Sam Choy’s ‘new wave’ poke surfaces on Kauai.
Celebrity chef conceives new market-driven experiences for Kauai resort
Before celebrity chef Sam Choy helped design menus for his new venture on Kauai, he first took a look at what’s growing on the Garden Isle. Choy wandered through Kauai Community Market in Puhi with Koloa Landing Resort sous chef Rafael Camarillo, tasting guava jam, smelling Sugarloaf pineapple and examining purple sweet potatoes.
“Visiting open markets is the most important thing a chef can do,” says Choy, who partnered with the luxury Poipu resort to create poolside Holoholo Grill and a weekly luau. “You feel the pulse of the area. You know exactly what people are raising, what they’re eating and how fresh it is. And then you create a menu based on that.”
An Oahu native and former head chef at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Choy came to fame in the 1980s as one of a dozen pioneers of Hawaii Regional Cuisine, a three-tiered approach in which island chefs encouraged local farmers to grow specialty crops, prepared their produce with European cooking techniques and deepened flavors with Asian sauces. He went on to operate several restaurants on Oahu and Hawaii Island, including the former Kaloko, which in 2004 won an America’s Classic Award from the James Beard Foundation.
Although Choy’s name remains on Kai Lanai in KailuaKona, where he lives, the chef is no longer affiliated with the restaurant. Other than supervising food on American Airlines’ flights to and from Hawaii, his primary focus has been growing his poke empire in Seattle. So his role in the reboot of Koloa Landing,
which now dozens of new condo-style suites and Kauai’s largest fantasy pool, has excited longtime fans in the islands.
For the luau, held in an intimate garden setting, Choy worked with executive chef Shaun Hinson, whose culinary roots lie in Ventura County and Savannah, Ga., to reimagine some staples and jettison others. The result is a Southern-tinged, beautifully presented buffet that features, among other innovations, a carving station for barbecued pork loin, herbed chicken, grilled kalbi short ribs and an array of tempting side dishes, from kimchi fried rice to quinoa with red pepper and Hilo potato salad studded with purple Okinawan sweet potatoes.
“Basically, I wanted to do something different, because every time you’ll find the same old thing, and the first time you go through the buffet it already looks messed up,” Choy explains. “I said, ‘Let’s be open to the idea of introducing good food, and the ethnic groups that brought their food to Hawaii.’ We’ve had a lot of nice compliments because of that.”
At Holoholo Grill, overlooking the pool’s many grottos and waterfalls, his dishes include a Poke Duo: a tako poke with slow-roasted octopus, spicy sambal, cucumbers and sesame oil, and kamaaina (“local”) poke — deeply savory, a little briny and as fresh as an ocean breeze. The latter’s simple preparation blends raw ahi, Japanese soy sauce, ogo (a burgundy-colored Hawaiian seaweed) and inamona, a condiment of roasted and ground kukui nuts.
“I wanted to continuously offer the true flavor of Kauai and look at Port Allen” — the island’s main fishing harbor —“as a farm of the fishing community,” Choy notes. “It’s really important that we work with local fisherman to create the two pokes, the octopus and the tuna. It’s that yin-yang thing; you’ve got the sweetness and saltiness that I call the magic flavor.”
The salty-sweet theme, which Choy also calls a “onetwo punch,” also inspires the nicoise salad with purple sweet potatoes, lightly seared ahi coated in a spicy rub and local frisee tossed in cider vinaigrette, as well as a Wagyu burger with sweet onion jam by night and tomato jam by day.
Hinson, who joined the resort team in May, says he plans to add more of Choy’s touches to the menu soon, including Choy’s signature Chinatown omelet with char sui pork. “I was always a fan of his, and he’s such a big name to locals, too,” Hinson says. “He comes here all the time and makes sure the food is still good.”
Choy will also return to the resort this week to cook the first in a series of special family-style dinners. “Visitors come because of the people, natural beauty and food,” Choy says, “so we want to give them a true taste of Kauai.”