Fantastic Filipino Food

So, this one started out as a bet between my sister and myself.   Having explored the extent of Filipino fast food, at places like Golden Coin, and having thoroughly enjoyed Andrew Zimmern's adventures in the Philippines, I really wanted a taste of the real, authentic, homemade Filipino food.  I wanted to begin exploring my own backyard for some place serving the real thing.  Now, my sister has quite a number of Filipino friends from Hawaii, who she met in school on the mainland.   So I asked her, to ask them, where to find the really good Filipino food here in Hawaii.  I wanted insider knowledge.   Just as I could rattle off the best Chinese places, I wanted a local Filipino guy to tell me where all of the good Filipino places were.   Her response was that, while available on the mainland, it simply didn't exist in Hawaii.  I was immediately, simply taken aback.   How could that possibly be true, when we have such an incredibly large Filipino population.  Even moreso, how could it be available on the mainland but not here, when we have such a big Filipino community.  Her rationale was that the Filipino population here is more prone to eating at home than eating out.  Therefore, there are no restaurants that serve the really good Filipino food.   Whereas on the mainland, everyone's so independant, that they don't eat at home with their families, and the demand for authentic Filipino food is greater.  While logical, I just couldn't believe that our local Filipinos community wouldn't have something really authentic and good to offer the rest of the us, their plantation neighbors.   So I set off on another quest, to find the really good Filipino food here, and more importantly to prove my sister wrong.

The Filipinos came to work on our sugar cane plantations very shortly after the Koreans, in 1906.  Like the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, they quickly found a new home in these islands, and fast friends in their island neighbors.  The neighborhoods of Kalihi and Waipahu became predominantly Filipino.  Driving in Kalihi is always fun because you get to see the fancy Filipino architecture, immediately recognizable by the balconies and the colors.  In my quest to find the good Filipino food, I again looked to Frank DeLima's "Filipino Christmas".   The one (to the tune of  "Oh come let us adore him"), "You'll find us in Waipahu!  You'll find us in Waipahu!" seemed like a veritable sign for me.  And indeed, I did find them, and good food, in Waipahu.  

The name that kept popping up in Waipahu for the best Filipino food, was Thelma's Restaurant, right on Farrington Highway.  So one day after visiting a client in Waipahu, I decided to pop in to Thelma's.  The first thing that surprised me, was that they were offering a lunch buffet.  Like the Indian buffet at Zaffron, this was a wonderful way to first get exposed to real Filipino food.  There were about a dozen dishes, most of which were completely unfamiliar to me.  The most predominant thing that you notice about Filipino food in general, is that while using many of the similar flavors to all Asian cuisine, like shoyu and fish sauces, there is a distinctly sour component to many of the dishes.  They love sour fruit juices and vinegar.  This combined with the pungent fish sauces, make a distinctly Filipino flavor.    Thelma's is a great way of trying a wide variety of new dishes.  While this gives the buffet a distinct advantage, the drawback is that you are unable to really familiarize yourself with a few representative dishes.  You aren't able to name any dishes, or really understand their composition.  Additionally, buffet food is never the highest quality, since it sits there for so long.   So while a fantastic cursory overview, to really get familiar, and make some favorites, you need to move beyond the buffet.

After a bit of additional research, I found the place that I would consider (as many do) the best Filipino food on the island.  It is a little restaurant right on River St. called Mabuhay Cafe.   It was a little intimidating at fist, being a non-Filipino walking into this restaurant.   I was a bit afraid it would be like walking into a saloon in those old Westerns, were everyone suddenly stops talking and turns to stare at you.   But they certainly made me feel welcome.  Their walls, are completely covered with Filipino luminaries that have graced their tables.  I took it as an instant sign of quality that they had a picture of Ben Cayetano on their wall.   If the place was authentic enough to satisfy our own Filipino governor, then it must be good.   The only problem with Mabuhay Cafe is that they're located in a somewhat unsavory part of town.   Even parking across the street, I was accosted by a druken crazy person offering me his sage advice.  It's not the kind of place, I would want to take a date, or any female friend for that matter.   Then again, once walking through the doors, you're in an oasis of good food. 

