(light relaxed music) (Yia slurps) (Yia laughs) - (slurps) Ah.

It may look like I'm on a sandy Hawaiian beach, but it turns out you don't have to take a flight across the Pacific to get a taste of the aloha spirit.

(giggles) I'm Chef Yia Vang.

In my restaurants, I share my family's Hmong heritage through the food we serve.

Every bite tells a story.

And the most memorable meals not only reflect who we are, they connect us.

From field to table, mill to market, let's explore food from around the world and relish the cuisines and cultures of our neighbors.

(soft upbeat music) (bright funky music) When you live on an island, community isn't just a word, it's something you depend on.

Everyone becomes a part of one big extended family.

- Aloha.

- [Yia] Which means everyone has a seat at the table.

In Hawaii, they call that ohana, which means family.

What happens when you trade in the beach for something a little colder?

- [Director] Mark.

- Okay, it's cold, I can't feel anything.

Let's get out of here.

(thumping dance music) (water splashes) Meet Warren Seta, a restaurateur and Japanese American who left a long career in fine dining to open Ono Hawaiian Plates with his partner Jess.

Together they're introducing Hawaiian plate lunch to a whole new and entirely landlocked community.

Okay, chef, what are we shopping for today?

- We're gonna put together my Grandma Florence's beef stew.

We're gonna create a plate lunch out of that.

- [Yia] What's the first step?

- The beef bone broth.

(broth boiling) (soft plucking music) Aloha.

Chef, how are you, man?

- What's up, Warren?

- How you been, man?

- Good.

- Good to see you.

Let's do some shopping.

(singing in Japanese) You got some Chinese celery here.

These prawns have a lot of anise flavor.

- Oh my gosh.

- It's fantastic.

- The smell of it, like that...

When was your first encounter or memory of eating a plate lunch?

- [Warren] It was at Ala Moana Beach in Honolulu.

My grandfather, he was a really great waterman, taught me how to swim, how to fish, all that water sports while my dad was working.

I was probably four or five.

We swam, hungry now, went for lunch.

My grandfather ordered me a beef curry and rice.

I'm sitting on the sand.

And that was my first experience that I remember of the mayonnaise from the mac salad mixing into the curry gravy.

That smell and that taste burned a memory in my mind.

When I'm making a plate lunch at Ono, it has to remind me of that.

(warm acoustic music) - [Yia] Hawaii is a string of 137 islands in the North Central Pacific Ocean, including eight major islands, all of which was formed by volcanic activity over 70 million years ago.

Known as the Aloha State, Hawaii is home to more than 25,000 unique animals, insects and plants, making it one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet.

So Warren, what makes a good beef stew for you?

- The stock.

We're gonna go through the meat department next 'cause that's where your flavor is.

Everything you add in after that is a backup.

Perfect, something like this here.

A good ratio of marrow.

See it?

This will give it a lot of viscosity.

So I've roasted off these bones.

- [Yia] When you're roasting off, what are you looking for?

- I'm looking for color, okay?

You want a nice rich color.

- And this is what we're looking for, right?

Right there.

- [Warren] 500 degrees, nice good-sized stock pot.

Add your bones right in.

We're gonna add a bouquet garni here.

- [Yia] So what's a bouquet garni?

- [Warren] Bouquet garni is just a fancy word for a tied-up piece of weeds over here, okay?

I got rosemary, I got thyme, I got marjoram.

Little bit of bay leaf here.

Let's let it go.

(soft upbeat music) - And I noticed too, that because of all the fat that's gonna be from the marrow, you want something a little leaner, right?

- [Warren] Yes, a little bit leaner.

Fat doesn't hurt also.

Fat is flavor.

So we'll get one of these, okay?

- [Yia] Awesome.

- [Warren] What you wanna do is cut it into these two by two, three by three chunks.

Nothing scientific.

I'm just gonna take some good red wine here like they did in Burgundy.

And we're just gonna be pretty liberal with it.

Yeah, you wanna get the wine in there.

Marinating it overnight in good red wine would also help tenderize the meat.

(light music) - [Yia] The more vegetable, the better, right?

- Yeah, we're gonna have carrots, potatoes.

