- We're at Kauai Family Restaurant where Peter
alongside his daughter Randi are serving up pork
adobo, oxtail soup, lau lau and loco mocos.
I'm excited to taste a little bit of Hawai'i.
(upbeat music)
- Hey Sheldon, how's it, welcome to Kauai Family
Restaurant my man. - Right on.
Mahalo, I walk in just like I'm in a restaurant in Hawai'i.
- Yeah, that's why we created it to be just like that.
- I brought my knives so we can get cooking.
- My mom and my sisters were living in Seattle
and they said there's no Hawai'ian restaurants
up here, why don't you come up here and open one.
- Was it just Hawai'ian's that was living up
there back in '93 that were your first customers?
- Believe it or not, it was the caucasians,
because on this corner here, it
used to be a Dag's Hamburger place.
When I opened here, they shut down
and I was the only one selling hamburger in this area.
So they would come here to get hamburger and french fries.
It took one month for one Hawai'ian guy to come in.
That one guy, the next month, only Hawai'ians came in.
Then the Hawai'ian food kicked in.
We're a plate lunch place, two scoops of rice,
mac salad and then your dish, all old school.
You know I try to replicate how we used to do
it in the back yard, my lau lau would cook for 15 hours.
- And that's what we're gonna be making right now.
- Hawai'ians used to make lau lau,
they used to use all the scraps.
- Like family style, everybody bring their own
portion of meat, traditionally, this used to
go inside the Emu too, so this was buried
underneath when they would make Kahlua pig.
- We cannot put them in the ground over here.
- We don't even have a backhole in the back.
- You cannot sell it if you put it in the ground.
- The ground, that's true.
- I guess the Board of Health, anyway so what I do
is I lay down a tea leaf, the taro leaf.
Put a little bit salt, pork fat, and beef fat,
one piece of fish and three pieces of pork.
- [Sheldon] That's some fat lau laus there.
- Because you're steaming it, it
blends in with the taro leaves.
- Bring home lau laus from Seattle, back to Maui.
So we make adobo first.
- The first thing we do is cook the fat.
- You're family is Hawai'ian, Filipino,
Spanish you were saying.
- Yes, we're from the west side of Kauai.
I came here by myself, I had three kids back there.
That's why I named the restaurant Kauai Family Restaurant.
My dad came from the Philippines.
It depends on what region, the
style of cooking is different.
This is a compilation of different styles into my style.
We're tenderizing the skin and braising it.
We'll fry the garlic, just like a pro yeah?
(laughing)
- When you had learned to cook?
- I grew up earlier than you in the '60s and I grew
up in plantation camp, when people had parties,
they would kill pigs and then the Filipino
men would cook it in the big siliocis,
the woks on the open pit fire.
That's the way I learned.
- And this has been marinating?
- Yes.
- And this is just pork butt that's been shoyu,
vinegar, black pepper and bay leaf.
It's kinda cool to be all the way out there in Seattle.
This is my food right here, it's got
comforting flavors of Hawai'i.
(upbeat music)
I'm excited to taste the lau lau.
I always eat them with chili pepper water.
(laughing)
The fat is unreal, I might have to take
lau lau home back to Hawai'i.
(laughing)
Pork adobo, I love that you fried the fat first.
That's where all the flavor is.
- Yeah.
- Perfect, it's vinegar forward, sometimes
you can taste the pepper corns, sometimes you
can taste the shoyu, that's how my dad used to make it.
Like growing up, this is local style.
- Very simple.
- So comforting though. You've been here in the
city for a really long time.
You must've seen a lot of changes.
- I think in '93, there was about 38,000
transplants from Hawai'i in this Puget Sound area.
In '96, it grew to about 68,000.
- That's a lot of Hawai'i transplants.
- Today, there's probably double that, cause
kids start coming to school here and stay here.
So a lot of the kids they work in high tech,
lawyers or doctors or nurses and the families
move from Hawai'i to join their kids.
- You're in here everyday too, in the kitchen?
- Yeah, I pretty much grew up in the restaurant.
- She helps take the edge off.
- We're waiting for him to retire.
- Being in the restaurant business, it's really stressful.
- I like it, it's so familiar to me.
- Of course, I'm proud of her because she does a lot.
- Those mom and pop shops are slowly disappearing.
- Kids don't wanna take over, so it's slowly going away.
- It's awesome to come all the way out here and see this.
That Aloha spirit and that family tradition continuing on.