Hawaii's Share Your Table

It’s easy to forget Hawai‘i’s still-active paniolo culture. We may think of riding horses and roping cattle the stuff of childhood dreams, a result of watching too many Westerns. Any vestiges of cowboy culture left are confined to states like Texas. But every year, Mealani’s Taste of the Hawaiian Range reminds us otherwise. Hilton Waikoloa fills with ranchers in cowboy boots and hats and a twang in their voices, and when the event opens, hungry attendees rush through the doors, like cattle left too long in the corral. One half expects the paniolo to start roping individuals in the crowd.

Taste of the Hawaiian Range isn’t about fundraising. It’s not about celebrity chefs. The show is all about Big Island agriculture, and the star is Hawai‘i beef, cooked tongue to tail. Past preparations include tripe adobo, braised until tender; skirt steak with an unagi glaze and kimchee sauce; house-cured meats like pastrami and corned beef; and even Rocky Mountain oysters, bull testicles breaded and fried.  

There’s also Hawaiian Red Veal, a new product that’s the result of ranchers brainstorming solutions to keep Hawai‘i beef in Hawai‘i, rather than shipping them to mainland feedlots. Throw away negative notions of veal; these calves are grass-fed and allowed to roam, free of hormones and antibiotics. Last year’s veal sliders, accompanied with veal jus, were a lean, tender and flavorful bite. 

The accompanying cast to Hawai‘i beef include pork, lamb, mutton, and goat. Tasty bites last year included shredded lamb topped with dragonfruit salsa on an ulu tortilla, and wild boar, ground into a sausage with fennel and cayenne. 

During the meat fest, produce tends to take a back seat, but Taste of the Hawaiian Range organizers make sure fruits and vegetables get their moment, during the Agricultural Festival Trade Show. Here, chefs, buyers and media get a chance to sample Big Island grown products like Tea Hawaii’s tea that has since been featured in the New York Times and organic produce grown by Chris Robb, named “Outstanding Farmer” for 2008. Robb Farms is located in Waimea, where people told him organic couldn’t be done. He loves proving people wrong.

In the rowdy crowd and haze of grill smoke, it’s easy to re-imagine a rip-roaring frontier town in the middle of the Waikoloa resort (minus some of the lawlessness). And indeed, there is a sense of the frontier here: in the paniolos and farmers of Big Island, as they reinvent old methods and introduce new, all in the hopes of keeping Hawai‘i agriculture alive.