A FOOD TRADITION

Hawaiian cuisine

Hawaiian cuisine combines Native Hawaiian foodways with influences from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, and other plantation communities. Traditional staples include taro, sweet potato, breadfruit, coconut, fish, pork, seaweed, and fermented foods, while later local cooking adds rice, noodles, soy, and preserved meats. Characteristic methods include imu earth-oven cooking, pounding, steaming, fermenting, grilling, and salting. Representative foods include poi with laulau, kalua pig, and lomi salmon. The term covers both Native Hawaiian traditions and the broader local cuisine that emerged through plantation-era cultural exchange, rather than simply describing generic Pacific or Asian American cooking.

Catalogue preview Cuisine connections may be unreviewed. Regional comparisons include their food references and do not establish the ingredients of a particular meal.