Originally published in the Taste Our Love for the Land cookbook, published 2015.

Hawaii is an island state, surrounded by the beautiful Pacific Ocean. We call Hawaii—so ethnically diverse—the melting pot of the Pacific, the gateway to Asia for the West and the gateway to the mainland U.S. for Asia. Our location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a long way from the Mainland, and we rely heavily on imports brought in by either plane or ship. We import somewhere between eighty-five and ninety percent of our food supply. In our lifetime, how do we move that dial back ten percent to become a little more self-sustaining?

Chef Alan Wong: Helping put Hawaii and its culture in the spotlight. Photos: courtesy of Alan Wong/“Taste Our Love for the Land,” 2015

Hawaii was born from agriculture. Sugar cane and pineapple were dominating industries once, but now they barely exist in the Islands. Pork and chicken are popular with the locals and we produced much of it back in the day, but now very little. Local dairy and egg production once accounted for up to seventy percent of what we consumed, but now it’s only thirty percent. We never had a six-month fishing ban on bottom fish until a few years ago. Our aquifers still produce awesome drinking water, but what was abundant once is slowly diminishing.

One of the original goals of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement, which began in 1991, was to help develop the agricultural network in the state of Hawaii. Today, cooks and chefs have much more to choose from as more product is being grown and produced in Hawaii. The number of farmers markets across the state is at its highest ever. 

One of the goals of the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival has been to put the spotlight on Hawaii—the people, the culture, our food, our farmers and what we grow, raise and produce here in the Islands. The two biggest groups receiving monies raised from this event represent Hawaii’s future cooks and future farmers. When you have more than a hundred world-class chefs from all over the globe cooking with local ingredients at the festival, it says a lot about what we eat here. If all of this helps move that dial back ten percent, to help create a more sustainable Hawaii, then all of us will have helped make the Islands a better place than before. By putting our food in the spotlight, we also put the farmer, the rancher and the fisherman in the spotlight. If that encourages more farmers to get started, and helps keep the existing ones in business and growing even more product, we’re all on the right path—so that our grandchildren’s children can enjoy what we have today, tomorrow.

Read the Q&A with Alan Wong

Korean Chili Vinegar Kualoa Shrimp with Seafood and Local Vegetables

Serves 4 | By Alan Wong