Malasada just became a part of local culture.

It's a staple food.

It's traditional.

It's a nostalgic food for many.

Malasadas is a favorite for all the island people.

They made it a, you know, basically a household item.

Malasada is a traditional confection.

It comes from Portugal.

It's a light fluffy donut, fried golden brown and rolled in sugar.

Leonard's Bakery has been serving Malasadas in Hawaiʻi since 1952.

Locals and tourists alike come just to have a taste of their signature fried treat.

My grandparents, Margaret and Leonard Rego Senior moved here from Maui and opened Leonard's as our malasadas gained popularity, they outgrew the original location and moved to moved here in 1957.

After we mix our dough, we portion it out into trays and take it here to our frying area, where one of our fryers will hand cut every piece and placed it on a net.

After the malasadas are proofed sufficiently, we'll then let them fry for about five minutes or so, until they're perfectly golden brown.

We started to offer malasadas coated in cinnamon sugar and li hing sugar.

And we also popularized the malasada puff, which is a malasada with filling inside of it.

Being a multi generational operation, we really value tradition, and we want to make sure that we keep traditions like malasadas alive for future generations.

And the Portuguese.. Well, we don't have a nickname for them.

We're the chosen people, the Portuguese.

I am Portuguese.

I have half Portuguese.

Although malasadas are native to Portugal, to many local residents, they have become a part of Hawaiʻi's culture.

My career as a comedian, 50 years I professionally shared the culture of Hawaiʻi through comedy.

How can you tell a potagee skeleton in the closet?

The winner of the hide and go seek contest.

Growing up on Pakohana Street in Pauoa Valley.

Well, there were 16 different homes, and in each of those homes there were eight ethnic groups.

And so through the years, I've established, you know, all this knowledge of the ethnicities of Hawaiʻi just on living in one street.

And the more dirty the outside of the lunch wagon, da more ʻono da food.

Frank's ethnically diverse neighborhood became the inspiration for his breakthrough record and successful comedy career.

That was my first album, A Taste of Malasadas was the title of the album, and they put my face in one of the malasadas, and in it, I had all of my routines that I created from when I was a little boy.

This room, we have all sorts of relics of Portuguese and plantation life.

So how did Portuguese donuts find their way to Hawaiʻi?

Prior to 1878, you had about 400 Azoreans that came and about 150 Cape Verdeans.

And these are whalers that jumped ship and settled here in Hawaiʻi and became citizens of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.

Dan Nelson has been researching the ancestry of Portuguese in Hawaiʻi since the 1990s We have a database of over 308,000 Portuguese immigrants and their descendants.

So a person can either come in or call or email or write a letter, we go in and Robert and I if there's pukas(holes), so to speak, in the records we take and do research.

Here we have the original copies of the original Portuguese Council General's passenger manifests.

All of the individuals that came from Portugal between 1878 and 1923 had to register with the Portuguese council here in Honolulu.

Most of the Portuguese that emigrated to Hawaiʻi came from either São Miguel or Madeira or mainland Portugal.

On the island of São Miguel, you have a pastry called filhó and it's not like the donut that you see here on malasada.

Malasada basically means bad bread.

So it was bread that didn't rise properly for making bread.

So if you look at some of those Malasadas today, especially, they'll punch a hole in the middle, so that way the thing fries better.

And it was only for special occasions, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Christmas, that would be a special thing.

Whether it was São Miguel and Azores or Madeira, most of the individuals that came were basically tenant farmers.

They had no chance of actually owning property.

Also, there were required military service, and a lot of the individuals were sent to the colonies; Angola, Mozambique.

Their chances of surviving were less than 50% There was no public education.

That's why, basically, 20,000 immigrated from Portugal to here.

Portuguese immigrants arrived on Hawaiʻi's shores and began work on the rapidly growing sugar plantations.

When the ship arrived at the port of Honolulu, all the ships came here.

Plantation owners would go there and say, I want X number of men, women, family, so forth.

From there they would go on inner Island ships to whatever plantation there was.

Eventually you end up with heavy concentrations of Portuguese in the Hāmākua area on the Big Island.

Makawao, Upcountry Maui on Oahu, you're looking at the Punchbowl area.

especially Over time, Malasadas evolved into the familiar round shape locals came to love.

I think malasadas have become so popular here because there's a large Portuguese population, and locals love to embrace their heritage and traditions, and malasada is a traditional food here.

In my career, I had the opportunity to travel halfway around the world, and one of them was to go to Portugal.

Starting in the Fatima and going to Sintra and to a few other cities.

I was very happy that I got to experience Portuguese culture.

Today, Portuguese culture is perpetuated through their music, language, religion and most importantly, food.

Leonard's Bakery and the Rego family were basically responsible for getting the malasada out publicly, but they made it basically a household item.

Malasadas are a staple food.

We grew up with them.

They're appropriate for all sorts of occasions, and there's something nostalgic about enjoying the same treats that your ancestors did you.