Pork Adobo at Mabuhay Cafe

As the baseline for a visit to any Filipino restaurant, you just have to try the adobo.   It gives you a good reference point, but besides that, not having the adobo is like learning about Japanese food and never trying sushi.   Adobo is so iconic of Filipino cuisine, that you simply need to try it.   But when I tried the pork adobo at Mabuhay cafe, my jaw almost dropped.   Their adobo was quite simply the best adobo I've ever had in my life.  It was like I had never tasted real adobo before.   Their meat was incredibly tender.  Fork tender, the way you can only get it if it's stewed for a really really long time.   While it had some vinegar taste, it was very light.  Some adobo I've had is overpoweringly sour, but theirs wasn't sour at all.   The most distinctive spice in fact was black pepper, but it wasn't ground pepper you taste.  That kind of flavor only comes from whole peppercorns, that have again been stewed long enough to infuse the meat with their flavor.   It's a little oily, but it's a very flavorful oil.  All in all, it wasn't nearly as overpowering as other adobo, and much more savory.  It's one of those classics, that even the uninitiated can recognize is a classic.

Pork Gisantes at Mabuhay Cafe

Following the adobo, I opted for another classic dish, pork gisantes.   Like the adobo, I've had gisantes where the tomato is very strong and sour.   But their gisantes is just wonderfully savory.  The peas have a really strong flavor, giving it almost the taste of split pea soup.   But unlike split pea soup, where the peas are nothing but mush, giving it a baby food texture that I've never liked, the peas in the gisantes are still whole, and though soft, still have enough distinct texture to that I really enjoyed it.  Again, the best pork gisantes I've had in my life.

Crispy Pata at Mabuhay Cafe

I wanted to have lechon, but looking on the menu, I found something that was a little more interesting.   Instead of roast pork belly, they have deep fried pig's feet, called crispy pata.   I'm used to pig's feet being in soup, and being basically a melt in your mouth skin.   The crispy pata on the other hand, turns the skin into an uber crunchy pork rind.  And I have no idea how they find so much meat in the pig's foot, but it's very meaty.   It's not like lechon or roast pork, where you've got layers of fat and layers of meat.   The meat here is just meat, but it's the perfect meaty texture.   Some people may be a little scared to try pig's feet, but once you get a bite of that awesome crunchy skin, you're hooked.

Fried Tilapia at Mabuhay Cafe

Filipinos are also well known for their fried fishes.   When done right, the fish is fried to the point where the fins and the tail take on the texture of potato chips.  It's awesome.   They're also known for using a fish that the rest of us consider somewhat repuslive, tilapia.    In Hawaii, the tilapia swims in some of our most poluted streams (like Nuuanu stream itsef).   Since tilapia takes on the flavor of whatever it's swimming in, most of us feel that eating tilapia is roughly the equivalent of shoving garbage in your mouth.   My dad said that he used to have Filipino co-workers that would even fish the tilapia out of Nuuanu Stream.  He said that the trick was to throw the fish into a tank of fresh water for about a week or two, continually changing the water.   Doing this, essentially flushes all of the nasty taste out of the fish.  I'm not anxious to try it, but I'm sure that the tilapia served at Mabuhay Cafe is farm raised.   It's delicious, and even my dad, who isn't as big a fish eater, he realy enjoyed their fish.  The best part is the cheeks in the head, and the collar right behind the gills.  

