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98 5 The Significance of Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine in Postcolonial Hawai‘i Samuel Hideo Yamashita Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine At first glance, Hawai‘i regional cuisine (HRC), like other American regional cuisines, seems nothing less than a paean to the state’s diverse ethnic communities and foods and to the islands’ natural bounty, air, land, and sea.1 Given the history of the Hawaiian Islands as, first, an independent kingdom (1795– 1893) and then a U.S. colony (1898–1959), however, Hawai‘i regional cuisine has a much greater significance. Traditionally, fine dining in Hawai‘i was assumed to be continental cuisine, which was usually found at restaurants in Waikiki. These establishments had long hired French, German, or Swiss chefs with impeccable credentials, who had been trained and apprenticed in Europe and brought continental culinary techniques, values, and traditions to the islands. Their richly sauced dishes echoed classic French cuisine and were consumed with French or, later, California wines. In theory, a fine meal at La Mer, the fabled French restaurant at the Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki, was no different from a fine meal at La Côte Basque in New York City or Guy Savoy in Paris.2 In contrast, because local food—what most of Hawai‘i’s population ate—was definitely not continental, it was denigrated, overlooked, or, at best, tolerated. Indeed, local food and continental cuisine were not to be mentioned in the same breath except perhaps ironically, as when one spoke of a “local French restaurant.” Local food was denigrated simply because it was what “locals” ate.3 During the colonial period, a “local” was someone born, raised, or educated in Hawai‘i who was not Caucasian and was a member of either the indigenous Hawaiian population or one of the many groups that had immigrated to the islands to work on the plantations or ranches.4 Typically, Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Puerto Ricans, Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipinos were regarded as locals. Indeed, during this time, Hawai‘i had a “rigid caste system” of racial Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine 99 hierarchies and distinctions, to which the colonial authorities and business elite strictly adhered.5 Every aspect of life in the colony was racialized: the inhabitants’ political, economic, and social life, as well as their education, sports, and culture. Wellborn members of the Caucasian elite attended O‘ahu College (known after 1935 as the Punahou School) or a mainland (continental U.S.) boarding school and then were sent away to an Ivy League university. After marrying someone from the local elite or the mainland, they returned to take their place in one of the five major companies, known as the “Big Five,” spending their free time playing tennis or golf and dining at one of several established Honolulu country clubs and reveling in the benefits of their superiority.6 Those Caucasians who were not so well born attended one of the English Standard Schools, and then the University of Hawai‘i.7 They then entered one of several local companies , where their race entitled them to rise to a managerial or supervisory position. Those who were Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, or some combination of these were locals and thus inferior. Within a century after 1778, when the first Europeans arrived in the islands, the indigenous population had dropped from somewhere between 400,000 and 1,000,000 to 40,000, owing to both the diseases brought by the visitors and the impact of the profound changes in land tenure, government, religion, and culture carried out at their urging.8 In 1893, prominent American businessmen engineered the overthrow of the native monarchy and pushed hard for the U.S. annexation of the islands, which finally took place in 1898 despite the opposition of the indigenous population.9 A decade after the islands were annexed, the remnants of the Hawaiian population were in both physical and cultural decline, and Asians were regarded by the Caucasian elite as mere “instruments of production,” akin to the “cattle of the ranges.”10 The exceptions were Hawaiians from the ali‘i, or chiefly, class—many of whom had succeeded in preserving their landholdings and married Caucasians—and locals who had succeeded in business.11 Most locals went to public elementary schools through the eighth grade and then started working at age fifteen, joining the large pool of plantation, factory, or dock workers. Some were lucky enough to be sent to one of the several private schools in Honolulu: the...

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