- [Yia] Here in the mainland, people have very different views of what Hawaiian food is.

- People make a big mistake that because it's from Hawaii, it's Hawaiian food.

We like to respect the actual Hawaiian culture.

- [Yia] The Kanaka Maoli or indigenous Hawaiians have lived on the islands since their Polynesian ancestors arrived as early as the first century AD.

Native Hawaiians are closely related to other indigenous islanders, including those in Tahiti, New Zealand, and Easter Island.

- [Warren] The plate lunch, that's not really Hawaiian food.

- Do you know the history of the plate lunch or where'd that idea come from?

- [Warren] That's food that was brought by the immigrants to Hawaii.

Rice was a staple, therefore the two scoops of rice, right?

The mac salad, who knows where that came from?

It was probably some- - It's America.

(laughs) - [Warren] And whatever the entree was, whether it was Japanese chicken katsu or the great barbecue from the guy from Korea, Filipino, you got the adobo, peanut bit, all this kind of- - Kalua pork.

- Yes, the kalua pork from the Hawaiians, right?

And that really was the genesis of plate lunch.

(tranquil harp music) - [Yia] When Grandma made it, what did she use?

- The staple vegetables, the carrots, the celery, and the onions and the potatoes.

- Do you remember the first time you had this dish from Grandma?

- [Warren] It's part of my life.

It was probably a once every two week staple.

Pot would be empty.

(soft casual music) The rice cooker would be empty, so it must have been really good.

Perfect.

(light music) (oil sizzling) Gonna get some aromatics in there.

Pour in the onion.

I think you got enough color there.

This is just kosher salt.

Celery tops, gonna add that in now.

- [Yia] Mmm.

- [Warren] So we got our bone broth here.

Been going for a few hours.

- [Yia] That's what I'm talking about, oh yeah.

Mmm, the num nums.

Oh my gosh, look at that.

- [Warren] This is the bone marrow.

My grandma would cook it with the bones in there.

- [Yia] When people think of Hawaii, Hawaiian, they always think pineapple.

Why?

- Because Hawaii had the biggest pineapple plantations in the world.

And many of the plantation workers, my ancestors from Japan came to work the plantation.

Pineapples is not indigenous to Hawaii.

- Oh, really - No, they're not.

- [Yia] The Hawaiian islands have always been a place of agriculture, with the first Polynesian settlers cultivating everything from ginger to coconut and even taro.

But European and American influence in the region resulted in a plantation economy focused on export, that converted much of the natives' land into sugarcane and pineapple farms.

- [Warren] My mother, my aunt, their generation, they worked in the pineapple cannery.

Pineapple was, the industry was part of our culture.

To staff these plantations, they brought all immigrants from Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal.

We never looked at a Filipino as a Filipino or a Japanese as a Japanese.

It was about opportunity.

- [Yia] That's such that immigrant story, that refugees story that you and I come from.

- Yes, you don't find plantations anymore in Hawaii.

The hotel industry became their main industry.

- We have everything here ready with the beef stock.

What's the next step?

- Now we're gonna start layering our vegetables.

What cooks the longest, celery and carrots.

Gonna let that simmer.

Halfway through, gonna throw the potatoes, then we'll finish this thing up.

(broth boiling) (soft thoughtful music) - [Yia] A lot of Hmong dishes are a stew and a soup.

All the flavors you put in is really intense, but it mellows out when it all cooks together.

- [Warren] I think every culture has a stew.

We're gonna let that potato finish off.

We'll cover it a bit.

- The infamous mac salad.

- Yes, this is quintessential plate lunch.

You gotta have mac salad.

And a lot of plate lunch joints are judged on their mac salad.

- This is what makes it a plate lunch.

- Yes, and when that mixes with the stew gravy, you'll see the perfect bite.

(singing in Japanese) (soft plucking music) And you want quite a bit of mayo, okay?

That is salt.

This is that powder.

That powder.

- [Yia] Oh, I think it's the same powder we use.

- [Warren] I'm not gonna reveal what it is.

- [Yia] Oh.

(Warren laughs) Ancient Hawaiian secrets.

- [Warren] Ancient Hawaiian secrets.

Dig your hand in there, have fun.

