So laulau.

If you've never eaten laulau before, what is it?

It's ʻono.

But ʻono in Hawaiian means delicious.

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!

Food in general, in Hawaiian culture is central.

So any kind of significant celebration food is going to be the central part of it.

Liko Hoe is a former Hawaiian Studies teacher and the owner of Waiahole Poi Factory, a restaurant specializing in authentic Hawaiian food.

So laulau is like a wrap that is, most times gonna be lūʻau leaves, which is the taro, the taro leaf and some kind of meat inside of it that's wrapped up after the lūʻau leaves, and everything is bundled together.

You wrap it with ti leaf.

The word laulau, you know, lau in Hawaiian, means leaf, both the edible part, the taro part, and the ti leaf, is all lau.

So basically, you just close out the edges and start to fold them all in, give it the first wrap with the ti leaf and then with the longer leaf, same thing gonna start at the tip of the leaf, roll it up until we get it around, split the end the stem part of this leaf, tie one overhand on that side, and then two overhand knots on this side.

Just get it kind of nice and packaged up.

Today, Liko is cooking laulau in a traditional Hawaiian method, using an imu or underground oven.

You dig a pit in the ground, and then you're going to kind of build your fire within that pit, and then on top of that wood for burning, we put the rocks, and the rocks are what is going to retain the heat.

You usually leave a hole.

So it's kind of like a chimney.

And in Hawaiian, we call this the waha, it's like the mouth of the imu.

And that basically, kind of creates, like a chimney that will keep the air flow coming straight up like that.

So basically, the imu is designed to heat up those rocks, capture that heat and kind of like insulate it.

So after we heat up the rocks, we're going to put a layer of banana stump and then a layer of clean banana leaves, and then the food, and then another layer of clean banana leaves to cover it, and then burlap bags to cover that, and then something to cover over.

We use tarp.

Some people will put dirt directly onto it, which is a traditional style also, and then you let it cook.

Can be anywhere from seven to 12 hours.

Part of the practice that is significant is doing these things that are basically in the same style that our kupuna 200, 400, 2000 years ago did you know.

And the ingredients that we use, the resources that we use to do it, is the same.

For me, I feel that when we do imu in this traditional way, it is connecting to our kupuna, our ancestors.

You can feel that heat through multiple layers.

So you got the rocks on the bottom, that's where the main heat is at.

It's going through the hāliʻi and steaming.

And then you got the food in there, and then we put the banana leaf and burlap bag and then two layers of tarp.

It's still pretty yeah, it's pretty nice and hot.

So that tells us that the fire that we built was was good heat.

Young's Fishmarket is a family business.

We started in 1951.

My grandparents started as a fish market, as the name suggests.

We started selling Hawaiian food shortly after.

Mainly we focus on Hawaiian food now.

So laulaus, kalua pig, beef stew, anything to make a plate lunch.

Here in Honolulu, restaurants like.

Young's Fishmarket have made laulau, the backbone of their business.

We had trouble getting fish, and there was a shortage at one point back in probably the 60s or so, and they slowly started to transition to other things to keep the business going.

One of the customers suggested making laulau, and it kind of took off from there.

So here's the pork laulau.

We're gonna take it out of the leaf.

So this outer part is the ti leaf.

We're just going to cut that part off.

We actually offer quite a few varieties of laulaus.

That's probably what sets us apart the most.

We have beef, chicken, fish, oxtail, vegetarian, and the pork laulau.

So it's something that we take pride in knowing that, you know, people come back year after year for almost 75 years now.

With today's technology, the Young's are able to accelerate the cooking process.

You use the bigger leaves on the outside, and then you fill the middle with the smaller leaves.

We use up parts of the stem, the pork, fat and a little piece of fish and salt, and then you wrap that up in the two ti leaves, and then tie that off, and then they get packed into the steamer and cooked.

It's usually about a four hour process.

So follow me into the kitchen.

This is where we cook all of our laulau.

And here we have one of our pots of pork, laulau.

So we steam normally up to 100 plus laulaus at a time in one of these pots.

Well, because of the long cooking time, in order to cook the taro leaf properly, the meat really kind of marinates and flavors the leaves.

Most people's favorite part is the fact that the meat is real soft and the leaves are very flavorful.

Yeah.

So this is pork, laulau.

There's fat in here, and then there's a small piece of butterfish, just for extra flavor.

Usually, when people are coming for the first time, we ask them if they've had, you know, cooked spinach, if they've had cooked collard greens.

That's usually the thing that most people are unsure of, because the leaves are not something that are available anywhere outside of the tropical, you know, environment.

So we want them to try it.

And if they like pork, or they like the meat, they'll like the laulau.

We see the customers a lot.

We have a lot of people that come weekly, on the same day.

They have the same order.

We know as soon as they walk in, oh, mini laulau plate with poi, side order of squid luau, or whatever it is.

We have a lot of those customers.

We have a lot of people that order every year for Christmas, every year for New Year's.

We hope that we'll be able to continue.

If we can continue getting the products, we'll make it as long as people still want it.

After seven hours, Liko's laulau are ready to be extracted.

The burlaps it's kind of hot so- With friends and family ready to partake.

Usually, you're making hundreds, yeah, and so when you're making hundreds, you need hundreds of hands involved.

And really, you know, when we work together like that, in Hawaiian, we call that laulima.

That word lau, you might notice, is also the same as the word in laulau.

And part of that, what that means is lau means many yeah.

So when we say laulima, lima is hands.

So laulima means many hands.

You know, in a sense that word laulau, and laulima, you know, it kind of has that meaning of many people.

Yup, thats ʻono!

Another word in Hawaiian has that lau is we use the term hoʻolauleʻa, you know and that's that same word in there.

And in that case, it means to cause abundance of leʻa or joy.

Really, that, yeah, that word lau, you know, it's a word that is about bringing together many people, many resources, and kind of, you know, bringing them together to celebrate.

Whether it's a comforting lunch or culinary tradition laulau serves as an important part of preserving Hawaiʻi's food culture.