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CHAPTER 5 Incorporating the Local Tourist at the Big Island Pol{e Festival Kristin McAndrews Sunnyweather, white sandbeaches, warm blue seas, friendly localpeople, and visions of paradise (Lofgren 1999:216) have typically attracted tourists to Hawai'i-not the local haute cuisine. Restaurant fare has changed for the better in the past fifteen years due to the creativity and marketing efforts of many of Hawai'i's top chefs who have brought ethnic diversity and cultural traditions into their recipes. But even the best chefs have difficulty incorporating some popular local foods into mainstream tourist food culture. For example, consider the luau. While fire twirlers, hula dancers , and Hawaiian musicians entertain, visitors can experience the cultural performance of a luau, which often includes an extensive buffet including teriyaki chicken and/or beef, rice, macaroni salad, Jell-O, and many other typical buffet dishes. But when local delicacies such as poi (fermented taro root) or poke (PO-kaYi a dish of raw fish, seaweed, oil, and salt) are served, these dishes often go untested or are immediately rejected due to the unique textures and flavors. Through the efforts of Hawai'i's chefs and Aloha Festivals (a six-week celebration of folklife in Hawai'i), not only mainland tourists, but also the local residents have begun to discover the culinary delights of various ethnic groups living in Hawai'i. Hawai'i's Regional Cuisine chefs have creatively utilized Hawai'i's fish, merging local tastes with nouvelle cuisine. Fish is a staple in Hawai'i. In fact, across ethnic groups we "eat twice as much fish [per person] as mainlandAmericans" (Apple 2001). Hawai'i's chefs have managed to transform a tired upscale restaurant cuisine based on imported products and Kristin McAndrews I 115 replaced it with a cuisine centered on goods grown in Hawai'i but combined in unexpected ways, so "now visitors praise the cuisine and locals who flock to the restaurants, proud of what the Islands have produced" (Lauden 1996:8). The chefs have also impacted regional cuisine from fish markets to restaurants, from grocery stores to home. Aloha Festivals honor Hawaiian and local folk culture by focusing on crafts or foods specific to Hawai'i's diverse ethnic culture. The islandwide , three-hundred-event festival celebrates Hawaiian heritage and local traditions and attracts both mainland tourists and local people throughout the state. It is the only statewide festival in the United States and lasts for six weeks (Choy 1999:viii). The loss of cultural and ethnic traditions is a concern of many people who live in Hawai'i (Masuoka 1999:A1 ). Michael Largey points out "tradition is formed in the present from evidence, perceptions, and impressions of the past. Tradition also uses images that imbue history with power, bringing the past into a relationship with the present" (2000:241). Aloha Festivals mediate the traditional cultural practice of the native people, the Hawaiians, with the local others , or other ethnic and cultural groups established in Hawai'i. The Poke Festival, a part of Aloha Festivals, held on the Big Island of Hawai'i in mid-September, is an annual celebration ofpoke. As part of the festivities, the festival holds apoke contest with up to ninety contestants. Presentations include creative visual displays that incorporate simple or complex poke recipes. Local and national politics, local traditions, and ethnic pride are reflected in the displays, which are often presented in a humorous manner. Ingredients in the poke recipes are also used as humorous devices. In this essay I will focus on the use of language and art in relationship to shifting positions of the teller (local) and the audience (local other), especially as it relates to humor. This essay will concentrate on the local tourist who travels within Hawai'i to sample the variations of the cultural and ethnic other. I tasted my first poke dish of raw fish, seaweed, kukui nut, and salt twenty-five years ago at a Hawaiian first birthday luau in Hana, Maui. I had been a visitor on Maui for one week. The host led me to a huge buffet table spread with many foods I had never seen before. He scooped a rather substantial amount of po'ke on my plate along with a small, raw blue crab and a couple of raw marinated opihi (limpets) and handed me some chopsticks . Thankfully, I was adept at chopsticks, but I had never eaten raw fish before. The fishy, seaweedy flavors and the crunchy but soft texture...

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