- Oh, it's about to get weird.

Oh yeah, that's the stuff.

- [Warren] One of the secrets to making a good mac salad is you overcook your noodles.

Mmm.

- I like it.

When I say the word ohana, what does that mean to you?

- Ohana, (twinkling music) of course, general term, family.

But you and I can be ohana.

If we connect, it doesn't matter what kind of, whether we agree with things, disagree with things, but I have mutual respect for you.

It's not just calling you ohana.

It's I feel you as ohana.

- I grew up in Wisconsin.

I grew up in Minnesota here.

You're constantly around majority white people.

It was the only time when I remember walking down Waikiki or in the North Shore in Hawaii, and I didn't have to explain why I was there.

And even then, some of the local guys came up, and they would ask me like, "Hey, what part of the island are you from?

Are you a local boy here?"

- Yeah, you look local.

- It was the first time in my life I felt like I belong.

- That's Hawaii.

That's Hawaii.

(soothing orchestral music) When we eat food in Hawaii, like we're gonna partake in my grandma Florence's beef stew, growing up, I didn't know beef stew was Irish or beef bourguignon from France and stuff like that.

I thought the whole world ate beef stew and rice.

I really did.

When you really look at the plate lunch, that's why the heart of Hawaii is in it, is because it is the essence of Hawaii.

It is that melting pot.

Jessie's gonna join us for dinner.

- [Yia] Okay.

- And we'll sit on the patio.

- Live it up, huh?

- [Warren] Grind time.

- [Yia] Yes.

(warm casual music) That's so good.

That creaminess from the mayo, it hits that stew's gravy there.

- [Warren] I know, it works.

That's the beauty of plate lunch.

- And that's exactly what you were talking about when you're talking about the tenderness of the beef, right?

- Yes.

- Like it's tender, but it's not just mush falling off.

- [Warren] You still gotta chew, yeah.

- Fork tender.

- [Warren] It's fork tender.

- [Yia] Fork tender.

So being here in the Midwest, how do you find that ohana spirit here in the Midwest?

- It doesn't have to be tied to a place.

It's a feeling.

- [Warren] As human beings, we tend to look outward for happiness.

It's up to us, we believe, to show them ohana.

- [Yia] It's what can I bring to the table?

- [Warren] What can I bring?

- How can I contribute?

- Yeah, then it becomes contagious.

- [Yia] Absolutely.

- [Warren] Plate lunches, it's such a wonderful...

It's just not food, it's a statement.

It's a way of life.

- [Yia] That's amazing.

At their table, and with every dish they pass out at their restaurant, Warren and Jess are building a vibrant community right here in the Midwest.

But they're not alone.

I'm off to meet another member of the local Ohana who has a pretty historic connection to the islands.

(rapping in Cantonese) (pulsing hiphop music) - Hey.

- Hey.

- Aloha, chef, how are you?

- Hey, man, awesome.

- Good to see you.

- I'm excited.

- Welcome.

- [Yia] Meet Chris Ikeda, a fourth generation Japanese American chef who trained in Hawaii under famed restaurateur Alan Wong.

Chris has dedicated his career to celebrating authentic Hawaii regional cuisine on every plate he serves up.

(dreamy pop music) - [Chris] All right, got some tuna here.

- [Yia] Aw, dude.

It is definitely not tuna from a can.

- [Chris] We're gonna make a couple things off of this ahi loin.

Ahi loco moco, with some fresh Kauai shrimp.

And then we're also gonna make more of a traditional Hawaii style poke.

- Tell me your story of how you got to Hawaii.

- My dad had a group of diners, Perkins Restaurants growing up.

So I worked in those, ended up getting my entrepreneurship degree at St. Thomas, and then went out to New York to get my culinary degree.

- Break it down for everybody.

- Cool, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ended up getting an apprenticeship out at Four Seasons at Hualalai Resort.

I loved it so much.

The day I graduated, I was on a plane back to Hawaii.

(light airy music) You're trying to carve out the loin at this point.

The loin is great for searing.

Almost looks like the shape of Big Island actually.

- [Yia] This knife, it's a single edge, right?

- [Chris] Yes, it's beveled only on one side.

- One stroke.

