| Title | : | Hawaii Regional Cuisine: The Food Movement That Changed the Way Hawaii Eats |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0824877454 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780824877453 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 200 |
| Publication | : | Published May 31, 2019 |
The founding group of twelve chefs--Sam Choy, Roger Dikon, Mark Ellman, Amy Ferguson Ota, Beverly Gannon, Jean-Marie Josselin, George Mavrothalassitis, Peter Merriman, Philippe Padovani, Gary Strehl, Alan Wong, and Roy Yamaguchi--grandly announced in August 1991 the establishment of what they called Hawai'i Regional Cuisine. At the time, they had no idea how dramatically they would change the food scene in the islands. While they each had their own style, their common commitment to using fresh, locally sourced ingredients of the highest quality at their restaurants quickly attracted the interest of journalists writing for national newspapers and magazines.
The final chapters close with a discussion of the leading chefs of the next generation and an assessment of HRC's impact on farming, fishing, ranching, aquaculture, and culinary education in the islands. Hawai'i Regional Cuisine will satisfy those who are passionate about food and intrigued by changes in local foodways.
Hawaii Regional Cuisine: The Food Movement That Changed the Way Hawaii Eats Reviews
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Though academic in nature, this analysis of the fine dining history of Hawaii (and its trickle-down effect on regular restaurants and farmers' markets) since the early 1990s to the near-present explained a lot of the positive changes I'd noticed on Big Island since going there regularly starting in 2003. Yamashita gave a good historical context of dining in the islands prior to the 90s, where there were strict racial divisions between Asian food, Hawaiian food, and the continental French cuisine that dominated hotels and fine dining. While it was heartening to read how the diverse chefs of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement championed local producers and Asian and Hawaiian native food ways, their approach (save for Merriman's) was still largely Oahu-centric. That said, even developments as far away as Oahu have definitely changed dining on the Big Island for the better over the last 20 years.
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Fun, fun, fun look at the history and backstories of successful Hawaiian chefs and restaurants from 1990-the present. Basically, before the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement made it so that you could cook local Hawaiian food AND be a fine dining chef, the only way to be a top chef in the culinary world was if you cooked European food (namely French). Then Roy Yamaguchi, Sam Choy, Alan Wong, and others started cooking Asian-Pacific-American food and made it big and it changed the Hawaiian food scene forever. I will say, as someone who doesn't cook and is not very familiar with Hawaiian food and HRC chefs, some passages read like long lists of names to me more than anything, but they still made me hungry!
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After hearing Dr. Yamashita speak about cuisine and restaurants in L.A.'s Little Tokyo, I decided to check out this monograph on Hawai'i Regional Cuisine.
Yamashita paints a clear picture of the development of Hawai'i's own haute cuisine tradition, outlining key chefs, ingredients, and the importance of the relationship of place (Hawai'i) to the food. By placing Hawai'i itself at the center of the discussion, we see how these innovative chefs, some from Hawai'i and some from elsewhere, crafted a cuisine that centers around the islands and the people who live on them, particularly the farmers whose produce is featured in many of the dishes. Yamashita also highlights the stratification of race and its relationship to the way different cuisines are treated and considered in Hawai'i. Yamashita's study includes not only the founders of HRC but also the next generation of HRC and HRC-adjacent chefs.
If you're into food culture at all, particularly new food cultures which continue to grow and develop, this book is definitely for you.
