are both more mom-and-pop than Flamingo and Columbia Inn were. I guess we also have to distinguish between family places and “locally owned and operated” (like L&L Drive in which is still open).
Waiola Shave Ice (mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall) is going strong. And Leonard’s Bakery is not Hawaiian (it’s Portuguese) but it is a local institution, is family owned and operated, and is not going anywhere. There are non-food-related mom-and-pops going strong, too. But there are plenty that have gotten so big that you can’t consider them family-run, and plenty more that have shut down (just like in New York and Oregon and anyplace you can think of in our country), and that’s just change.
If a familiar restaurant that you’ve gone to all your life closes it can be alarming. So you become a “man without a bar” and it hurts like being without a country. That is how important food and tradition are – to all cultures. Social occasions are centered around food, and memories are formed where these occasions happen. That is very different from a local (or ethnic) food disappearing. Restaurants closing – even after being owned by one family for a couple of generations – is just capitalism and… Change.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 4:21 pm ¶
LtYar wrote:
The article also does not specify if this is all Oahu based or if it is happening on every island. And in every small town on every island. Yes, there is a Subway in Hanalei*, but there are far more plate lunch places or independently run businesses than franchises or chains.
*chosen as an example of a very small town that has a LOT of tourists. Waimea, Hanapepe, Lahaina, etc, seem to be slightly more immune to chain restaurants than Honolulu. In my limited 10 year experience only of course; this is all empirical.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 4:24 pm ¶
sarah wrote:
to follow up on ElleDee’s first comment, i’m uncomfortable with the ways this article basically erases Native Hawaiians (outside of mentioning their dwindling population in the early 1900s). it’s not that the food that comes out of the Hawaiian context, or the diversity that produced it, don’t deserve discussion – but by failing to differentiate between what is “Hawaiian” and “Native Hawaiian,” and thereby rendering that conversation unimportant, a disservice is done to a still present but often unacknowledged indigenous community that maintains a strong and active struggle for and claim to sovereignty.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 5:45 pm ¶
Redbrick wrote:
@ElleDee, I agree, that the distinction (and overlap) between Local culture and Native Hawaiian culture is an important one. I wondered if the Audrey writer would make that point, but since I can’t find the article either I’m not sure how it was dealt with throughout.
In the excerpt that Latoya posted I could see ‘Local’ and ‘Hawaiian’ being interpreted as synonymns. It may seem like a typographical point, but saying “Hawaiian food culture” is different than saying “Hawai‘i food culture” or even “food culture in Hawai‘i” because it appears to make reference to the indigenous traditions of this place as opposed to the very fascinating cultural contact between settler populations that has taken place in the last one hundred fifty years and more.
I live in Honolulu and, though we didn’t see it in the excerpts, I bet that Susan Soon He Stanton’s article had to address the outrageous gentrification of Hawai‘i, especially on O‘ahu, as a cause of these Local restaurants closing up. Real estate prices, rents, and the cost of importing food make keeping a mom and pop operation going difficult when most of the community is involved in a service economy that supports the now struggling tourism industry and are barely able to earn a living wage. Like other places, chains come in and flourish here because their food is cheap and they can afford to build their own structures or keep up the rent.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 5:59 pm ¶
ButterflySmut wrote:
It figures, the one thing that gets the local girl to de-lurk and comment is the article about food. My impression from this is that the article sort of conflates the two – plate lunch (meals with ingredients of mixed ethnic origin, such as chicken katsu curry) and native Hawaiian food (such as kalua pork, seen in the picture).
I’ve eaten at most of the now-closed restaurants in the article, and they served a sort of cultural mishmash of dishes, usually everything from steak and potatoes to adobo to sashimi to chow mein and yes, sometimes Hawaiian-Hawaiian food. Not so different from Zippy’s in terms of what’s there, but nice when you don’t feel like those homogenized Zippy’s flavors.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 5:59 pm ¶
elpico wrote:
JC, locally franchised fast food restaurants in Hawaii (McDonalds, Burger King, etc.) do serve Portuguese sausage and eggs with rice for breakfast and saimin for lunch, and Native Hawaiians *do* eat at these places, just like everyone else.
If I walk one mile toward the ocean on the street where I live, there is Leonard’s (family owned and operated Portuguese bakery), Ono Hawaiian foods (mom and pop plate lunches), a new Cajun restaraunt, a Korean cook your own at the table place, one restaraunt each serving Thai and Vietnamese food, two Chinese and two Japanese restaraunts, a tiny shop that sells Hawaiian poke and pipikaula, an upscale local/Hawaiian place (Sam Choy’s), Waiola shave ice, and Rainbow Drive-inn (plate lunch). The 7-11 and mom-and-pop convenience stores sell Spam musubi, pork hash, and manapua. There might be more, I can’t remember. Hawaiian food is widely available (Foodland and Safeway carry luau leaves, poi, taro, local fruits, kalua pig, coconut milk, etc.) as is the remarkable potluck handed down from plantation days.
