Having never been to Hawaii before we decided we must experience a lu’au while we are here. We heard that the one at the Kona Village resort was one of the better ones. Unfortunately it has the most expensive price tag of the luau’s, but none of them are cheap by any means.
Overall we thought the food and entertainment were excellent. They have two different types of luau’s to attend. One is an evening dedicated to just Hawaiian dancing and the one that we chose covers all the Polynesian types of dancing. They showed different examples from Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa and Tahiti.
The luau consisted of cooking a pig the traditional way, in the ground. They dig a pit called an imu and layer it with wood and light it on fire. Then large rocks are placed over the wood. To control the extreme heat from burning the food a layer of ti leaves is placed over the rocks. A pig is traditionally cooked, it is stuff with smaller rocks to help it cook from the inside out. The pit is then sealed of with a lot more ti leaves, then several inches of sand and a burlap cover. It cooks for many hours. Vegetables and fish were also cooked in the ground in a similar way.
We tried a bit of everything. Many things we were tasting for the first time like the Hawaiian staple Poi. It is made from mashing taro root into a paste. It was rather bland, a slight sweet flavor if anything. We tried some Moon fish, it was a white fish with a texture and look of chicken. It was very salty. Our favorite thing were the purple sweet potato buns, delicious.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.