Choose from these ingredients to make it “Hawaiian”: banana, coconut, macadamia nut, pineapple, pork, rice, spam, sweet potato, taro, yam.
You’re going about it the wrong way. Look at the way “Chinese/Polynesian” restaurants from the 1950s made “Hawaiian” food. Especially places like Trader Vic’s. You don’t need pineapples (although that helps a LOT). Using Coconut instead can suggest a Polynesian atmosphere. You need pointlessly over-sweetened and unusual food.
Bongo-Bongo soup. Mainly Oyster puree and spinach, although The Bad Taste Encyclopedia claims that you can get away without the oysters and use baby-food spinach.
The Pu-Pu Platter, with teritaki skewers and glutinously sweet sauced chicken would help
Huh. The burger was supposed to come with a scoop of macaroni salad and I substituted fries instead. I thought the original side was weird, and here they were being authentic. This thread explains the spam options on the menu as well.
TIL that a pu-pu platter is a real thing and not invented by the Bloodhound Gang NSFW lyrics
ISTM every Chinese restaurant in the western USA in the 1970s-1990s had those on the menu.
The Big Kahuna burger at the Hawaiian-ish place nearby has Spam, pineapple, and teriyaki sauce. No cheese. (I prefer their Spam BLT, which is a salt-lovers dream sandwich.)
Hell, every Chinese restaurant in the eastern USA had them too.
I would really like to see a resurgence in the popularity of all things Tiki.
Me too. I liked going to Kelbo’s when I lived in L.A. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that they closed in 1994. There’s a Tiki bar in Bellingham (Redrum), but it’s much smaller and less ‘authentically Tiki’.
Each spring my gf contemplates having a tiki bar in our yard. She has yet to take the plunge.
The Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco is still going strong. When I went there a few years ago there was a line out the door to get in, which I believe is typical.
Teddy’s Bigger Burgers is a Hawaiian burger chain with multiple locations in Hawaii. They used to have a location in Woodinville and sometime around 15 years ago I had the chance to eat there and really enjoyed it.
I just learned they closed their Woodinville location in 2021 due to Covid so that’s no longer an option but that place was great. Real Hawaiian food and atmosphere in WA.
We have lots of tiki bars in FL, but ISTM most have lost the whole 1960s Tiki mystique / theme except the thatched roof and a couple of featured fruity sweet cocktails.
Other than being mostly outdoors they’re ordinary burger-centric 2020s-era sports bars.
Yeah, the thing about Kelbo’s was that it was so tacky! You really need the '50s/'60s tack-o-rama for it to be right.
We had a little Tiki resurgence here in Chicago about 10 years ago. Three Doys and a Dash got some national press
Now, I really have a craving for Rumaki …
I wish. Some places (I’m looking at you, Ken’s) put peas in it. YUCK.
I mean, I like peas, and I like mac salad, but they should not be combined. Sorry, @Johnny_L.A. I’m also sad when tuna fish is added.
This thread is addressing two sometimes overlapping (but hardly identical) definitions of Hawaiian cuisine: tiki culture, which relies heavily on stereotypes and imagined versions of Hawai’i, and the authentic items that people really do eat all the time here.
To the authentic stuff listed above (poi, plate lunch, mac salad, spam), I would add poke bowls, loco moco, kulolo, lau-lau, and “ocean salad” (which is what they tend to call wakame salad here).
Also, Hawaiians have a thing for dreadful gravy. I would say it tastes like came out of a can, and maybe it does (now I’m looking at Hawaiian Style Cafe), but I wouldn’t know for sure as I would never stoop to using canned gravy. Anyway, to the extent it has a flavor, the flavor is … brown.
Oh gosh, I forgot one of my favorites: lomi-lomi salmon. I have no clue how this became a Hawaiian staple, but I love it.
…and kalua pig of course!
Hawaiian food is a mix of Polynesian, US military rations circa WW2, Japanese, and Chinese cuisines. The options for making something more “Hawaiian” are sort of so vast that it doesn’t have much meaning.
I’d probably take a beef/pork dumpling filling recipe and use that for the patty, top with coleslaw and a tamarind/sriracha sauce, but that’s just one variation.
Pineapples aren’t native to Hawaii, they were imported from Brazil.
There are still a lot of Polynesian/Chinese restaurants in New England left over from the 1950s. On of the biggest is near my home – The Kowloon. Despite taking its name from a peninsula and a district within Honk Kong, The Kowloon proclaims its nature by being built in the shape of a giant Polynesian hut with a Polynesian statue image on the front (although it also has flanking Chinese Dragons, and the side of the restaurant is in Chinese style). Its current incarnation got started in 1958.
I wonder if there was a window of opportunity in which the pu pu platter could have been named something else. “Pu pu” doesn’t exactly make my tummbly rumbly 
Naw, that name was half the fun when we asked for it as a kid.