Postcard from Hawaii

By Vicki Polon

 
Chef John Kerkeslager

          Since I’m always hunting for local grub wherever I happen to be, and I happen to be in Kauai, it’s luau time - a must for the first-time Hawaiian tourist. Not that it takes much to get me to eat kalua pig, or any pig, to be frank. Here we are, in a swarm of several hundred like-minded hungry oglers, crowding around an earthen pit, on a lush tropical plantation. Two buff young Hawaiian men in tropical pareas make perfect harmony blowing on conch sells. I actually shiver at the magic.

          The men dig the roasted and steamed pig out of the underground “imu,” where it has been cooking for half a day.  And then it’s off to the dining gazebo for an all-you-can-eat buffet. In this land of abundance, I am stunned by the spread arrayed before us.  Canned beans, frozen vegetables, glutinous brown rice, breasts of rubber chicken, lifeless steamed-out fish fillets. Happily, the pig is delicious, falling-off-the-bone tender. I comfort myself by refilling my plate with it twice.  Traditional music and dance follow: At least that’s authentic.

          Next morning I described the pitiful meal to John Kerkeslager, corporate executive chef for Davidson Hotels & Resorts, management group of our hotel. He knew instantly what I meant. “Most chefs here are not doing local. With such extraordinary bounty…they’re not even serving coconut.” He’d flown in from Atlanta to revamp the menu of the hotel restaurant, Voyager, at the Courtyard Marriott at Coconut Beach.  “It blew me away this restaurant wasn’t taking advantage of local resources,” he added.  In the new menu all of the dishes will have “local infusion,” he promised.

          A graduate of Johnson & Wales University in Providence, John, 45, is soft-spoken, but passionate. For him “it’s all about food,” since he started working in a family restaurant at 15. That passion prompted him to name his daughter, now 13, after his favorite mushroom, though spelled Marelle, not morel, sparing her the inevitable teen teasing.

          He too is always sniffing out hidden local delicacies. This week, he’d been foraging at Kauai’s farmers markets, where he was excited to discover sweet potato greens – “earthy with a subtle sweetness.” He plans to serve them, when available, as an alternative to kale or beet greens. He even keeps a pole under a palm tree outside the hotel kitchen so he can knock down coconuts and indulge in their sweet milk and flesh whenever he gets the urge.

          Tasting a few of the chef’s inspired new dishes - fingerling potatoes with local trumpet mushrooms and wilted spinach, grilled rare ahi with lemon and olive oil and maitakes – assures me that the island has landed its locavore champion.

Voyager, Courtyard Marriott at Coconut Beach, 650 Aleka Loop, Kapa’a, Kauai, Hawaii. 808-822-3455.