Hawaiian Flavors.(cuisine)(Brief Article)

Joan Myers and her husband, Stan, love Hawaii. The California couple has vacationed on the islands for nearly 30 years--espousing its virtues to anyone who will listen. Says Joan, "Our favorite place is the Big Island, with its volcanoes, rain forests and waterfalls. It's really spectacular." But ask about food, and her tone changes. "Well, that's the one area that always seemed to be lacking in the past," says Myers with a chuckle. She's not the only one who used to consider the cuisine in America's 50th state a laughing matter. "The common joke used to be that the only good food in Hawaii was on the plane ride over here," says renowned Honolulu chef Alan Wong.

No longer. Forget the touristy luaus with "Americanized" versions of local delicacies. These days restaurant menus in Hawaii are likely to offer such specialties as grilled opakapaka (Hawaiian snapper) in a macadamia-ginger-basil pesto, tempura of Kona lobster roll or chicken breasts stuffed with spiced mango. Mashed taro (the tuber used to make the island specialty known as poi) is the de rigueur replacement for ordinary mashed potatoes, and coconut-creme-spinach sauce is as ubiquitous as brown gravy at a Southern truck stop. "It's everything you expect fine food to be," says Myers. "I daresay the meals we've had here lately can stack up to anything we can get in San Francisco. Whatever has happened, we think it's great."

What's happened is Hawaii regional cuisine, a culinary revolution launched in the early '90s by 12 prominent island chefs, including Wong. They were anxious to declare their independence from the traditional staples of island cooking: frozen fish (because local fishermen couldn't keep up with demand) and canned vegetables imported from the mainland. Known as HRC, the cuisine reflects Hawaii's melting pot of Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Filipino and Korean immigrants who came to the islands to work on sugarcane and pineapple plantations. "We didn't invent the cuisine. It was already here, in ...