Filipino food has a bad stigma for dishes like black dog and balut.  While neither of these dishes are on the menu at Mabuhay Cafe, there are other dishes that most people would find a little frightening.   Dinuguan, for example is basically a stew of pig guts and blood.   The velvety, dark black color, reminiscent of a squid ink stew, is a little scary to the Western palate.   I myself would love to try it, but I'm just not allowed to eat internal organs anymore.  As I really love ox tail, I was intrigued by their kare kare, which is a sort of peanut butter flavor stew.  The problem again, is that it's cooked with tripe, which I'm not allowed to eat.  Mabuhay Cafe also has some prominent goat dishes on the menu, something I've never found on any other menu around the island.   Being quite fond of the gamey taste of lamb, I thought that I would really enjoy goat as well.   Unfortunately, goat has a lot of small, brittle bones that shatter and must be picked out of your food.  The little bones made the goat somewhat less enjoyable for me, so I'm not as fond of it.  

Admittedly there are some flavors that I just aren't that appealing to me.   They have a vegetable soup called sinigang, which has a very sour tamarind flavor.   I'm not really fond of sour soups, so sinigang just isn't very appetizing to me.   Probably the most famous Filipino vegetable dish is a mixed vegetable stir fry called pinakbet.   It's got all kinds of vegetables in it.  Most people don't care for it, because it's flavored with bagoong (their famous shrimp paste, similar to Chinese harm ha), which has a very strong flavor.   I personally love harm ha, so I have no problems with the pungent flavor, but the main vegetable in the mix is one that I just don't like, bitter melon.   Bitter melon is something that my Po Po used to love, and something my dad really enjoyed as he got older.   We figured that as you get older, your taste buds aren't as accute as they are in your youth, so stronger flavors like bitter melon appeal to you more.  But as kids, we just don't like it.   So every year, we take a little taste, shudder, make a horrid face, and say "nope, I'm still young!"

Mabuhay Cafe is easily the best Filipino food I've ever eaten, and a great place to try exciting new flavors.   The best part about it was, that I definitely won my bet with my sister.   We really do have excellent authentic Filipino food here, as we should considering how big a part of our island community the Filipinos have been.

Black Dog Roasting on an Open Fire

Christmas is a holiday celebrated around the world.  So when you think of Christmas food, the first food that comes to mind probably isn't Filipino food.  But listening to the radio this past week, they've been playing Frank DeLima's "Filipino Christmas" pretty frequently, and somehow it gave me a craving.   I think it's that one line (to the tune of Mel Torme's Christmas Song), "Black dog roasting on an open fire.   Bagaong boiling on the stove."  Somehow Frank's resonating tenor, although menat to be humorous, captures the same warm mesmerizing quality that Mel Torme's did, and invokes the same desire for festive food.  Not that I really had a craving for black dog (something I've never actually tasted), but for Filipino food in general.

Filipino food has a bad stigma attached to it, I think.   It gets a bad rap, and people are afraid to try it because of dishes like black dog, and balut (or unhatched baby duck eggs).  While they certainly exist in the cuisine, and there really isn't anything wrong with either of those dishes (except that they defy the Western notions of what should and should not be eaten), they are not all encompassing of the entire cuisine.   But, because it lacks the popularity, Filipino food just doesn't have the prominence that Japanese or Chinese food has, even here in Hawaii.  However, it certainly is readily available if you want to go get some.

Ironically, it isn't even in Hawaii that I first developed a liking for Filipino food.   It was when I was doing work for the Department of Education in Guarm.  Being very far from home, my traveller's instinct kicked in and I really wanted to explore, especially the food scene.   For lunch, my contacts there took me to a popular Filipino fast food chain called, Jollibee.   While basically a burger joint, their flavors are definitely Filipino, and they offered Filipino favorites like palabok and Filipino style spaghetti (which is disarmingly sweet).  This naturally piqued my curiosity, and for dinner one night, I went searching for more traditional Filipino dishes, something I found at one of the little vendors at the night market in the Chamorro Village.  With Guam being only an hour flight away from the Philippines, it should be no real surprise that I found good Filipino food there.   But I figured with our huge Filipino population here, we must have similar food here.   So when I returned I promptly made a visit to the defacto headquarters for Filipino food here, Golden Coin Bakeshop and Restaurant.

