The food scene in Hawaii is in an exciting phase. More and more Hawaiian chefs, like Top Chef Sheldon Simeon, the Pig and the Lady's Andrew Le and Senia's Chris Kajioka are winning accolades and national attention.
The farm-to-table wave has struck the state, and new restaurants focused on locally procured ingredients are opening on every island. In hotels and resorts too, menus are being recrafted to focus on Hawaiian flavors and products.
On Maui, home to large ranches and numerous small farms, there are great examples of all of these movements. On a recent trip to the Valley Isle sponsored by the Maui Visitors and Convention Bureau, I had the opportunity to sample three buzz-worthy restaurants including a resort with a fresh new menu, a celebrity-chef driven lunch spot and a former plantation converted into a modern restaurant and tourist attraction.
Preserve Kitchen and Bar at Travaasa Hana: In 2015-2016 Travaasa Hana underwent a $12 million renovation that updated the cabins and included a total revamp of the restaurant with a new name and a menu that better reflected the islands. In November 2016, executive chef Bella Toland, who grew up in the Philippines and worked in Wolfgang Puck's Spago, took the helm of the kitchen.
The Preserve Kitchen and Bar at Travaasa Hana specializes in ingredients found in and around Hana, like this white fish wrapped in nori and then tempura fried. Photo Credit: Tovin Lapan
Sitting close to the top of the property, diners enjoy views of rolling greenery and palm trees that drop down to Hana Bay. The evening at the open-air restaurant was serene, and tugged the just-arrived group of journalists into a tranquil, vacation mindset. Craft cocktails, also made with Hawaiian-made liquors and local fruits and vegetables, made the transition all the easier.
The menu is inventive and fresh, paying homage to not just Hawaiian ingredients but specifically fish, meat and produce found in and around Hana. We started with a raw bowl including fresh ahi that melted in your mouth, pohole fern salad and wasabi soy. Next up was a tempura-fried, nori-wrapped whitefish that was perfectly crispy on the outside and firm and moist on the inside. Another highlight was the crispy beef, strips of fried local beef with Maui onions and greens.
The Preserve Kitchen and Bar is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and frequently features live Hawaiian music and hula performances.
The Mill House at Maui Tropical Plantation: Once a sprawling sugar plantation, this property is now host to a tram farm tour, coffee roaster, gift shop and ice cream maker. The views of the adjacent pond and hillside from the affiliate farm-to-table restaurant, the Mill House, are selfie-background heaven, and few diners can resist asking the staff to snap a group shot.
The fish crudo with kiawe honey is a good example of the fresh, locally inspired dishes at the Mill House. Photo Credit: Tovin Lapan
The menu is dedicated to Maui produce and products, from the dishes to the drinks. Executive chef Jeff Scheer changes things seasonally, and on a May evening we kicked our meal off with some Maui Brewing Co. beers and a fish crudo with local honey, puffed buckwheat and reaper chili water that was perfectly balanced and featured uncommon ingredients emblematic of the rest of the meal to come.
Other standouts included hand cut, wide and flat pasta noodles with a rich beef ragu and gremolata, and a bountiful dashi broth cioppino chock full of hunks of tender fish, mussels and shrimp. The incredibly light and flavorful coconut sorbet ensconced in a layer of coconut cake and a dome of meringue, all topped with a pineapple compote, was an ending worthy of an encore.
The Mill House is open daily for lunch and dinner.
Tin Roof: When Hilo-born chef Sheldon Simeon left Migrant at the Wailea Marriott, he was ready for a break from resort fine dining and was looking for something more fun and casual. Perhaps most importantly, he wanted a place where he could play with flavors to his heart's delight and not worry about the constraints of hotel dining.
He found all of that in a strip mall not too far from the Kahului Airport, where he opened the lunch spot Tin Roof. Here Simeon combines common Hawaiian flavors and ingredients in uncommon ways. One of the stars is the mochiko chicken, sweet mochiko-batter fried chicken marinated in ginger sake shoyu, topped with su-miso sauce and gochujang aioli, and served with rice. You can also add extras, like a six-minute egg, to the meal. The menu also includes Simeon's take on a poke bowl and garlic shrimp, as well as a pork belly that is first roasted, then deep-fried and topped with tomato onion lomi and patis vinaigrette.
There are no tables in the small restaurant, just a counter that looks out on the parking lot. A nice alternative is to take your lunch to nearby Kanaha Beach Park, where you can enjoy your meal at a picnic table with a view of the ocean.
Tin Roof is open Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.