I didn’t grow up eating taro or poi; it wasn’t on the dinner table. My mom is from Japan, so she had no idea what it was. I was in elementary school when someone gave me my first taste of poi and I just didn’t like it. It reminded me of the taste of cigarettes. The inspiration behind writing about poi is someone recently asked me to submit a recipe for kalo or taro. I chose poi made from taro.
When I was 6 years old, my mom, sister Bev and I lived in the apartment building behind the original L & L Drive Inn on Liliha St. My mom cooked at a Japanese restaurant at night, so she hired a babysitter for us while she went off to work. One night, she made us miso soup and rice before going off to work. When she left, the babysitter had her brothers come into the apartment and they had me try smoking a cigarette. I had asthma at the time and coughed it up right away. What really had an effect on me was when I ate the rice after the ciga rette. The rice just tasted awful, it was smoky because the taste of the cigarette stayed in my mouth. I couldn’t eat dinner that night. This was the single event that made me not to want to smoke cigarettes ever, because I loved to eat, especially rice. When it came to eating poi for the first time, I don’t know why but it just brought me back to that smoky cigarette rice taste left in my mouth.
When I became a cook and entered culinary school, I realized that I had to try and eat everything, at least a “thank you” bite. Even though growing up, I only ate three vegetables and was a very picky eater. I tried poi again but could only eat it with other things in it like kalua pig, lomi salmon and chile pepper water. I learned to like it and I also learned that there are so many different varieties and types of taro, each one with its own taste.
Today, I just love the taste of poi. Back in the day when I had the restaurants, all diners had the choice of rice, brown rice or poi. Early in my career, when I was at the Mauna Lani, I was asked to do an event called the “New Wave Luau” for the Cuisines of the Sun event which we held each year. I served traditional Hawaiian dishes as well as new dishes that utilized the traditional ingredients. One of the items born was a dish called “kalua duck, taro pancakes, poi vinaigrette, tomato chile pepper water drizzle.” For people that didn’t care for poi the first time they ate it, like me, the poi was now in a different form and with other components, was now more friendly to the inexperienced poi eaters.
A lot of hotels have their own luaus for guests and visitors. I would always be sad when I would see all the poi left over in their little cups. Often times, I would hear people describe it as having the texture of wallpaper paste and tasting quite bland. What I wanted to do as a chef was to create dishes utilizing poi so that they would like it and slowly get to the point where they were eating a whole bowl of it just by itself. It’s so healthy and tasty. A poi vinaigrette is simply using poi to bind oil and vinegar into an emulsification without using an egg. A poi stew uses the poi to thicken a beef stew without using flour. A poi gazpacho is a refreshing vegan cold soup blending poi with ripe tomatoes. I know I am just scratching the surface when talking about kalo, taro and poi, but I’ll let the experts talk about it. My career goal has always been about trying to help change the world’s perception of what we eat in Hawaii today, meaning, it’s not about pineapples on everything.
Chef and restaurateur Alan Wong has wowed diners around the world for decades, and is known as one of the founders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine. Find his column in Crave every first Wednesday. Currently, Wong is dba Alan Wong’s Consulting Co.