Golden Coin is pretty much the definitive Filipino plate lunch in Hawaii.  What Patti's Chinese Kitchen was to Chinese food, Golden Coin is to Filipino food.   A beloved and treasured, local favorite.  Even the ordering concept is the same, with a choice of starch and 2 to 3 choices from long rows of delicious, and foreign looking foods.   However, instead of chow fun, you get pancit as your starch.   Instead of choosing beef broccoli or lemon chicken, you can choose pinakbet or dinuguan.  In fact, many of the Filipino dishes have Chinese roots.  But they all have a very distinctly Filipino flavor.

Palabok from Golden Coin

Driving past Golden Coin on King St. in Kalihi, they had a big banner advertising their palabok.   As this was one of the featured dishes at Jollibee as well, it was one of my first jumping off points for Filipino cuisine.  Unfortunately, while comfort food for the Filipinos, the palabok really didn't excite me.   It is basically a bed of very thin translucent rice noodles (much thinner than our local chicken long rice).  On top of that they drown the plate in this thick, gloppy, corn-starch laden gravy, which to me really didn't have that much flavor.  On top of that are the condiments of boiled eggs, shrimps, minced pork rinds, and some minced green onion.    All in all, it's not a bad dish.  But was pretty tame, and not at all threatening like black dog.  I can easily see how it would be great comfort food for people who grew up with it.  For myself, not having grown up with it, I found it an interesting hodge podge of toppings, but not that interesting a dish.  The gloppy, messy gravy just wasn't flavorful enough for me.

Fried Bangus from Golden Coin

The one dish that really impressed me the most in Guam, was their fried fish.   On my plate, I was basically served a whole fried fish.   When done right, all of the fins and tail have an almost potato chip like crunch to them.   So the next thing I tried at Golden Coin was their fried bangus (or milk fish).   Bangus is pretty much he national fish of the Philippines.  It is on practically every menu.   The bangus at Golden Coin was tasty.   However, it must've been a different fish from the one I had in Guam.   It wasn't fried nearly as crispy.   In fact, the skin on the fish, usually one of the best parts, was a little touch and scaly.   But the meat was very nice and white, and the bones were easy to pick out.  

Pork Adobo, Lechon, & Pancit Bihon Plate from Golden Coin

What Golden Coin does really well, is their 2-choice or 3-choice plates (the same as Patti's or Panda).  Instead of getting a chow mein, I went straight for a pancit bihon.   Their pancit also utilizes translucent rice noodles, like the palabok.   It's somewhat similar to Singapore noodles.   The best pancit I ever had, was of course, homemade by a Filipino lady who used to give us dance lessons.  Her pancit was a completely addictive, chewy texture, almost similar to pad thai.   But then, no fast food pancit could compare to her homemade goodness.  And the pancit at Golden Coin was pretty on par with any other fast food noodle.   Besides the pancit, I decided to try the quintessential Filipino dish, pork adobo.   Their adobo was, not unlike beef stew from L&L in terms of texture.  It's soft, but not melt in your mouth kind of soft.   The gravy that it sits in is almost the same consistency as local style as well.  However, instead of a tomato and carrot flavor, there's a vinegar and pepper flavor.   The adobo is pretty much the classic version of adobo in my mind.   It's the same style of adobo that every other plate lunch place that offers it, tries to achieve.   But no one captures the tenderness of beef, or the classic vinegar taste, as well as Golden Coin.

