The Weekly Eater: Na’au aims to preserve Hawaii’s food culture

Over on Hawaii island, out of the eye of the foodie media, Brian Hirata has been quietly plotting a culinary revolution.

He’d started his culinary career on a traditional path, as sous-chef at The Four Seasons Resort Hualalai.

After six years in that luxury setting, he became a culinary instructor at Hawaii Community College, where he spent a decade in the classroom and could have continued until retirement.

But a turning point came when he asked his students if they liked the flavor of opelu and only two out of 18 knew what it was. They also didn’t know limu kohu, the red seaweed commonly used in poke.

For Hirata, who had grown up close to the land and its food supply — hunting, fishing, farming and foraging — it was as though an alarm had gone off in his head.

“If the next generation doesn’t have a connection to these ingredients, then they become unimportant,” he said. “And if enough local fish become unimportant, then maybe the ocean is not important. It’s that line of thinking, ‘I don’t know about it so I don’t care.’”

The chef put his ideas into his Na‘au Project. The literal translation of “na‘au” is “intestines,” but it can also refer to following one’s gut. Hirata’s told him he must do his part to preserve foodways rapidly disappearing amid a generation more likely to be weaned on restaurant fare than home cooking, on purchased ingredients rather than those grown in gardens or found in forests.

His aim is to open a Hawaii island restaurant that will become a destination for foodies from around the globe, but until then, he is presenting pop-up dinners that reflect his philosophy and vision.

As a kind of shorthand, I’ve taken to calling his approach next-generation farm-to-table, but that is an oversimplification. For one thing, few next-gen chefs are capable of replicating his work, which calls for foraging for ingredients many fail to recognize as being edible, such as sheep sorrel and popolo berries.

It’s more like a time-machine exploration of unique indigenous cuisine, stepping backward to rediscover ingredients that might have been foraged in 18th- and 19th-century Hawaii, then returning to the present to plate them utilizing 21st-century techniques and style.

“I think we lost this food connection, in a sense, and I want to see if we can find a way back to it,” he said.

BY SHOWCASING “wild and overlooked local ingredients,” he gives visitor a more authentic experience of eating local, he said, raising awareness of local ingredients and how better to cultivate and preserve them.

Included in his mission is managing such invasive species of fish as taape (bluestripe snapper), which compete with local fish for food. Hirata said taape, which destroys the ecosystem, is considered a “rubbish fish,” but actually has the texture and flavor of lobster. If it were marketed better, he said, fishermen would have an incentive to catch more, removing it from the environment.

Hirata eschews premium ingredients such as foie gras, truffles and caviar in favor of the most humble ingredients, from sand crabs to hapuu fern shoots, relying on technique and an extensive knowledge of flavor profiles to showcase their essence.

During the first of his pop-ups, 12 courses showcased all the island had to offer, starting with Hawai‘i Rainforest, with ingredients sourced from the Hamakua Coast. The centerpiece was a poached prawn cake in a charred bamboo shoot broth flavored with prawn heads, and featuring hapuu and pohole fern shoots, pepeiao (wood ear mushrooms) and pickled myoga (Japanese ginger) from his yard.

Far from feeling deprived in any way by these most ordinary ingredients, I appreciated the thought and care that went into every preparation. Each dish was a joy, and wonderful in its originality.

Hawaii’s Shallow Water Crabs was served in a glass, with corn husk ash mimicking the look of sand. Sand crabs, and Samoan crabmeat were bound by fermented ulu miso and finished with sea asparagus.

Hirata regaled us with stories of growing up in Hilo, crabbing at night with his cousins from a rowboat in the Wailoa River, then eating so many, “I got hives.”

Shrimp tempura was inspired by nostalgia for the cooking of his grandmother, who would top shrimp with surimi, or fish paste, before breading and frying it. Hirata used Molokai amaebi for his version, with oio (bonefish) surimi. As a finishing touch, he used akule that had been smoked, dried and aged in a manner similar to katsuobushi (Japanese bonito flakes), grated table-side to increase the dish’s umami and aroma.

Fried menpachi served with paiai comprised a dish called Fish and Poi, the paiai aerated with egg white and pan-fried, giving the usually dense taro paste a fluffy texture and crisp exterior. Nothing goes to waste, so the menpachi heads and fins were fried up for nibbling with soy-chili pepper water.

Next up was a Farmers Egg, the egg yolk from free-range quails raised on 13 Mile Farm in Kurtistown. The egg yolk was served with aerated cauliflower and egg white puree, garlic-cream mallow and ki nehe (Spanish needle) to echo the quail’s diet of the two wild greens.

ONE OF my favorites was the Tidal Pool Thai Seafood Chowder of opae (tiny shrimp), nehu (Hawaiian anchovies) and kupee (sea snails) with kabocha arancini and kupee coconut broth. The soup bowl was placed over river rocks inside a second dish into which was poured a Thai herb-infused water meant not for sipping but to lend fresh-from-the-garden aromatics.

The meal ended with an ohelo berry cheesecake of Hamakua chevre inspired by Hirata’s mom’s cheesecake and topped with a ti leaf ash tuile cracked to reveal red ohelo berry gel. Hirata said when land is devastated by lava, the ohelo plant is one of the first to spring back to life.

Other aspects of his connection to land and family showed up on the table, such as his grandparents’ tea set from occupied Japan and wood platters he shaped and sanded himself from the trunk of a favorite ohia tree that had provided shade and shelter on hunting excursion, but had burned in a forest fire. He wanted to preserve the wood that remained.

NA’AU RESTAURANT

Brian Hirata plans more pop-ups on Hawaii island, with Oahu events next year.

Events feature a tasting menu with drink pairings. For tickets go to eventbrite.com (search for “Naau”):

>> Oct. 13: Anna Ranch Heritage Center, Waimea, 6 p.m. Cost: $265.

>> Nov. 10: The Palms Cliff House Inn, Honomu, 5:30 p.m. Cost: $265.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.