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Mouth-Watering Street Food To Try in Hawaii

9 Mouth-Watering Street Food To Try in Hawaii (2024)

Blessed with mesmerizing landscapes, sandy beaches, and alluring marine life, Hawaii is definitely the number one destination on everyone’s bucket list. Accept it or not, we all have fancied traveling to Hawaii at some point in our life. Celebrated all around the globe for its beaches, parties, nightlife, and architecture, Hawaii comes among the top destinations in the world to visit. But hold on, that is not all, one thing that is utterly astounding about Hawaii but is lesser known is its FOOD. Having its culinary roots in the various regions of the world from China to Japan to India, the flavors and the spices of the local Hawaiian food is one to die for.

Roadside vendors, push trucks, openings in a wall – even in urban areas with high class restaurants for top-notch food, probably the best meals are served on the roads. Since the last few years, street food has gained more importance than its competition and people prefer to have it because of its easy availability and quick service record. Destinations like Hawaii have obscured the line between haute cuisine and street food. The street food of Hawaii, because of its exotic taste has become extremely popular among both the locals and the tourists. Therefore, you should not miss out on it too when in Hawaii.

So, listed below are some of the mouth-watering street food Hawaiian dishes that you can try to satisfy your taste buds when you next visit the city:

9 Mouth-Watering Street Food To Try in Hawaii

Taro ko Farm Chips

It is a fact widely known that good food is mostly characterized by the fact that it is extremely hard to get, and Taro Ko Farm’s taro, Kuala (yam) and potato chips are no exception to it. They are one of the best street foods to try on the islands of Hawaii. You can just locate these hand-tailored chips on Kauai in the little notable town of HanapÄ“pÄ“ at an old greenhouse. The hours are straightforward: If the entryway opens, you’ll locate its proprietor, Dale Nagamine, selling packs out of brown colored boxes for $5 each. In the event that the entryway’s shut, you’re experiencing bad luck. One can’t get enough of the li hing mui (dried plum) enhanced potato chips, made with four simple ingredients: potatoes, garlic salt, soybean oil, and li hing mui powder. With an aftertaste like that of a sweet grill potato chip, they are seriously irresistible.

Rainbow Drive-in’s Mix Plate

You can’t visit Hawaii without avoiding your no-carb diet at least once and topping off on a plate of lunch. Two scoops of rice, one scoop macaroni serving of mixed greens, and three sorts of meat (grilled pork, mahimahi, and boneless chicken). That is actually what you’ll discover in Rainbow Drive-In’s Mix Plate, ideal for those of us who need a smidgen of everything. The pork is delicate, the fish tastes fresh and the chicken is delicious. It’s a feast comprising the Islands’ best blend of cultures with a history tracing all the way back to the 1880s when manor workers would bring their bento-style lunch to work. Presently, it’s become a local’s go-to comfort food in convenient bring-home bundles.

Cow Pig Bun Burgers

Pretty much every eatery has a burger on its menu, however, there’s one in particular that makes your mouth salivate when the plane lands. Cow Pig Bun’s burgers on Maui are that acceptable and apparently the best in Hawai’i. Roger Stettler and Greg Shepherd opened the gastropub in 2014 (in a tech park), and it’s earned a solid reputation among the meat-eaters in the past couple of years since it’s been open. You can choose among six unique burgers—all similarly delightful and heavenly, for example, the House burger with focaccia bread, bacon-garlic aioli, gruyere cheddar, arugula, caramelized onions, and balsamic coating and the Bacon Jam burger with brioche, blue cheddar, lettuce, whiskey bacon jam, and salted onions. It is one street food destination in Hawaii that you absolutely can’t miss.

Hawaiian Plate

It doesn’t make any difference whether you have it at an eatery, lunch cart, or someone’s home; when in Hawaii, you need to do what local people do: get a plate of traditional Hawaiian food. Request a scoop of rice with a kalua pig on top, pork or chicken lau lau (enclosed by ti leaves), pipikaula (dried beef), and Lomi salmon as an afterthought, with a side of poi (taro, cooked, beat and diminished with water), and kolo (taro and coconut cream pudding) or haupia (coconut cream pudding) for dessert. Blend and match it any way you like, and eat until you get a Kanak assault which is a food coma.

