Anyone who's spent any length of time away from the Islands—or sent a care package to a homesick college student—knows: Hawai‘i folk feel strongly about the tastes of home. It goes beyond craving a familiar food. It's a comforting connection that resonates in our souls.

As Arnold Hiura, author of Kau Kau: Cuisine & Culture in the Hawaiian Islands, writes:

“Simple but soothing”—one could not find a more precise definition of comfort food.

To be sure, food is inherently comforting in that it wards off hunger, but comfort foods are special in that they are imbued with unique—apparently paranormal—characteristics. They have the ability to whisk us home from far, far away; they can pick us up in a warm, healing embrace when we’re feeling down; they can turn back the hands of time when life seems to be moving too swiftly, and they remind us of life’s simple pleasures in a world grown too complex.

Soup is one of the most universal comfort foods in the world. All around the globe some kind of chicken soup, miso soup, bean soup, oxtail soup, jook (rice soup), tomato soup, noodle soup, vegetable soup, pig’s feet soup or chowder heads the lists of comfort foods. Soup just seems naturally disposed to the role: It is flavor; it is aroma; it is texture; it is instant warmth that fills the body and stimulates the brain.

Saimin: The Ultimate Comfort Food? “Saimin” is a contraction of the Chinese words “sai” (thin) and “mein” (noodle). Saimin noodles are unique in that they contain eggs and are curly and slightly chewy when cooked. The popular staple (see photo page ii) dates back to the plantation era, when it cost 10 cents for a large bowl, 5 cents for a small one, at Waipahu’s Shiroma Saimin stand in the 1930s. Saimin is served alongside hot dogs and burgers throughout the Islands—only in Hawai‘i is it found on the menu at Jack in the Box and McDonald’s. Hamura’s Saimin Stand on Kaua‘i was even recognized by the prestigious James Beard Foundation as one of America’s Classics in 2006. (Photo by Adriana Torres Chong)

Soups are also simple and economical to prepare, allowing families to stretch limited food budgets in order to feed a tablefull of hungry children. For many local families, fish soup could be created for next to nothing by anyone with a fishing pole, spear gun or fishing net and a vegetable garden. Stews and noodles also rank very high on the list of comfort foods. Almost anything associated with one’s childhood—including cookies, milk and ice cream—certainly qualifies.

Even Hawai‘i’s most celebrated chefs often crave their favorite comfort foods over the fancy dishes they prepare for others. Side Street Inn—an unassuming restaurant-bar in Kaka‘ako—is a favorite place for chefs like Alan Wong, Roy Yamaguchi, Russell Siu, Hiroshi Fukui and others to eat, drink and relax after work. Colin Nishida, Side Street’s owner and chef, is famed for his local dishes such as poke, pork chops, chicken gizzards, smoked pork and fried rice. “It’s comfort food,” Fukui said. The food is “very local—it hits home,” Wong observed. “People think chefs like to eat only fancy, very complex food; in reality, chefs look for very simple stuff.” Siu agrees. “I don’t eat at work,” he says. “I usually pick up a plate of beef stew or something on my way home.”

The true power of comfort food, however, has more to do with context than it does with content. It has more to do, in other words, with the love that permeated one’s family’s kitchen than the freshly baked cookies and cold glass of milk enjoyed there, or the comfort of being nursed back to health rather than the curative properties of soup itself, or the company of old childhood friends rather than the drive-ins frequented with them.

We need to eat to survive—it is a basic human instinct. But, beyond that, food unites people in intimate ways. Comfort food, especially, and the memories it triggers in us, provides an emotional—even spiritual—power to connect people from different geographic, economic and ethnic backgrounds into families, communities, cultures. It has the power to bind us as human beings in its universal embrace.

Kau Kau: Cuisine & Culture in the Hawaiian Islands by Arnold Hiura will be available in bookstores in January 2010. It is available now at www.bookshawaii.net for advance order and holiday delivery.

Tags: Arnold Hiura, comfort food, food, food traditions, Kau Kau: Cuisine & Culture in the Hawaiian Islands, saimin

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Cookbooks, Hawaii cookbooks, Hawaii history, Hawaii non-fiction, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.