- [Chris] You want clean cuts, as precise as possible.

- [Yia] It's the closest I will ever feel to being a samurai.

You know, you just one slice, boom.

(warm acoustic music) When I think of food from Hawaii, right away my brain always goes to plate lunch.

That's kind of like my jam, right?

I think a lot of it too, is 'cause it resonates in me as a Hmong kid who was like, you eat everything with rice.

What's the difference between the food you do and something like a plate lunch?

- [Chris] Yeah, I would say Hawaii regional cuisine.

It's a little elevated.

So we're taking those basics and foundations of plate lunch and the cuisines of Hawaii, and then just trying to continue to grow it and take it to that next level.

So first we're gonna start out with searing off the tuna for our ahi loco moco.

Fortunate enough to sync up with a guy named Chef Alan Wong.

- Real famous, yeah, real famous.

- One of the founders of Hawaii regional cuisine.

It showed me the path of what Hawaii was all about.

- [Yia] So today we're gonna be doing a loco moco, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- But it's a little different than your traditional loco moco?

- [Chris] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- So let's talk about the traditional side.

What's in a loco moco?

Which by the way, I love loco moco.

It is the best.

- It's a contemporary Hawaiian dish formed in the early 1940s, usually comprised of rice, a beef patty, a sunny up egg and brown gravy around the whole thing.

So this one is a little more elevated than a traditional loco, with Japanese sushi rice, furikake on top, a golden curry around the outside, some fried Kauai shrimp, sunny up egg.

- [Yia] And when we're searing, we're not cooking it all the way through, right?

- [Chris] No, usually medium rare, maybe medium.

You really want it that way.

And then some seared Hawaiian tuna.

(oil sizzling) - [Yia] Oh man, that was real quick.

- [Chris] Yeah, yeah, we're gonna go real rare on it.

- [Yia] Wow.

- [Chris] When it's this fresh, no need to mess with it.

(warm casual music) - I did not know that you have a whole family lineage that's connected to the islands.

- I'm yonsei or fourth generation Japanese.

My great-grandfather migrated over in the early 1900s, making his way up to Minnesota.

Ended up having a really successful career in pathology to the point where he was actually Hubert Humphrey's personal doctor.

He ended up becoming the first person of Asian descent to get naturalized in the state of Minnesota.

And then my grandfather back during World War II, in order to avoid internment or other problems that came along, became enlisted and joined the 442nd, which was an all Japanese unit that fought for the United States.

The 442nd was Japanese from the mainland and Japanese from Hawaii.

So that's where my grandfather got exposed to Japanese from Hawaii.

- [Yia] After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, enlistment rates around the country spiked with those eager to join the war efforts, including the brave men of the 442nd regiment.

This segregated unit fought in Italy, France, and Germany, and went on to become the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in US military history.

- [Chris] I kind of draw a parallel to my grandfather's time in the 442nd.

I'm trying to present Hawaii regional cuisine to people in the Midwest to educate them the best we can through our food.

(soft electronic music) (oil sizzling) This is a dried seaweed seasoning that's used as a condiment on rice throughout Asia.

All right, so we like to cut these loins after we sear them off into a few little pieces.

- [Yia] They look like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

- [Chris] Kind of.

- [Yia] Don't they look like a little tea sandwiches?

Those are tea sandwiches I'd be all about, bro.

- [Yia] Right?

So we're hard at work making a Japanese style golden curry.

So it's Kaffir lime leaf, curry, coconut water, ginger, garlic, green onion, lemongrass.

♪ I am finding a meaning ♪ ♪ I was down, but I'm healing ♪ ♪ With no sun ♪ - [Chris] And then we just get the egg right on top.

- [Yia] Oh, look at that guy.

Oh.

Is there any way you bougie it up a little bit?

- [Chris] Oh yeah.

- [Yia] Okay, how we bougieing it?

- [Chris] It's fun.

So we do a little sesame seed all the way around.

Throw a little pickled red onion all over.

- [Yia] Curry's so rich, we wanna humble it a little bit, you know?

I mean, look.

- [Chris] A little bit of green onion all the way around.

- [Yia] Culinary school right there, man.

$80,000.