Cocoa Puffs

Ask a native about Liliha Bakery and the person will probably rave about the Honolulu bread shop’s coco puffs, a cherished Hawaii cream-puff cake. Occupants can’t get enough of the light, flaky Choux baked good, loaded up with gooey chocolate pudding and finished off with rich Chantilly icing—and neither will you; once you try it. Why? The icing sets the coco puff different from other prepared desserts. An altered interpretation of German chocolate cake frosting, chantilly frosting ditches walnuts and coconut and adds more margarine. Once you start eating it, it becomes absolutely difficult to eat only one.

Acai Bowl

Acai is such a popular street food of Hawaii that you can get an acai bowl at almost every spot, however, there’s just one particular spot where you can get it with granola, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and nectar, finished off with paiai (hand-beat taro), and that is at Diamond Head Health Cove Bar in Waikiki. The assortment of sweet flavors combines very well with the paiai and is an incredible introduction to the Hawaiian staple. This little bowl of happiness is so addictive that soon after having it once, you start eating it like a local.Mouth-Watering Street Food To Try in Hawaii

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Croissada

Say salud to the Croissada, the croissant-malasada. For as far back as we can remember, hybrid pastries have been extremely popular throughout the nation and it hasn’t been long since the recent influx of imaginative carbs happened at Hawaii’s shores. The Croissada is a persuading combination of the two, taking the vaporous, sugar-shrouded doughtiness of a malasada, the cherished Portuguese pastry, on the inside and giving it the flaky, layered surface you’d expect of a croissant outwardly. The Aloha Center Café at the Pacific Beach Hotel initially presented the creation in Waikiki, mixing every one of its Croissadas with a Polynesian vanilla Bavarian cream. As of lately, another alteration has hit the scene, the Grandona, from Honolulu bread shop Let Them Eat Cupcakes in Chinatown, which makes its very own set number of baked happiness. These are a must-try for all the sugar craving souls of the world.

Mac and Cheese Pancakes

Can’t choose between breakfast or lunch? At almost every café and bistro concealed in the nooks and corner of the Manoa Valley in Oahu, the two universes amazingly crash to give rise to a dreamy, flavorful informal breakfast dish, Macintosh, and cheddar pancakes. (Indeed, macaroni and cheddar pancakes, you read that right.) The two hotcakes are covered with a layer of softened cheddar and each nibble uncovers pieces of elbow macaroni cooked into the batter. Finish them off with cuts of fresh bacon and sprinkle everything with a liberal measure of maple syrup and you have yourself a salty-sweet matching, that is absolutely mouth-watering.

Manapua

There’s not a single place that exists—seashore, office meeting, before your TV with that Netflix arrangement you need to make up for a lost time—where manapuas aren’t fitting. You can eat them up in dozens, or simply a solitary bun to fill in your stomach, it’s apparently Hawaii’s most convenient food. The Islands’ local take on traditional Chinese bao, Manapuas are pillowy white buns loaded up with sweet char siu pork and were brought by the Chinese who moved here in the mid-to late-nineteenth century. Depending on who you ask, the name is either a shortening of mea ono puaa (“yummy pork pastry”) or Mauna puaa (“pork mountain”) and whether they’re better heated or steamed is still up for debate many years later. Manapua is available at the vast majority of Hawaii’s Chinese eateries, yet in case you’re searching for a more diverse assortment, manapua take-out joints like Libby Manapua Shop on Oahu and The Manapua Bakery on Maui are the best options. Alongside singe siu, ginger chicken, yam, lap cheong, frank, pizza, shoyu chicken—and so on, you name it and there’s likely a manapua for it.

These were some of the street food dishes of Hawaii that one must try when visiting the chain of Islands.

FAQs for Foodies in Hawaii

Q1. Is good vegetarian food available in Hawaii?

Ans: Yes, a lot of very healthy and delicious vegetarian dishes are available in Hawaii. In fact, a lot of the hotels and eateries offer alternatives to the non-vegetarian ones with vegetarian ingredients.

Q2. Is The Traditional Food Available In Hawaii Very Expensive?

Ans: No, the traditional food available in Hawaii is not very expensive. In fact, the price depends on the place that you are eating at. Most of the hotels offer really amazing food at reasonable prices.

Q3. What Are Some Of The Famous Places To Dine In, In Hawaii?

Ans: Some of the hotels offering great food at reasonable prices in Hawaii are Da Kitchen in Maui, Coconut’s Fish Café at Kauai, and Leonard’s bakery at Oahu.

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