Honolulu restaurateurs put vegan spin on local favorites

Hawaii is well-known for its unique cuisine, from plate lunches loaded with lau lau to loco moco smothered in gravy.

Inspired by these local favorites, a handful of Honolulu restaurateurs are putting a different spin on some of Hawaii’s more popular dishes, offering up vegetarian and vegan versions. 

DOWNBEAT DINER & LOUNGE: LOCO MOCO

Downbeat Diner and Lounge offers an American diner menu with the option to make almost every item on the menu in its traditional form, or as a vegetarian or vegan dish. Think wings, salads, burgers, sandwiches, breakfast items, milkshakes — even a local favorite, the loco moco — made with or without meat or, if you prefer, without animal products at all.

"Most of our diner food is pretty like classic American diner food … but of course we’re in Hawaii, we’re in Chinatown, we’ve got to pay respect to our local roots here and honor some of the local favorites, and the loco moco was just a simple one that made a lot of sense to do here," said Josh Hancock, co-owner of Downbeat.

Downbeat’s vegetarian loco moco features a vegan tahini gravy made by cooking down seasoned vegetables and tahini, which is a sesame seed product. After scooping brown rice onto the plate, Downbeat chef Jon Ness pan fries a housemade veggie burger made with grilled vegetables, black beans and mushrooms. He then ladles tahini gravy over the burger and adds two over-easy eggs to top it off. Downbeat’s vegetarian loco moco can also be made vegan with a tofu scramble in place of the eggs.

"So it’s a place that anyone can come to, whether you’re a carnivore or not because we have both options," Hancock said.

Growing up as a vegetarian in Hawaii, Hancock would go to ethnic restaurants, often eating Thai, Chinese or Vietnamese food. But there wasn’t really a place to get classic American food as a vegetarian or vegan, he said.

"So (Downbeat) is kind of in response to that," Hancock said. "We make something pretty simple — but have an option for people that have a different kind of a diet, like maybe for health reasons or maybe for political reasons or whatever it might be."

BLUE TREE CAFE: TOFU MUSUBI

In case there’s no time to sit down and eat, Blue Tree Cafe offers a tofu musubi that can be easily eaten on the go.

Josh Roach, general manager of Blue Tree Cafe, loved spam musubi and thought of creating something similar to serve at the cafe. The tofu musubi has evolved since his first recipe and quickly grew in popularity.

"It’s a healthy snack, it’s not like fried food, and it’s really good for you," Roach said.

To create the musubi, cafe chefs marinate tofu overnight in grated ginger, chopped onion, minced garlic, sugar, mirin, sesame oil and soy sauce. The tofu is then baked, placed over brown rice and wrapped in nori.

Along with the musubi, Blue Tree Cafe also serves a buffalo eggplant sandwich, a cucumber sandwich, summer salads with fruits and a li hing mui dressing or a banana puree dressing, a tofu curry wrap and raw vegan cookie dough pops.

"That was a big thing about it — sharing the fact that vegetarian and vegan food can not only be delicious but really it’s OK to eat and hang out," Roach said. "There’s such a stigma to it, like ‘oh its vegan it’s probably cardboard;’ but really it’s really delicious."

Blue Tree Cafe focuses on being involved in the community by working with local farms.

"What’s amazing is that we’ve stayed open because our product is really good, the food here is delicious and our chefs spend a lot of time and put a lot of passion into building that food," Roach said. "It’s like they all have a very specific desire to be working in this industry and working with this type of food."

Blue Tree Cafe’s team considers themselves "ambassadors of health" who strive to share the world of health with the rest of the world, Roach said. The cafe offers juices, smoothies and elixirs that are made to ease different types of ailments.

"It happens a lot. We have people that come in that have a cold or a flu or a stomachache or are even hungover and we use our fresh juices and things to cure them," Roach said. "It’s very easy and that’s really the concept we want to share with everyone; it’s really easy to make healthy lifestyle choices — it doesn’t have to be crazy, it doesn’t have to be expensive."

Other beverage options, including coffee, espresso and tea, can all be made vegan with their homemade almond milk.

Owner Kevin Aoki opened Blue Tree Cafe in December of 2012 with his grandfather’s coffee shop as the inspiration. It was a place that brought the community together and where people could speak openly without being criticized for an opinion they had.

"So I think a really big reason why our shop is located here and why it is such a neighborhood-focused shop is because it comes from that mentality of the community is the reason it exists," Roach said.

WING ICE CREAM: COCONUT MILK ICE CREAM

For those hot days in Hawaii, Wing Ice Cream in Chinatown offers coconut milk ice cream made with a focus on local ingredients.

Miller Royer, owner of Wing Enterprises Inc., is also known as Chinatown’s ice cream master. In mid-July, he started a vegan ice cream takeover — making only coconut-milk-based ice cream for about a month. Royer’s homemade ice cream is made in small batches and uses as many local ingredients as possible.

"I like to provide vegan ice cream as an opportunity for people to try something more healthy and also to provide people who have alternative lifestyles and diet restrictions an option they wouldn’t normally have," Royer said.

During a recent visit he featured a golden milk flavor made from local olena (also known as turmeric) and cracked black pepper; coco monkey made from organic bananas and local cacao; and kulolo made from local taro.

"Right now he just happened to get plenty of olena and you know, we think, ‘What does this go good with?’ And golden milk has already been a drink that’s been around so why not turn it into ice cream?" said Thao Nguyen, Royer’s girlfriend, who collaborates with him to create new ice cream flavors at Wing. "It’s more of like a healthy thing — cracked pepper makes the nutrition value of turmeric more available to you."

Flavors are constantly changing at Wing because they are dependent on the ingredients Royer can gather from the local farmers he’s built relationships with. It’s all about what’s in season and what the farmers have an abundance of, he said.

Royer worked as a chef for years and learned to make ice cream on the side. He opened Wing Enterprises Inc. in 2013 with a push from his mom, who helped him get the lease.

"When it came time to start my own business I thought a lot about what Chinatown didn’t have and what skills I had," Royer said. "Since I grew up in Chinatown I knew that there had never been an ice cream place down here so I decided to go that route."

Looking forward, Royer is focused on expanding his flavors by experimenting with new, local ingredients. He hopes to one day make it into grocery stores to make his ice cream more available to customers.

Other places that serve vegetarian- and vegan-friendly food include:

• Kokua Market
• Down to Earth
• Govinda’s Vegetarian Buffet
• Simple Joy
• The Loving Hut
• Peace Cafe