We're going back to Kalihi! There's a
lot of great spots in that particular
neighborhood, and this next spot is one
of the best. It is called Helena's
Hawaiian Food. It is 70 years old. Helena
is a woman who learned to cook while
working the Navy laundry in the 1940s,
and she opened a restaurant in 1946. Now
she employs her grandson Craig, sort
of grooming him to be the heir to the
restaurant. This place specializes in
traditional food of the island: kalua pig,
pipikaulu ribs, squid luau, lomi salmon. So
this is going to be some fantastic local
specialties that have been given
accolades from all kinds of different
outlets and media, and won a James Beard
Foundation Award. So we're headed there
now, we're going to try some of this
great food, and I'm really excited.
We're standing with Craig, hello!
I want to know, I've
heard there's a very touching story. "It's
just the story about how this restaurant
was started in 1946 by my grandmother.
She worked with me all the way til 2007
and I worked with there every day for
like 25 years, even in high school. I
would mop floors and and wait tables. She
worked till she was 89, almost 90, and
then she left the restaurant to me. She
just told me not to worry about her and
just keep going." When you were a kid were
you getting paid? "No I wasn't getting
paid. She would pay me what I
needed, 'Oh you need a new car? Okay here's
the money for the new car.' But she would
never give me money. She
didn't trust me with the money because
she knew I would be crazy. It was kind of
like Mr. Miyagi. I was wondering, 'Why
am I doing all of this?'" When your
grandmother passed away, she paid you
back wages for all the time that you
worked? "How do you hear all this? Who's telling
you? But yeah." Obviously it's a very
loved restaurant here in the
neighborhood. What do you think the
secret to that? "It's just carrying on the
tradition and doing things the right way.
That's what is my grandma passed down to
me and that's what I do." The ribs are
very famous here. "Well I mean we sell 300
to 400 pounds of ribs a day. I can show
you how we're gonna make them, if you wanna see some of that."
Oh really? Great! "These have been
marinated, it's a soy-based marinade. When
you eat it it's not teriyaki. We dry
ours in the Hawaiian paniolo. Paniolo is the
Hawaiian cowboy, because in actuality the
Hawaiian's didnt have beef. They had dog, pig, chicken, and
taro, and they were foraging societies. So
there's two types of Hawaiian food: there
is ancient Hawaiian food and there's
more contemporary Hawaiian food, like
when the Chinese came there was chicken
on rice. Then they started to ranch
beef in Hawaii and there's the Hawaiian
cowboy the paniolo, and so they used to
dry their meat, pipikaula it's called, cause the
pipi is at the Hawaiian word for cow.
With the salt and the drying
you're going to get some moisture loss,
and the flavor concentrates. I call it
dry aging turbocharged." How long do they
stay up there? "These ones have been up
since eight o'clock in the morning. You
see how the meat is changed. My
grandma taught me how to do this and
we've been doing it for 70 years." I did I
hear you made a couple
unsuccessful attempts to come here
before? "Yeah that's right, so I came here
about a year ago, they were closed. Two
times: one time I can a little bit
late I guess they sold out of food or something,
closed a bit early, so a year later I
decided to come again." It's a popular
place. "Yeah." And what did you think? "It's
great, I have to say, never really was a
big fan of poi but loved it here." Oh you
had the poi! "Yeah." Did you try the ribs? "Yep,
delicious. I love them pipis." I'm sorry?
"I learned in Hawaiian word for cows is pipis."
We all love them pipis.
I am super looking forward to trying
some of this delicious food. I think
we'll do the Menu D, so the plate that
has a little bit of everything. "Yeah that
is the best combination plate." Do you
think I could get a little bit of
macaroni salad? "Of course." Just give me
whatever you want. "Really? Can I really
feed you?" Well, now wait, why? "The second
most popular item that we sell here
which is seasonal, it's called the fried
butter fish collar. And it's very nice." I
can't say no. "Can I get you anything else?"
That would be more than enough.
"So with your meal I'm gonna bring you
all some haupia, it's complimentary,
it's a coconut dessert."
"Aloha! Here we go. This is the famous
short ribs, we call it pipikaula. This is
the fried butter fish that I was
encouraging you to have. This is the
sweet poi. The onions and salt
is complementary to your meal. So how we
like to do it is we'll sprinkle some of
this Hawaiian salt over your onions, take
a bite of it to the plate of the pipikaula
short ribs, and it kind of just
goes together nicely." This looks amazing,
way more food than I anticipated. Why
don't we just start with a little kalua
pig. Kalua pig is a classic Hawaiian
dish, slow-roasted pork, very juicy, tender,
and smoky. It was suggested that I put a
little bit of this Hawaiian salt on to
the onions. Really nice, the meat, it just
falls apart and is sitting in a nice little
pool of its own clear juices. The
wonderful smoke flavor. The ribs though
are sort of eyeing me from this side of
the table. This is what Craig explained
to us, hanging them, drying them, they look
incredible.
They're really good, they're hearty, the
marinade which is a soy-based marinade
like Craig said, it's not going to come
across like a like a teriyaki sauce. It
doesn't have that sticky sweetness of
teriyaki. Poi is the pounded taro, it is
super goopy and viscous. It does go
really well with the meat. Everyone gets
a little order or rhythm they come in
here because that's just kind of what
you do, it's easy to see why.
Painstakingly putting the time in to
complete a recipe that has been
completed the same way for decades and
decades. Pipikaula ribs, the macaroni
salad, in Hawaii it is a staple of the
plate lunch. Typically a plate lunch
consists of an entree, two scoops of rice, and a little bit of macaroni salad.
This is nice. Craig said this is the one
addition like ever, because of pressure
and popular demand. It's sort of like a
nice little palate cleanser. The
butterfish is from Pacific waters close to Japan.
It's kind of like a flat fish and on the
edges it looks like a little bit like a
flounder. That's nice, this is a nice
salty piece of fried fish. The skin is on
it, it's nice and crunchy, not overcooked, a
little bit flaky.
Now we'll have a little lomi
salmon: bits of salmon mixed with
tomatoes, onions, in what sort of
resembles like a salmon ceviche, pico de
gallo kind of action going on. There's a
lot of acid and that cold sweetness and
tartness. And little bits of salmon meat!
Something sort of clean and nice to go
with some of the heavier foods. Qquid
luau. These are luau leaves, and luau
leaves are young taro leaves typically
prepared with squid, obviously, and maybe
coconut milk sometimes. Definitely coconut
milk. This is pretty cool, it has that
sort of creamy quality of like a creamed
spinach, but also brings that sort of
sweet root-like quality from the taro as
well. And then the little bits of squid
that are nice and tender. We have dessert
which is the haupi. They give
this out to everyone for free as it is
available and this is a traditional
coconut dessert. It's like a coconut
flan. It's like a gelatinous jiggly
piece of coconut jello, very smooth, very
creamy, nice and light, not overwhelming.
Food here's great. This restaurant has
been around since 1946,
which makes it 70 years old. What's
really impressing me the more time we
spend here in Hawaii and Honolulu is how
many of these neighborhood institutions
are still around. Frankly these
days restaurants open in major cities
and are lucky to get two years
or three. To me it amplifies how great
places like this really are. I really
hope you enjoyed this episode of Dining
on a Dime from Helena's Hawaiian Food.
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