By any measure, Hawaii is a very special place, with a mélange of climate, geography and culture found nowhere else. But when it comes to food, Hawaii is truly one of a kind. Mixing an equatorial setting and endless sunshine with ample rain and wildly varied altitudes – from sea level to what by some measures is the highest mountain on earth – Hawaii can grow almost anything, from lettuce to pineapples, macadamia nuts to coffee.

Surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean, it is also rich in seafood, including endemic species found no place else. Throw in an ethnic mix of Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and transplanted American mainlanders, and you get a unique homegrown cooking style with very varied roots – which is why any visitor to the island should try real Hawaiian food.

Luau/Kalua Cuisine:

A luau is a festive, traditional group dinner, a backyard party of sorts, which has been highly commercialized into resort-based galas with dancers and music, more style than substance. But luau cuisine is authentic, and well worth seeking out, especially at one of the smaller, more traditional venues. They key ingredient is a whole pig, cooked kalua style – kalua means “to cook in a an underground oven.” A large pit (imu) is dug in the ground (often at a sandy beach where digging is easier!) and lined with stones. A fire is built in the pit, and once the wood has burned away, the very hot stones retain heat for hours. These are covered with banana leaves, the pig is put in, covered with a wet tarp or banana leaves to preserve moisture, than covered with insulating sand or dirt, cooking slowly underground all day.

While the pig is the Luau centerpiece, squid and chicken cooked in a similar way are also often served, and there are several traditional accompaniments, uniquely Hawaiian dishes that can be enjoyed in concert with kalua pig or on their own at many other meals. Poi is among the most important and particular Hawaiian dishes, a liquidy paste made by vigorously mashing the starchy roots of the taro plant while adding water. A distant relative of mashed potatoes, it is much thinner and distinctly purple. Lomi-lomi salmon is a popular side dish salad of raw salmon cut into chunks and lightly salted, tossed with tomatoes and chopped Maui sweet onion, served cold.Chicken long rice is a twist on chicken and rice casseroles like paella, although not made with rice but rather thin bean thread noodles, served very wet in broth. To close, haupia is a white flan-like gelatinous dessert made from coconut milk, usually served in blocks.

Because of the elaborate preparation and scope of a whole pig luau, many restaurants offer an alternative form of kalua pork where a whole shoulder is wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in an oven at low temperature to simulate the underground process. Kalua pork appears on menus everywhere. A near relative is laulau, a dish combining pork and fish, usually salted butterfish, with chunks of both wrapped in a banana or taro leaf for individual sized portions. Traditionally cooked in the imu, these are now often steamed on stove tops.

Plate Lunches:

This tradition dates back to plantation days, when laborers took a break for hearty lunch served from a wagon. Today plate lunches are typically dispensed from food trucks – long predating the current American trend – especially by the beach. A plate lunch consists of a choice of meat entrée and two starchy sides, usually a heaping mound of white rice and another of macaroni salad. It is often served in a divided three-section clamshell takeout box, and makes an ideal instant picnic – in France you might grab a baguette and wedge of cheese, in Hawaii you get a plate lunch for the beach. The uniquely local spin is the meat course, with typical choices including teriyaki beef or shrimp, curry stews, Japanese-style fried chicken, lomi-lomi salmon, shredded kalua pork, and always loco moco, a hamburger patty topped with thick brown gravy and a fried egg, ubiquitous throughout the Island State. Wide patties of grilled chorizo called Portuguese sausage are also wildly popular here, sometimes as a plate lunch choice, but always at breakfast as a bacon alternative.

Seafood:

Hawaii is world famous for its wealth of seafood, and virtually every restaurant will offer an array of fresh fish served grilled, blackened, steamed, and cooked every which way, in steaks, filets or whole. Tuna is the most common, in several local varieties, especially skipjack, yellowfin and albacore. Other widely available fishes include marlin, grouper, snapper, wahoo (ono) and the ubiquitous mahi mahi (dolphin fish). Octopus is also very popular. Kumu is an endemic fish found only in Hawaii, once prized by royalty and forbidden to commoners, and at one point so popular that it was common at breakfast, broiled in butter. Kumu was overfished, and is now typically taken only with spears, and very rare on menus. Along with some other obscure but very Hawaiian dishes it is occasionally served at the award-winning Ko Restaurant on Maui, known as the island’s only fine dining eatery specializing in classic cuisine of Hawaii’s sugarcane plantation era.

Hawaii’s most distinctive seafood dish is poke, a raw salad distantly related to sashimi, with chunks of raw seafood tossed with sea salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, hot pepper and chopped Maui sweet onions. Like conventional salads, there are myriad variations, and poke specialty shops might offer a dozen styles, with different seafood and additions. It is often spicy and can be an entrée on a plate lunch.

Other Hawaiian Dishes:

One of Hawaii’s oddest yet most beloved snacks is Spam musubi, sold everywhere from convenience stores to beverage carts at the finest golf courses. Spam is a canned, processed block of pork, spices and binders developed in World War II to preserve and transport meat. It is very popular here, with Hawaiians consuming more per capita than anyone on earth. A beloved snack, Spam musubi takes a sushi approach, topping a block of sushi rice with a slice of grilled Spam wrapped in nori (seaweed).

Macadamia nuts are everywhere, on their own, honey roasted, in chocolate, as ice cream, and as a crust for fish dishes. Hawaiian shaved ice is a longstanding hot weather dessert, where in lieu of ice cream, you’ll find a mound of finely ground ice flavored with fruit juices. Oxtail stew and oxtail soup are very popular, as are myriad variations on saimin, a traditional Chinese noodle soup. In Hawaii saimin has become a family of multi-cultural one-pot mashups that marry local ingredients, and can include Portuguese sausage, Spam, Japanese ramen, Japanese dumplings (gyoza), and many other ingredients.