Besides the pork adobo, I really wanted to try the lechon.   I first saw lechon when watching Anthony Bourdain's adventures in the Philippines.  The whole roasted pig slowly turning on the bamboo spit, getting glazed and golden brown, with skin as crispy and addictive as candy, made me literally drool.   Mainly though, I wanted to see how it compared to Chinese siu yuk (roast pork).   Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.  Other than a different dipping sauce, the flavors of the lechon were essentially the same as any siu yuk you would find at a Chinese fast food place.   Though they may use different herbs and seasonings, they weren't really pronounced enough to make the lechon taste different from siu yuk.   Worse, the lechon suffered from the same flaws as all Chinese fast food places.   The fat was congealed and hard, and all around unappetizing.  When you cut off the hunks of fat, the meat you're left with is decent, but a little dry and not that tender.   The skin was good though.  Always the best part really.

Roast Pork from Duck Lee

Maybe I'm just culturally biased, but I think I like Chinese siu yuk better.   Or it may be that having frequented more Chinese restaurants than Filipino ones, I just know who offers the best siu yuk and haven't yet found the equivalent lechon.   Hands down the best roast pork on the island, is the suckling pig served at dim sum at Royal Garden.   But then, that's yuu jyuu, not siu yuk, so it's a different dish.   My favorite Chinese restaurant to get just a plate of siu yuk over rice, is still Hung Won.  But then, comparing a little family restaurant to fast food is not exactly comparing apples to apples.   The best take out, Chinese fast food, siu yuk can be found at Duck Lee in the Market City Shopping Center.  If you can get it while it's still fresh and hot, it's just delicious.   The meat is nice and soft, and the skin is just perfectly crunchy.

Roast Duck from Duck Lee

Speaking of Duck Lee, the best thing that they do is their roast duck.  It's probably one of the best Chinese fast food dishes around.   Each piece is just glistening with fat, juice, and the light sauce.  The duck isn't just all bones.  It's meaty and succulent.  The skin, is not crispy, but just melts in your mouth, the same way that the skin on good shoyu chicken does.   Best of all is the sauce they glaze the duck in.  It's just the perfect blend of salty, sweet, and plum and star anise flavors.  It doesn't overpower the duck, but really brings out the duck flavor.

It's kind of ironic that this Portuguese man is able to emulate the sounds of the Filipino language so well, and was able to set off such a quest.  Then again, maybe it isn't that ironic, considering how well Frank knows Hawaii, and all of its people.  In today's ridiculously oversensitive environment of political correctness, I'm sometimes surprised that Frank's ethnic humor can still survive.   I have never been a fan of the political correctness movement.   To me, instead of stimulating respect and tolerance for other cultures as it should, it fosters an environment where it is too easy to offend other people.  People take themselves way too seriously.  In Hawaii, we've learned that being able to laugh at ourselves is the key to cultural harmony (something that a few shows, like Avenue Q, have recognized).  It's not meant to offend, it's meant to bond.  And Frank's observations are funny because they're really accurate.  Local Chinese really are thrifty to the point of excess.  Local Japanese really are like how Frank personified as Glenn Miyashiro.   The only ones who get bent out of shape listening to Frank, are the newcomers to the islands.  But they too quickly learn that, humor and food are the keys to the racial harmony that we pride ourselves so much on.

Perfect Poi

Whenever we have guests come from the mainland, it's always fun trying to get them to do 2 things.   Firstly, it's always a riot to get them to try to pronounce our street names, as we're driving home.   Particularly, names like Keeaumoku or Kalanianaole.  They always get stuck the first time.  But after a week with me they usually get the hang of it.  The other thing is to get them to try real Hawaiian food, particularly poi.   Somehow, foods like poi, lau lau, and squid luau just don't look appetizing to them.   People don't get poi especially.  They just don't know what it is.   So I try to put it in reference for them, I call it "mashed potatoes", but instead of using potatoes, we use another tuber root, the taro.

I honestly don't know what people complain about with poi.   People look at it and say that it has the texture of wallpaper paste.   But I absolutely love that smoothness that it has.   It's almost like jello pudding, but more viscous.   People find the gray color unappetizing.   But every time I look at it, I think that that lavender gray is such a pretty shade.   People don't like the tartness of day old poi.   I suppose that may be an acquired taste, but most people serve poi pretty fresh these days, so no one really tastes the more fermented stuff.  I guess, it's just something people aren't used to.   But for us that grew up with it, it's a must have food.  

