16 Hawaiian Recipes for a Lūʻau

King Kamehameha II couldn't have known that he was helping make way for the first lūʻaus when he made the once unthinkable decision to eat with his mother in 1819, ending the longstanding system of kapu, or taboo, that governed native Hawaiian society. Complex rules around who could eat what with whom were left by the wayside, and families began to eat together for the first time in many generations. And the celebrations that grew out of that first taboo-breaking meal look very different from the commercial lūʻaus that tourists (myself included) frequent when they visit what was once the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.

While its system of government may have been overthrown by the U.S., the people — and foodways — remain. For Hawaiians, native and otherwise, a lūʻau is a family or community celebration to which you must be invited. For the rest of us, we pay for some kind of buffet and show. (I, for one, love a cheesy tourist performance, as long as the facts are right and the money is going to the right people.) Still, there's a thread, even if it is sometimes tenuous, between the community feasts and the tourist extravaganzas, which is most often visible in the food itself. There are dishes served at both tables that it's difficult to get anywhere else, especially on the mainland, whether it's poi (pounded taro root) or kālua pork cooked in a real imu (earth oven).

The recipes here are dishes from that buffet bounty that have proved to be especially portable, brought to kitchens around the world by chefs like Sheldon Simeon, Kiki Aranita, Steve Balantac, and Henry Adaniya, who have a longstanding connection with the islands. That includes mac salad, poke, huli huli chicken, Spam musubi, butter mochi, Mai Tais, and more.

Missing are local icons like lomi lomi salmon (salty chopped salmon that's used like a condiment), lau lau (meat or fish wrapped and cooked in taro and ti leaves), ube (purple sweet potatoes), chicken long rice (chicken with rice vermicelli), sweet rolls (not unlike King's Hawaiian), haupia (coconut cream pudding), as well as the all-important staple, poi, a starchy base ideal when paired with a flavorful bite.

But, as Sheldon Simeon writes in his cookbook, Cook Real Hawai'i, a dish like poi is so “elemental” that it should “have to be experienced in Hawai'i to be fully understood and appreciated.”

The history of the U.S. and Hawai'i has been in many ways defined by consumption. Mainlanders have absorbed Hawai'i as an idea and ideal, bought its agricultural products, patronized its tourism industry, and used (by way of the U.S. military) its strategic location. People living in Hawai'i, on the other hand, have seen imported canned food like Spam become staples. (Even lomi lomi salmon is made with nonlocal fish.) This back-and-forth has been anything but even; a better word is extractive.

But something special can happen in a kitchen when a cook submits themselves to the wisdom of a recipe. They become apprentices: students who learn by doing, cooking, eating. Even if you mess it up on your first try, for a moment the tradition lives in you.

So if you are planning a large community celebration, let yourself be a student of the culinary wisdom of Hawai'i. And if you do make it to Mokupuni Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian islands), don't leave without trying the poi.