Local Grindz

Please follow the buttons to explore the various types of local grinds as well as the individual restaurants in each category:

Ono Local grindz and bowling? You got 'em both at The Alley in Aiea, featured in Page 1 of the Local Casual Family section.

Just what types of foods make up local grindz when it comes to the island of Oahu, Hawaii? Visitors may think it stems mostly from ethnic Hawaiian foods, but that is only a small part of the whole picture. Local grindz owes just as much of its characteristics to Hawaiian as it does to American, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and so many other cultures. The ethnic differences on Oahu, Hawaii ensure such a huge degree of variation that it becomes much too complex to define in a simple statement or two. Try asking around as to what local grindz really are and you will likely get as many different answers as there are bees at Matsumoto’s Shave Ice Store in Haleiwa - but you know what? That’s just how we like to keep it! It’s all part of the unique culinary diversity that makes the islands, and Hawaii, in general, so special!

After all, most of us here have been very comfortable growing up with neighbors from every corner of the world, each contributing their own part to the local food scene. Any community on the island, big or small, on any given weekend, will have its share of festive gatherings, each highlighting the culinary virtues of one or more different cultures. It could be the Kahunahana’s across the street, cooking up the Hawaiian staple, lau-lau, over a fire in 55-gallon drums; or the Kanemaru’s down the road, putting together a combination of Japanese dishes like nishime, kinpira gobo, and inari sushi; or the Castro family next door, enticing the entire neighborhood with the sweet aroma of marinated meats and sausages, Portuguese-style, slowly smoking inside their home-made burner!

It is a wonder to encounter a land where so many different cultures intermingle so freely. The number of ethnicities that call Oahu, and Hawaii in general, home, have blossomed and flourished for many generations. We are not referred to as the “Melting Pot” and “Crossroads of the Pacific” for nothing!

This ethnic mixing sprang out of a time in our past when an international labor force was brought in to grow and harvest the vast fields of sugar cane and pineapple that helped fuel the island’s economy, a movement that would forever change the cultural, and thus culinary, landscape of the islands. From right around the 1850’s and on they came, mostly from the Asian nations of China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, but also from other parts of the world like Puerto Rico. As time passed and the various ethnicities began venturing from the boundaries of their camps, as they called them, to inter-mingle with eachother as well as with the local population, the native palate was invigorated with exotic new ingredients and ideas from all over the world. Out of this spread of ethnic mixing a new food culture was suddenly born.

I often wonder if the Portuguese had any inkling that their beloved malasada’s would one day become as popular as they are today, or if the Chinese knew that their steaming-hot dim-sum, chow mein, and fried rice would soon have such a dramatic impact upon our local food scene. I can only imagine if my grandma was just a little bit nervous, waiting to see if her chicken hekka, konbu-maki, and tsukemono would go over well with the Rabago’s, who had cross-culturally married into our’s. Likewise, they also must have been wondering if my grandma would enjoy the Filipino dishes of kare-kare and pancit that they brought over. Aah, can you imagine the wonder and discovery of new culinary worlds mixing together for the first time?

Whatever it was then, one thing is for certain now- every culture on the island has added to the rich and wonderful diversity that we now see. In the following sections and sub-sections we'll explore the many food types that have been adopted and have since evolved over the years into their own unique creations now endemic to the islands.

Visitors and members of the country's finest (military personnel) stationed on the island will no doubt find this section enlightening, especially the Local Specialty items sub-section, where you will find such interesting things as saimin, manapua, poke, crack seed, huli-huli chicken, oxtail soup, shave ice, and malasadas.

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