Everything tastes better at the beach

You may be tied to your job but out there, it’s summer. Midsummer already. The kids will be back in school in a few weeks.

Time for a beach picnic, a grill-fest with friends at the park, under a backyard tarp or in that all-purpose carport.

Writing my latest book, "Celebrations, Island Style" (due out in the fall from Island Heritage), I had fun with the summertime chapter, recalling the al fresco experiences.

It’s a cliche, but it’s true: Everything tastes better outdoors. I’ve done a lot of "professional eating" as a food writer, often at extraordinary restaurants.

But ask me my No. 1 food memory. It is this: An anonymous beach in Oregon. A whole steamed Dungeness crab, bought from a take-out shack, cold and broken open with our hands. Some oranges. A bottle of otherwise unremarkable white wine. Salt air the perfect seasoning.

I’m not the only one who thinks that way.

"Oh, the beach was the best," said Rose Cadinha, 85, who grew up on Maui and Oahu and now lives in a Kaneohe care home. "Everything taste sooooo ono."

Cadinha says they didn’t take much when they went to the beach in her childhood, and certainly nothing fancy: a loaf of her mom’s white Portuguese bread, poi or a pot of rice, vinegar and shoyu, a can opener and some pork and beans, matches for lighting a driftwood fire, empty kaukau tins (old-fashioned metal lunchboxes) and old military-issue forks instead of disposable goods.

At the beach, "Daddy and my brothers would catch fish, the Hawaiian uncles pick opihi, the Hawaiian aunties pick limu. We took some paakai (salt) — all we needed."

They would grill the fish and dress it with a little salt, maybe some shoyu and vinegar. Sometimes they would mix raw fish with seaweed or top the fish with fresh seaweed while it was on the grill (a recycled old metal refrigerator shelf).

"If no fish, we make pork-and-bean sandwiches or pork and beans with rice," she said.

Whether or not you’re a foodie, it’s likely your beach cookouts and park picnics are a bit more elaborate. You’re not even in the game if you don’t have a coffin-size cooler, a hibachi, a Costco shelf’s worth of paper goods, beach chairs and folding tables.

And maybe you don’t even cook anything. You just pick up bento from an okazuya or grab a bucket of Zippy’s chili.

Zippy’s, hot dogs and hamburgers play a role in Jamie Go’s family outings. But the 43-year-old Chinese-French/Cajun state analyst, who lives in Honolulu, said the mix gets much more eclectic than that: Dad’s "secret recipe" kalbi and teri beef, Auntie’s char siu chicken and marinated tako, musubi and "obligatory" Chinese specialties that include roast duck and creative noodle recipes.

Go said summer picnics are nothing compared with the football tailgate parties that he and the Tsaiko sports writer ohana — Star-Advertiser staff writer Stephen Tsai’s fan club — put on each fall.

"We do crab legs, oysters, shrimp and other seafood fare. And since many of us like to cook and try new things, we come up with all kinds of new food items like kalua pig nachos, kim chee burgers, miso pork chops, teri pork belly, kalua and cabbage egg rolls with a remoulade sauce and other items of interest," he said.

"We even had a tailgate where the theme was frying stuff. We had various woks and deep fryers we used to fry whatever people brought and that included things from kim chee, jalapenos, pickles, hot dogs and chicken, to other things like pork chops and Twinkies."

His points are well-made: Take a familiar dish and do something unexpected with it (Portuguese sausage hamburgers, grilled vegetable sandwiches with tahini-garlic-lemon sauce).

Said Go, "In Hawaii, you are always going to get a potluck menu that is as diverse as the island people we are."

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Reach Wanda Adams at wandaadams@clearwire.net.