I knew it! Hawaii is just one big tropical cliche, full of crystaline waters, forested hillsides, volcanoes and rainbows!

The visuals don’t need to be expressed beyond the simple guarantee that, yes, Oahu does look like all of those postcards all of the time. The sweet scent of plumerias in the air is a fresh lei continuously draped around your neck. Almost-maybe rain dampens the world but drenches nothing. Waves crash down on white sand with wet thunder, fields of bamboo rustle at a slow tempo and ocean breezes freeze time whenever they pick up. If I were a cigar, I’d be maintained in the perfect condition, finding in this ecosystem the ideal set of parameters for comfort and longevity.

In other words, Hawaii lived up to the hype, and now I know what it’s like to be one of those criminals in one of those Hollywood thrillers, proving that crime does pay and living happily ever after on the beaches of tropical island destination X while sipping on tropical island cocktail Z. I was able to join the hundred other mainlanders on the beach, our drinks served in hollowed-out coconuts with wedges of pineapples and tiny umbrellas like scaled down, diorama versions of the tropical paradise already being experienced on a larger level, because basking in an expensive vacation requires all five senses, not just the kind of taste that evaporates in the face of wildly tacky aloha shirts.

I didn’t actually buy one of those novelty cocktails, but Mele and I played the tourist plenty, pampering ourselves via shoreside cantinas, public beaches of private resorts, hotel-operated dolphin habitats and tropical cocktail menus where there is always enough colada in your pina colada. In Hawaii, that kind of leisure is a dime a dozen – plus or minus a twelve dollar, spiked, fruit smoothie – and after an awesome day of surfing or hiking, relaxing in a full body suit of sunscreen and snacking on a pupu platter while sipping on a mai tai is the Oahu experience… kind of.

That’s the Waikiki way, at least, and it’s plenty fun to hit the beaches, shop, drink, and pretend the island is an amusement park for your rented happiness, that Pele built those green hills and pristine beaches with her volcanoes for your enjoyment alone, and that there are no locals on the island besides those adorable old men and women in the aloha shirts that served your cocktails. Or that tiny grandpa who took your luggage. Or that wildly white-haired behemoth who captained an outrigger and gave you a novelty surf lesson. Or that pudgy teen who made your shaved ice. Or those pesty street names that are so damn long, even though they use so few letters.

I apologize, locals, but I happen to love aloha shirts with every bone in my haole body, and that just isn’t curable.

There is an artificial quality to those hotel beachside bars. Even when the elderly waiter served us the poke and taro chips appetizer, insisting that The Royal Hawaiian makes poke the island way, I was aware that no island local would ever order the appetizer with its tourist beach price hike. They would instead make it themselves, or pick some up from a seafood market, specialty joint or Foodland. Poke, which refers to how raw fish is cut, may find its way onto the menus of hot shots like Alan Wong, but it’s normally just made with ahi tuna and anything spicy enough to add some flavor to a very mild and inexpensive fish. Anyone can make tuna salad, raw or not.

Not everyone can make lau lau or poi, but on nice weekends, at the corners of residential streets, next to a sign offering a reward for a lost cat, and another advertising lychees at $5/lb, there are cardboard signs for homemade pork lau lau, kalua pig and various other soulful Hawaiian staples being sold out of folks’ backyards. Tourist or not, my main goal when traveling is to eat the destination, and food served out of a garage is the kind of local culture that quickly lures me away from beaches and resorts while dodging herds of tourists being funneled through museums, hula dances, and engineered luaus.

I didn’t eat any Hawaiian food out of a garage, because I can’t masquerade out of that pink tourist stamp known as my skin tone, but I settled for the next best thing: Ono Hawaiian Food.

Ono Hawaiian Food is not an engineered experience like a funded luau or professional hulu performance, but it is something similar. There is an atmosphere of maintained down-to-earth local life that reminds me of the waiter at the Royal Hawaiian and his reassurance that his food is island authentic. The proximity to Waikiki insures easy access to hordes of tourists, and likewise, this invisible streetside food stop is one of the most Yelp!-reviewed joints on the island, a place that word-of-mouth turned into a tourist attraction for out-of-towners to experience “real Hawaiian food” and soon after transformed its Yelp! page into a forum for why they don’t like real Hawaiian food after all.

Ono Hawaiian Food is an interesting little place. By all means it is a local hangout, a hole-in-the-wall soul food diner where the food’s cheap, delicious and maybe even authentic. Perhaps it was a Kapahulu secret once, as unassuming as its generic name, before popularity turned its walls into a photo album of hungry, curious mainlanders and signed celebrity photos that remind me of Oakland’s Lois the Pie Queen. However it turned out, even if locals frequent the place, too, Ono Hawaiian Food is definitely at least partly for the tourists, for people like me, who want to know what “real Hawaiian food” tastes like. And yes, that makes me feel a little worse about myself.

I don’t regret giving the place a try, though, and while there are some so-called Hawaiian foods I’ve tried in California – like plate lunches, portuguese sausage breakfasts, teri-burgers, spam musubi and kalua pork (tacos) – I had never tried pork lau lau or poi, and I’m glad I chose Ono Hawaiian Food as the spot to do so. Wrapped in steamy taro leaves with butterfish, the fatty and messy laundry pile of pig was absolutely delicious. No frame of reference is necessary for tender and flavorful pork.

I could have used some reference for the poi, though, which continued to bewilder me even after I consumed it. Traditional poi is a matter of debate in Hawaii; its strictest preparation violates some health codes, and I couldn’t tell you how “real” Ono Hawaiian Food’s version rated. I didn’t dislike it; the purple pudding tasted like a child’s glue stick (in a good way), but as a starchy staple I can’t see pushing rice aside for it, and isn’t that the only test that matters?

Haupia, otherwise known as tapioca pudding you can cut, is less exotic and more tasty. Lomi lomi salmon, on the other hand, is just about impossible not to mistake for salsa. Even when your brain knows it won’t taste like tomatoes, something in your body is not ready for it to taste instead like diced lox. It’s like that dreaded villain kettle corn, which looks like popcorn and even smells a little like popcorn, but then viciously backstabs your tongue with sweetness. Welcome to the league of evil, lomi lomi. You can represent Oahu in the meetings.

My general expectations for Hawaii were not so shockingly dispelled. Maybe I didn’t see any whole pigs roasting over hot lava flows with pineapples in their mouths (yet), but I saw plenty of mainland piglets with pineapple wedges in their cocktails, and learned very unsurprisingly that I like Hawaiian food, especially when it’s ono, by name or otherwise. I had a good time playing tourist at the dinner table, wearing an aloha shirt, covered in sunscreen, trying to eat Oahu – and I’m a little sorry about it, because nobody completely loves being a tourist, even when it’s on a volcano, under a rainbow and all around delicious.

Ono Hawaiian Food
726 Kapahulu Ave
Honolulu, HI 96816
(808) 737-2275

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 11:02 am and is filed under travel.