Taste of Hawaii: A Foodie’s Guide to Island Cuisine and Local Flavors
Hawaii’s culinary identity starts not in a restaurant, but in an underground oven called an imu. A whole pig, seasoned with Hawaiian salt and wrapped in ti leaves, is slow-cooked over hot stones for hours until the meat falls apart. That dish — kalua pig — is one of the few that predates contact, and it remains the centrepiece of a modern luau alongside poi, lomi lomi salmon, and haupia. But the islands’ food story is wider than any single plate. The volcanic soil that supports taro in terraced fields called loʻi also sustains one of the world’s largest