ElleDee has it right. Hawaiian food is one part of local food. It is always a good idea to distinguish between Native Hawaiian culture and local culture. And there are plenty of places that are still family run, and plenty of places to get authentic Hawaiian, Japanese, and other local foods.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 9:48 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@LtYar –
The article also does not specify if this is all Oahu based or if it is happening on every island.
This was not specified. The article just refers to Hawaii, and occasionally a city.
@Redbrick –
I live in Honolulu and, though we didn’t see it in the excerpts, I bet that Susan Soon He Stanton’s article had to address the outrageous gentrification of Hawai‘i, especially on O‘ahu, as a cause of these Local restaurants closing up.
Actually, now that you mention this, it didn’t. I just re-read the article and the cost of living isn’t mentioned at all. The article is framed as if there is no one to carry on the family tradition, and with the mounting pressures of the economy and the stress of running a business, people opt-out. Interesting.
@Sarah -
I’m sorry. This is an article summary and that aspect wasn’t discussed. Normally when I hear about native hawaiians, people normally use the term indigenous. That term did not arise in the article. Also, from the history referred to in the article (which I looked up, hence the LOC link) the local people in Stanton’s article includes all the people who worked the land and had been in Hawaii for generations. So, for example, the passage I quoted in the comment I posted above. I’m not sure how to categorize.
@ButterflySmut –
sometimes Hawaiian-Hawaiian food
Okay, now I’m confused. The article basically argued that native (article usage) Hawaiian food *is* in essence a mash-up of all the cultures, but many of you on the thread are indicating something else. Can anyone explain?
@all -
Thank you all for your responses. This is really informative. In reference to a lot of your questions, I can’t really go much further. It is a 4 page article I am summarizing, which didn’t touch most of the issues you raised. Most of the piece seems to take place in Honolulu (or at least, that’s the main city mentioned) so it could be a regional thing.
However, the author made sure to put this in the article:
“As many long-time local favorites close down while only a few like Helena’s and Highway Inn continue, vestiges of old Hawaii may be in danger in disappearing forever. While the future of local restaurants and local food is unknown, one thing is certain – nothing brings people together as easily as food.”
Since so many of you disagree with the article, I’ll try to scan in a copy when I get back to DC. I think I accurately represented the ideas and concepts expressed in the article, but I could be wrong.
Posted 13 Jun 2009 at 1:01 am ¶
ElleDee wrote:
Latoya, the ethnic/native Hawaiians (Hawaiian-Hawaiians) had their own culture and cuisine when Captain Cook first showed up and it persists today. Like Violet lists above, things like taro, Kalua pork and poi are still served all over.
But then after people of all nationalities began moving to Hawaii a new mash-up culture emerged that is *also* unique to Hawaii, which is why it is confusing to people from the mainland. “Hawaiian” things can come from people endemic to Hawaii *or* people who have roots from elsewhere (often a lot of elsewheres because a huge portion of the population is mixed) but live in Hawaii. Even though Local culture borrows from many different heritages (including native Hawaiian!), for the most part people can identify the different elements and say where they came from, like many on this thread have done. Not being Local myself I’m not as good at this, though having lived in Japan gives me a big leg up.
There is also the issue that there remains huge political tension between native Hawaiians and everyone else. It was not that long ago that the US rolled up and took all their stuff. I’m not informed enough to say much more, but I’m sure it looms large in the mind of many commenting on this thread. Most people that live in Hawaii are, uh, imported and we shouldn’t forget that.
I don’t know if I’ve made this any clearer. Hawaii is unique in so many ways it can be hard to explain. But damn all of you on this thread for making my constant Hawaii Hankering ™ flare up! Lol.
Posted 13 Jun 2009 at 12:25 pm ¶
m. wrote:
The comments on this post are super-smart. It makes me happy to see that several people brought up the issue of ‘Hawaiian’ vs. ‘Hawai’i’. I just wanted to point this out, because it is important to use ‘Hawai’i’ in place of ‘Hawaiian’. Reason being is that ‘Hawaiian’ is an ethnicity, not an adjective, and was once a nationality – making ‘Native Hawaiian’ redundant. (There’s a reason those of us who are indigenous to “the mainland” don’t call ourselves ‘Native _____’ +the tribe/nation we belong to.) So it’s nonsensical as well as disrespectful to those who are otherwise referred to as “Natives” or ‘indigenous’ to use ‘Hawaiian’ as a descriptor for someone or something that is not kanaka or otherwise just local. The best example I could come up with for this sort of thing is the idea of a Spaniard – either born in the Philippines or having once lived there – calling themselves and/or their cultural products ‘Tagalog’.