I really love how unique poi is.   A lot of cultures eat rice as the staple of their diet.  A lot of cultures eat potatoes as their mainstay.   A lot of cultures must have bread in every meal.   But poi... poi is unique.   Only in the islands was poi the main staple of the Hawaiian diet.  Because it was such an important part of the diet, there were so many rules and ettiquite concerning your poi.  True Hawaiians believe you should never "dirty" your poi.   But me, I love dipping my kalua pig or my lomi lomi salmon in with the poi.  It just tastes so good together.   One brings out the flavor of the other.   Just like bread and butter.   And of course, as kids, we all at one time enjoyed the taste of milk and sugar with our poi.   

True Hawaiians would insist that poi should be eaten with your fingers.   There's that whole dipping wrist motion that you have to master properly too.   But in these modern times, you just can't help but eat it with a spoon.   We do however, still use fingers as our measurement of viscocity.   The ideal thickness is always 2 finger poi (thick enough to eat with 2 fingers).  Cheaper poi, which has been thinned with water a little is 3 finger poi.   That is probably the ideal range.  But in the past decade or so, excessive rains have damaged many taro crops, and poi has become a bit expensive.  Add to that the fact that many tourists come, put the poi on their plates, but wind up disliking it, and letting it go to waste, and we've definitely got a poi shortage on our hands.   So these days, it's not uncommon to go to a hotel and find them serving what I would grade as 4 or even 5 finger poi.   It's really tasteless and foul.   If you go down to New Orleans they have the expression "baptizing the gumbo", for watering it down to accomodate more guests.   But as much as I dislike watered down gumbo, poi is all about texture, and "baptized" poi is even worse.   On the contrary, not many people have ever tried poi while it is still being pounded.   Last Summer, I was as the Makaha Mango Festival, and they had a Hawaiian boy pounding fresh poi.  As he pounded, he passed out pieces (yes pieces) of poi that had been pounded, but before he had added any water to it.   The pounded taro actually had the chewy texture of really good mochi.   I really liked it, and I wonder why no one has ever thought to market it in that form.    Then again, I'm always partial to thicker poi.   That's when you know you've got the real good (un-watered down) stuff.

So... where do you get good poi?    Certainly not a hotel restaurant or some place like that.   Some Hawaiian food place?   The supermarket to eat at home?    Almost all of the poi that we eat come from bags of Taro Brand poi.   I really haven't seen many other brands of poi in the supermarkets.   The differences from place to place come from whether they have watered down the poi, or how long they have let it sit.   The true old Hawaiians really liked their poi kinda sour, but honestly I prefer it on the fresher side.   But if you've watered it down, processed it too much, frozen it and tried to reheat it, or anything like that, the poi loses all of its taro flavor, and you really don't get much of anything other than a texture.

Taro Brand Poi from Costco

While I was searching around though, I actually found a poi that really tastes different from other poi.   It all started when my son was first born.  I had remembered when my sister was a baby, she had a problem drinking formula and my mom had run out of milk for her.   So in Hawaii, pretty much all doctors recommend poi for babies who cannot drink milk (as they are lactose intolerant or whatever other reasons), because poi is simply so nutritious.   Remembering how nutritious poi is, and wanting my son to have a taste for local food, I wanted poi to be his first "real" food (after breast milk and baby cereals).   So just to be sure, I asked his pediatrician if this was okay.   She said yes, but she recommended we go with Hanalei Poi.    Hanalei Poi?   Was this a specific brand, or was it just poi that was made in Hanalei in general?  We visited Kauai that year, and drove up to Hanalei, but didn't see any poi company there.    Well, it turns out that Hanalei Poi is a special manufacturer that is pasturized and different from regular poi.   But it is really dang hard to find.

