Great food, beautiful beaches at Hawaii Food and Wine Festival
http://www.saultstar.com/2015/09/09/...-wine-festival
By Jim Byers, Special to Postmedia Network
Wednesday, September 9, 2015 4:37:17 EDT PM
KAANAPALI, MAUI – Celebrity chef Art Smith is holding court on the patio of the popular Hula Grill, just steps from the sparkling blue waters of Kaanapali Beach. He’s sporting a black Hawaiian shirt and a gorgeous lei made of intertwined green leaves and spiky orange flowers and talking about the local food scene on day one of the Hawaii Food and Wine Festival on Maui.
“They’ve always grown amazing things here,” said Smith, a Florida-born, Chicago-based restaurateur and chef who works closely with Chicagoan and part-time Maui resident Oprah Winfrey. “But now there’s a pride in what’s grown and raised in Hawaii.”
“For a period it was hard to find great food here, but that’s changed,” says another top chef, Nancy Oakes of the famed Boulevard restaurant in San Francisco. “It used to be Spam and those plate lunches or a hamburger patty at breakfast. But you now have young chefs working on the mainland and bringing ideas home and marrying those with local ingredients.”
Oakes pauses and looks around, taking in the white sand beach at Kaanapali and the views of the sparkling green islands of Lanai and Molokai across the water.
“And, on top of the great food, when you come here your shoulders drop two inches.”
You can still find casual, neighborhood joints in the Hawaiian islands; places that serve saimin noodles, Portuguese sausage and carb-heavy mixed plate lunches, with their famous two scoops of rice plus macaroni, potato salad, poi and shredded Hawaiian pork. But you’ll also find remarkable, romantic spots such as Merriman’s in Kapalua and Ka’ana Kitchen at the Andaz Maui hotel in Wailea, where chef Isaac Bancaco pairs deeply flavoured, deep red Maui strawberries with perfectly salty prosciutto and local ricotta cheese.