Anyway, yeah: glad that there’s smart people who caught that and had some insightful things to say. And damn, now I want a plate lunch (for dinner) with kalua pork! Yummy…
Posted 13 Jun 2009 at 11:46 pm ¶
ElleDee wrote:
Wait, since when was “Hawaiian” not an adjective?
I’m all for distinguishing between things that are ethnically Hawaiian and things that are local. I would assume that the “of Hawaii” construction would include everything that’s unique to Hawaii now, both native and local. Native Hawaiian is redundant, except that no one can understand that distinction unless they aren’t already pretty well versed in the issues, and even then it’s confusing because you can never be sure how *other* people are using the term, which is why we’ve gone through a number of different constructions on this thread alone, including Hawaiian-Hawaiian.
Sadly most people can’t distinguish between generic “tropical” and what’s “of Hawaii” anyway.
Posted 14 Jun 2009 at 10:43 am ¶
RobynT wrote:
article on use of “Hawaiian” in AP Style:
http://www.hawaiiankingdom.info/C259362623/E20051103084049/index.html
Posted 14 Jun 2009 at 2:03 pm ¶
m. wrote:
@ ElleDee:
Whether or not others can distinguish between the two, it’s still the proper way of addressing people vs. things. There’s no law that states you can’t add ‘Native’ to the front of ‘Hawaiian’, but Hawaiian IS an ethnicity so even if most people aren’t going to use it that way…well, they should. I’m not buying the cop-outs, and I’d rather be correct and confuse some people who don’t get it (and probably wouldn’t care even if it was explained to them) than completely dismissive of those who should have the first say. It’s the only island in the Pacific (aside from Guam where those who aren’t “native” use ‘Chamorru/an’ to describe everyone/thing in sight) that people share this common confusion about, so I don’t buy the “buts”. ‘Samoan’, ‘Tongan’, ‘Maori’, etc. isn’t used when speaking of commodities, so ‘Hawaiian’ shouldn’t, either. Those who find that difficult to grasp (it really isn’t) can go kick rocks.
Posted 14 Jun 2009 at 10:27 pm ¶
Christine wrote:
Um, m., a lot of people who are indigenous to the continent call themselves native: Indian people. Both Hawai‘i and the U.S. continent are settler societies (or part of the same settler society, the U.S., in reality), with Kanaka Maoli and American Indians the indigenous people to both places, respectively. The reason we (you, it sounds like, and me) don’t use Native ____ as people who live on the continent is because we are not indigenous. People whose ancestors immigrated from outside the North American continent are not indigenous to North America, as non-Hawaiian “locals” are not indigenous to Hawai‘i even if their relatives have been in Hawai‘i since the turn of the century. A very important distinction: settler and native, not to shame settlers, but to be clear so we can respond to the ongoing occupation of native land as people aware of our position.
According to usage in academe, as far as I know, ‘Hawaiian’ is not a purely geographical marker. It marks indigeneity. Hence, ‘local’ for non-Hawaiian (non-indigenous, aka settler) residents.
Posted 15 Jun 2009 at 7:02 pm ¶
Christine wrote:
P.S. m., after rereading your post, I realize it isn’t totally clear if you are American Indian, First Nations, etc, or not. Sorry if I responded too quickly and misidentified your position.
Posted 15 Jun 2009 at 7:04 pm ¶
Leighton Jong wrote:
Plate lunch culture? Hey, I like eat plate lunch!
Posted 16 Jun 2009 at 6:28 am ¶
m. wrote:
Christine:
Not trying to be snippy, but yeah – it’s never good to assume from the other side of a monitor. I *am* one of those Natives you speak of (the Indian kind, not the Islander), and although white/Black/Asian have become the default races/people/cultures of the entire North American continent, as well as the internet…and, like, the world…it matters for me to know that there are some people out there who *aren’t* indigenous (like yourself, apparently) that are well-aware there are plenty of us who *are* – with a capital ‘I’, even. And yeah, I’m not trying to beat a dead horse, but people who do not know me “IRL” (I can’t believe I just used that acronym) or well-enough in cyberspace (to know who I am) have made some pretty hefty assumptions based on ridiculous shit like the way I word things/express myself and how I go about approaching topics on blogs and msg boards. I actually don’t know what’s worse sometimes: people who make assumptions about me in-person b/c of my brown skin or people who do it on the ‘net b/c of my ____(?) words. Or just b/c, you know, they weren’t expecting one of my kind to be up in these interwebs. It has driven me to getting my back up like this, like I am now. This is what being invisible, being one of “those people”, being a member of a so-called “vanishing/extinct race” entails.
Nevertheless; this is the internet, we don’t know each other, you apologized and I’m accepting it. Natives: we walk among you, we’re on ur internetz, etc.
Posted 18 Jun 2009 at 6:45 am ¶