Taro Fields in Hanalei, Kauai

Hanalei Poi is pasturized and boiled much hotter than regular poi.   It's then tightly sealed and shipped.  Because it is boiled so hot and sealed so tightly, much less bacteria is found in the poi causing it to ferment much less (which is probably also why my pediatrician recommended it for my son).   The resultant poi, is the complete opposite of sour poi.   From the moment that I first opened it, it seemed a much brighter lavender color than the gray that we're used to.   It was every bit as smooth as regular poi, but it was much much sweeter.  Not artificially sweet as in adding sugar to your poi, but a natural fresh sweet taste that I had never experienced in a poi before.  You could taste much more of the taro flavor to the poi.   It was extraordinary.   Simply the best poi I had ever tasted in my life.   Here finally, was a poi that was truly different than any other poi.   But it was so incredibly difficult to find.

I was told that I could simply walk into Foodland and buy some Hanalei Poi in their freezer section.  But every time I went, I could never find it.    I went from supermarket to supermarket, but no one seemed to carry it.   Finally, the place I found it was another Hawaii institution.   More than an institution, it is a landmark both physically and culturally.   The place I found it was Tamashiro Market.    Famed for the big orange crab on the top of their light pink building inviting people in, Tamashiro is a monument to seafood in Kalihi. 

Ever since I was little I loved going to Tamashiro Market.  It was so much fun going through the turnstall and wandering down the cramped little aisles to find all kinds of things that you just couldn't find anywhere else.   They were the first place I ever saw jars of pigs blood on sale for your soups and stuff.   The lobster tanks and crab tanks were always full, and all little kids love staring at lobster and crab tanks.   They have tanks and tanks full of different kinds of limu, ogo, and other seaweeds.   Every New Year's Tamashiro is THE place to go to get fresh sashimi (an absolute must if you're Japanese for prosperity in the new year), and the lines for people getting fresh fish are ridiculously long.   Tamashiro is one of the only places (outside of Chinatown), that I've ever seen geoduck for sale. 

Opihi Poke from Tamashiro Market

As a fish market, Tamashiro is also the king of fresh poke of different types.   Besides the regular poke though, Tamashiro is the place for really rare finds, like opihi poke.   I love opihi.   Just thinking of opihi brings to mind Frank De Lima's chipmunk-esque opihi song ("Please don't eat me").   But you know how hard it is to harvest opihi?   Remember, they live on the lava rocks right amongst the smashing surf and the only way to harvest them is with a screwdriver and some daring individual with extremely sure footing (just like the "Opihi Man" song by the Ka'au Crater Boys).   Because of their tenacity and endurance, surviving the harshest of environments, we even adopted the opihi as the mascot for my IT company, Opihi Net, LLC.  The taste of the opihi at Tamashiro, is impecably fresh.   It is crisp and cruncy, and tastes way better than a large abalone.   But the truly, uber Hawaiian experience is having the opihi poke with your Hanalei Poi.   The combination is absolutely extraordinary.

When I was little though, my absolute favorite thing to get from Tamashiro was their bud-bud (pronounced "bood bood").   Bud-bud is a Filipino desert, which is roughly a foot long stick of mochi rice, coconut milk, and sugar, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed.   The caramel colored, coconuty sweet mochi rice is just one of those precious childhood flavors that you never forget.  I have never seen it anywhere except at Tamashiro Market.

For all of their love of markets, neither Bourdain nor Zimmern made it to Tamashiro's on their Hawaii episodes.   Too bad.  They both missed out the truest, freshest taste of Hawaii they could've gotten.   Had Zimmern tried Hanalei Poi, instead of diving straight into the hardcore 5-day old stuff, he might've liked it a lot more.   Maybe it's just as well.   With our taro shortages and our dwindling opihi population, these are 2 truly Hawaiian tastes that I would rather keep all to ourselves.