(Chris laughs) (gentle ukulele music) I think that everyone has this beautiful view of Hawaii, especially being from the Midwest.

You're like, "That's paradise."

Like I wanna go out there, live that aloha life.

- [Chris] People do have that association with Hawaii.

It's exotic, it's fun, it's cool.

And it's an amazing place, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows all the time.

Particularly right now, the cost of living is skyrocketing.

There's challenges with securing affordable housing for a lot of these families that have been out there for generations, where people are almost getting pushed outta Hawaii, and you're starting to see more Hawaiians, Polynesians throughout the United States now.

It's the unfortunate byproduct of the rising costs in Hawaii.

It's pushing Hawaii culture and cuisine out of Hawaii and more into the mainland.

- Dang, from a culinary standpoint, that's awesome.

From a socioeconomic standpoint, that's not cool, you know?

And so how do we turn a frown upside down?

Eating more local mocos.

- That's right, that's right.

So this is that saku portion of the ahi.

We're gonna actually use this to make poke.

- Okay.

- [Chris] Hawaiian style, they like real nice, thick chunks.

(gentle cozy music) - [Yia] What's the difference between Hawaiian cuisine and Hawaii regional cuisine?

- That's a really good question.

I feel like it's important to separate those two.

You have Hawaiian cuisine, which is indigenous Hawaiian cookery.

- [Yia] Can you give me examples of Hawaiian cuisine?

- [Chris] Yeah, so you have poke.

Poke has been around for centuries.

Poi, poi is another very important food.

- It's like a staple.

- [Chris] Yes, absolutely.

And then you have Hawaii regional cuisine encompasses all of those different ethnicities and cultures that really migrated over to Hawaii during the plantation days.

And it's still continuing to evolve to this day.

- [Yia] What's really cool for me is both of them can live in the same space.

- [Chris] Absolutely.

- Okay, this version of the poke is very traditional, if that's the word you wanna use.

- [Chris] Probably the OG poke, if you were to describe it that way.

- So what all goes in it?

- [Chris] So we have the diced ahi tuna, inamona, or the, it's a candlenut, and they also call it a kukui nut.

- Oh my God.

- Basically roast those and...

Very unique flavor.

And then we also have some salt from Kona Salt Farms.

And this is called alaea salt, which is actually like a red clay sea salt.

- [Yia] Tell me more about your connection with Warren and Jess from Ono.

- [Chris] Over the years, we've just collaborated on different things.

Probably our most recent was in response to the wildfires in Maui.

- They are still fighting fires tonight on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

- [Chris] They had a lot of personal connection to that, a lot of family that was impacted by that.

We were kind of the two Minnesota restaurants that represented Hawaii at that time.

We put together a luau fundraiser, so it was Minnesotans for Maui.

Collectively, we raised almost $40,000.

- Dang.

- Yeah, it was really cool to see the community come together for Hawaii.

(warm casual music) There you go, perfect.

I think it's there.

- [Yia] I think it's there too.

Let's go eat.

- All right, let's try it out.

(light relaxed music) - [Yia] Dude, this looks amazing.

I'm so excited to break into it, man.

Let's do this.

I love the nuts on there.

This is awesome, man.

- [Yia] You gotta get some poke too.

- One of my favorite meals is poke over hot rice.

- Perfect.

- 'Cause that rice just, it makes that fat come out.

One of the things I really notice is how much care you have to understand the old ways first before we can do something like this.

- I mean, let's face it, not everyone is able to go out to Hawaii.

It's expensive.

But if we can provide just that little slice of aloha here right in the Midwest that everybody can try out and see, we're doing our job.

During the plantation days, everybody would share.

That to me is Hawaii.

That essence of aloha, I don't think should ever change.

And working together I think is a big piece of it all, too.

- Speaking of working together, I think we need to work together to finish this.

- [Chris] Let's do it.

- [Yia] Well thanks, brother.

I appreciate it, man, you having us, dude.

It was awesome here, dude.

- Appreciate it.

- [Yia] Next time you dream about visiting paradise, remember the spirit of the islands lives in the memories of its people and the fusion of its food.

And with chefs like these, the closest island community might be in your own neighborhood.

(upbeat music) (bright music)