I would say that to experience a manapua is to truly experience part of Hawaiʻi's culture.

If you're visiting Hawaiʻi and you want to know what the locals eat, you've got to include manapua in part of that.

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

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

Manapua is such a popular item in Hawaiʻi because it's one of the iconic Hawaiʻi comfort foods.

It's just like the culture of Hawaiʻi.

It's a blend of multiple cultures coming together.

Elliott Chun is the president of Chun Wah Kam Noodle Factory.

The family business opened in 1942, in Honolulu's Chinatown, where they provided noodle products to restaurants across Hawaiʻi.

Today, the company's menu has expanded to include many plate lunches and local favorites, including the manapua.

Anyone from Hawaiʻi knows what it means to break open a manapua and take a bite.

I think that's why we've been so successful with this product.

It is very iconic Hawaiʻi food.

So, you know, here in Hawaiʻi, we're all descended from the plantation days, cultures, where there's Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, of course, Hawaiian.

Back in the day, the workers would get together and share their lunches and share their foods.

And pretty soon, some of these things start to really fused together like a real fusion kind of cuisine.

The Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century, coming to work the plantations, they brought over the Chinese char siu bao.

As the cultures blended, we developed a bigger bun.

It's sealed on the bottom, versus the Chinese bao, which is sealed on top.

It's lighter, it's fluffier, it's sweeter.

And this became the Hawaiʻi's version of the char siu bao, the manapua.

When the Chinese people brought it out, the Hawaiians called it "mea ʻono puaʻa" which loosely translated as the "delicious pork pastry".

I don't know how it morphed, but it became manapua.

Nobody else calls it manapua.

So manapua comes in all different varieties, but the most popular filling is char siu, and that comes in either a steamed bread or a baked bread.

Making a manapua is a simple process.

Dough is mixed with sugar and yeast to create the lumps of dough.

By hand, the dough is flattened and wrapped around the char siu meat.

Char siu is a Chinese style barbecue pork, and they chop it up.

Some places, shred it finer than others.

And that's, again, a matter of preference.

We take filling that we've pre made because it needs to be cold, and we wrap that in our in our dough.

Those are left to proof, then they are either steamed or baked, depending on the variety, and brought out immediately for customers for sale.

The topic of steamed versus baked is highly discussed amongst locals, but which manapua is the most popular?

There's always debate about which is the most popular.

You either have team steam or team baked.

Char siu baos are filled with barbecue pork, right?

The original was steamed.

You'll see this all the time at Chinese restaurants, a steamed version, but a lot of people in Hawaiʻi like the baked version because it's sweeter.

It's a very polarizing subject, so people get really opinionated, and there's like little fights and arguments that break out because it's like, no, you're wrong.

This is my favorite.

No, this is my favorite.

And we debate on why we like it better.

In our experience, the sales are about equal with maybe steamed edging out base just a little bit.

We found that people in Hawaiʻi still want manapua.

We in the past decades, we have introduced different fillings.

We have ube fillings, curry chicken, lap cheong, kalua pig, things like that.

I don't know something about the flavor of Hawaiʻi foods.

It evokes a bit of nostalgia.

So I have some cousins who live in Nebraska, and whenever they come home or come back to Hawaiʻi, which is not very often, when they bite into it, you can see on their faces like, oh my god, I'm home.

Whether steamed or baked, the char siu filled bun known as manapua is the perfect local comfort food and the perfect example of Hawaiʻi's ʻono food culture.