For years, restaurants looking to serve a meat alternative have opted for outsourced industry brands such as Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat. Now, local chains are beginning to look inward for an island-grown substitute.
Highway Inn, a go-to plate lunch restaurant on Oʻahu, used to offer a vegan patty option for their loco moco and hamburger using Impossible Burger but recently made the switch to a beefy breadfruit one. The new ʻulu patty is packed full of vegetables and spices like turmeric and ginger.
The change is small, but for owner Monica Toguchi-Ryan it's an investment that hopefully, “down the road will help mitigate some of those issues in terms of sustainability."
ʻUlu is a canoe plant and was once a staple in the Native Hawaiian diet. Toguchi-Ryan said utilizing the crop is not only in line with their brand of serving authentic Hawaiian food, but it also allows the restaurant to lessen their dependence on imported food by sourcing closer to home.
Hawaiʻi imports up to 90% of its food, according to the state's Office of Planning. That dependence leaves the islands vulnerable to disasters or global events that affect supply and shipping.
Easing that dependence is something lawmakers have been paying close attention to. Act 176, passed in 2021, mandated that by 2030, state departments must source at least 30% of their food from local farms.
However, in their first annual report, departments said they struggled to source “common foods” like apples, carrots, potatoes and rice.
An agriculture census done in 2017 showed that island-wide, there's less than 40 acres of land devoted to producing potatoes. Additionally, less than 50 acres produce carrots and 11 acres produce apples. The report found that there were no rice farms in the state.
State representative and agriculture committee member Amy Perusso said “it is a matter of shifting the palate.”
“What I admire is the folks who are kind of looking at how we were able to feed so many people here before and how do we kind of go back to that kind of food system that is really grounded in this place, and in the culture of this place,” she said.
That means incorporating produce such as kalo, ʻulu, ʻuala and palaʻai.
“These are crops that are already well adapted that already grow well here. They don't need a whole lot of external help to thrive,” Dana Shapiro, general manager of ʻUlu Cooperative, said.
Shapiro said that while she wants people to eat Native Hawaiian crops on a regular basis, she understands traditional cooking methods can be intimidating and not feasible for the everyday person.
“Most people don't have an imu in their backyard anymore, or, you know, use an imu to cook on a daily basis,” she said.
To make traditional crops more accessible, the co-op began posting recipes on their website that were more suited to a modern palate. Some inspired recipes include ratatʻulu, kalo hash and ʻuala hummus.
“Presenting a scalloped ʻulu dish to someone who's really unfamiliar with ʻulu — that's sort of an entryway to get people to pay attention to this crop that they might think of as an ancient crop that's no longer relevant,” she said.
“We really need to start shifting all of our consumption behaviors now so that the food system can sort of rebuild. And that way we will be ready if something happens in the future,” she said.
Perusso said that a good place to start that shift is in cafeterias.
“We've been focused so intently on farm-to-school because that's the place where young people's palates are shaped, and where they connect to food and to their community through that everyday experience,” she said.
Shapiro is a mother of two young children and sees firsthand the impact school food can have on her kids.
“When you feed your kid ʻulu at home, which we do, it's one thing, but when they eat it in the cafeteria alongside their friends and their peers…it's a whole different influence, it has a really huge impact,” Shapiro said.
“Everybody can do their part to help the environment, help the future, build a more sustainable Hawaiʻi and planet by adding ʻulu to their diet, even just once a month, maybe once a week, if you want to be really ambitious,” she said.
For Toguchi-Ryan, she said at the very least, she hopes seeing it on a menu can help to spark some conversations.
“I think it's a great opportunity for people to start thinking about a food product that perhaps [they] never thought about until you saw it on the menu for the first time,” she said.
