If you grew up in Hawaiʻi, chances are you grew up eating saimin.

It is such a significant part of Hawaiʻi culture.

It's ingrained.

People who travel or go to live in the mainland for a long period of time, they come back and they eat a bowl of saimin, and they feel like they're home again.

So I think that's kind of special.

In the islands, our ethnic melting pot has created a diverse community of ʻono or delicious food.

Let's take a closer look at our local cuisine here on ʻOno!

I pretty much grew up in the restaurant.

I worked every position.

I love, working dishwasher, bus boy, it's my favorite position.

Bryce Fujimoto is a third generation manager at Shiroʻs Saimin Haven.

The family owned restaurant specializes in saimin, a noodle dish that originated here in Hawaiʻi.

Saimin is a local dish derived from ramen from Japan, but it pulls a little more cultural, different cultures into it as well.

It can be very simple with noodles and broth, but the noodles need to be really good and the broth is light, but yet there's a lot of umami.

Shiroʻs was started by Franz Shiro Matsuo he's my grandpa in 1969.

He kind of glamorized saimin, because in the beginning, saimin was more known as a snack, but he really added a lot of other cultural flavors into it.

It's really neat, because we see families grow up here, and so we're able to, you know, connect with them in different ways, and watch the kids grow and in the process, feel a little older every year that we serve.

Noodles tender and easy to cook.

Right for any time of day, snack, lunch party or late TV.

Dress up the soup for namasu, or, surprisingly, wind up with chow min.

You can with Okahara instant saimin treat.

One of the most versatile food packages on your grocery shelf.

Saimin has a long history in Hawai'i, dating back to the plantation era.

For the Okaharas, it was the family's first step into American entrepreneurship.

Oh, my great grandfather and his wife are from Japan.

The first place they lived was in 1932 and there was a shack in the back of a house, and that's where they started making noodles and saimin, When the Okaharas decided to specialize in saimin, Tokizo looked up the history of saimin soup.

While little noodles, "sai" means little "min" means noodle are known and liked in many lands, he discovered that the soup made with them apparently originated in Hawaiʻi.

From three years old I had helped my grandma and grandpa and go in and everything and help them.

I'm the only one literally grew up there, and I ended up running it.

My father took many positions as far as getting into carnivals at EK Fernandez, many sports events for, you know, schools and, yeah, that was good.

That's what bring me pride.

People came to us for help, and we supplied with equipment and whatever they needed.

They were very happy.

Okahara Saimin Factory grew to become one of the largest noodle distributors on Oʻahu.

The popularity of their saimin eventually earned them a spot on McDonald's menu.

Even now we were closed, retired.

And, you know, I say we used to deliver to McDonald's.

They go, what?

And they get very excited.

They say, I used to eat that, you know.

We were all over the place.

And so that was, that was always cool to see just that Okahara Saimin logo.

That's the pride we have.

And then just seeing like, you know, over generations, really, how, how all of the kids would, you know, kind of grew up on saimin.

Businesses like Okahara Saimin played a large role in saimin's popularity, but it was people like Franz Shiro Matsuo who were able to take saimin to the next level.

He added won bok.

He added won ton, you know, he pulled that from the Chinese culture.

And he also put all types of garnishes inside of it, too.

Right now we have saimins ranging with roast duck inside Chinese roast pork paired with a lot of fried foods, but he really just wanted to make a meal in a bowl.

My grandpa had a very outgoing personality.

He was a showman.

He used to entertain guests with his ukulele playing.

Even though he didn't really know how to play ukulele, he taught himself.

He used to sometimes sing to customers.

He also wrote poems on a weekly basis.

Dear hearts, I don't like the expression.

I don't have time.

I'm too busy.

Let's make it tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes.

If you want to accomplish anything, you must make time, and time is now.

But you know, something that made it successful was he had this phrase, keep It simple stupid, so you don't want to make things so complicated so that nobody else can do it.

You want something that's simple and good that everybody can repeat over and over again.

It's a unique Hawaiʻi experience.

I think if you come from the mainland to visit you won't find something like this on the mainland.

It's it is not ramen.

Saimin clearly draws inspiration from ramen, but what sets it apart?

So one of the main differences is the broth.

The broth is the main show for the ramen with saimin, like I said, it's a little cleaner, a little crisper, and you do have to add some other things to it in order to get that same richness.

The regular garnishes you'll usually see in a saimin bowl is going to be green onion, maybe some, maybe some scrambled egg.

You can put char siu in there.

You can put luncheon meat in there, or spam.

Whereas, you know, you see in in ramen, while there is, like, a large variety, you know, ramen will have like the more like the roast pork piece, the big piece of seaweed.

Green veggies, corn, you probably wouldn't see corn in saimin.

Basic steps of making the saimin is first we have to cook the noodles, throw the dashi into the smaller pot, add whatever ingredients that you like to put in there, bring it up to a boil.

So you cool the noodles off.

After it's cooked, put it into the bowl, and then you add the rest of the pot with the hot ingredients, and then you can garnish it with your cold ingredients after that.

For many local residents, saimin invokes a taste of nostalgia that is tough to find anywhere else.

So noodles, little bit of dashi put some mustard shoyu.

You can really taste the dashi.

It's the umami.

I grew up eating saimin.

I grew up eating a lot of saimin, and have so many memories tied to it.

My kids were raised eating saimin as well, and they love it.

I feel, I feel it's such a great representation of who we are, our island state.

And I really do hope that they'll stay around for a long, long time so that generations to come can enjoy saimin.