Hualalai oysters pass the test

The Four Seasons Resort Hualalai is producing organically raised oysters on Hawaii island for use at all six restaurants on the property.

The Hualalai oysters are grown in Punawai Lake, a 2-1/2-acre, nearly 3 million-gallon lake — an inland, man-made but aquifer-fed environment maintained and tightly controlled by David Chai, director of natural resources at Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, and his team.

“We are in full control of the water,” Chai said. “The pond is lined, so there is no influence” from the surrounding area, which enables “flow-through,” he said. “It’s a state-of-the-art lake” that won an Environmental Protection Agency award in 2005.

All those aspects are crucial to the resort’s ability to maintain water quality and, therefore, quality of its oysters.

“The testing is rigorous,” said Peter Oshiro, Environmental Health Program manager with the Food Safety Program for the state Department of Health. “The water has to be near-pristine since the food is going to be eaten raw,” he said. Oysters undergo a process after harvesting to ensure all impurities have been cleaned out.

The resort has been running Punawai Lake on the property since 2002, raising a variety of fish, including kampachi and moi, awa, milkfish and native shrimp.

“Right away we started stocking and raising shrimp, and we’ve been doing experiments with oysters for a long time, growing them and experimenting with which ones were the best” for Hawaii’s climate and growing conditions, Chai said, adding, “The Eastern oyster was the best one.” The Hualalai oysters are of the Crass­ostrea virginica variety from the Chesapeake Bay area.

Pacific shrimp will be the next commercial-scale aqua-crop to be grown in Punawai, Chai said.

Once the resort’s permit was obtained in September, efforts began to get the oysters ready for prime time, onto the plates of resort guests and residents who got their first taste in November.

They are served raw on the half shell at the award-winning ‘ULU Ocean Grill and Hualalai Grille, “our steakhouse,” said Executive Chef Massimo Falsini.

The raw preparation is served with something called Hot Damskey sauce, named after its creator, chef de cuisine Chris Damskey, as well as house-made yuzu ponzu sauce.

“At Beach Tree we prepare a classic po’ boy” sandwich using the larger oysters, Falsini said. He uses soft French baguettes for the sandwiches, “made from a mother-yeast born 19 years ago,” atop which the battered and lightly fried oysters are served with house-made mayonnaise and other fresh ingredients from the resort’s gardens, as well as locally sourced vegetables from Big Island farmers.

“We are sourcing over 90 percent of our ingredients locally from more than 160 farmers, ranchers and fishermen” as well as its own aquaculture and garden operations, Falsini said.

It’s how he grew up in Italy, and it is the same ethic used by the resort, he said.

On Oahu there is an oyster farm at Kualoa Ranch, which made a big splash with news of its commercial production in Moli‘i Fishpond on the island’s windward coast in February 2014 and has enjoyed great success with customers.

Commercial production of shellfish on Oahu dates back to at least the 1980s. The first permit to raise shellfish in Hawaii was issued for clam cultivation to Sunrise Capital Inc., doing business as Kauai Shrimp, said Oshiro, of the Health Department.

Kualoa was the second permittee but the first to raise oysters. The University of Hawaii at Hilo also has a permit for a small research facility.

The history of Hawaii’s commercial oyster production includes Taylor “Tap” Pryor’s Systemculture Seafood Plantations at Kahuku, which local and national news reports in the early 1980s described as causing excitement at the prospects for high-value aquaculture.

In an April 1984 report of the Governor’s Aquaculture Industry Development Committee, Chairman William C. Rowland spoke of development potential for the industry but noted that obstacles to large-scale commercial operations would need to be reduced or eliminated if the industry were to grow.

Good intentions aside, business cycles, Pryor’s sale of his oyster operation to a company that converted to prawn farming, and hurricanes got in the way of continued oyster production until recent years.

The state’s certification program “just died,” Oshiro said. Necessary certification was lost and had to be re-established, as there were “requests from people who wanted to get back” into the business. Oshiro has heard that other entities are interested in obtaining permits for commercial shellfish production, but at this moment “we’ve had no formal applications,” Oshiro said.

Back at the resort, Falsini revels in the ability to control the salinity of the resort-raised oysters. “It’s crazy,” he said.

Given the size of Punawai Lake, “we could do 10 times what we’re doing” in terms of production, Chai said, but plans are for the resort to keep production and usage in-house. No steps are being taken to grow and sell oysters to the general public.

“Our whole mission is to take care of the environment, to be stewards of this place,” Chai said.