55 Fun Facts About Luau

Which Hawaiian king broke the eating kapu in 1819 by dining with women, paving the way for luaus?

Kamehameha II, born Liholiho, was pressed into the public meal by his mother Keōpūolani and the queen regent Kaʻahumanu in 1819, ending the ʻai kapu that kept men and women from eating together.

What is the name of Hawaii's 1819 taboo-breaking that let women eat forbidden foods and dine with men?

ʻAi Noa means 'free eating'; after Liholiho's public meal with the chiefesses in 1819, messengers were sent across the islands to announce that the eating kapu had fallen.

The word lūʻau itself is the Hawaiian name for what?

Lūʻau means taro leaves: the feast took its name from a dish of young taro tops simmered in coconut milk that was always on the table.

Under the Hawaiian kapu system, which food was forbidden to women as the body form of the god Lono?

Pork was forbidden to women because the pig was a body form of Lono; most bananas (Kanaloa) and coconuts (Kū) were off-limits too, so the first luau was a political statement as much as a meal.

Before 'lūʻau' became the everyday word, a large Hawaiian feast was called what?

ʻAhaʻaina was the old word for a large feast, with pāʻina for smaller dinners; lūʻau as a name for the party is documented in print from 1856, in a report on a royal celebration.

Kālua pig, the centerpiece of a luau, is slow-cooked in an imu. What is an imu?

An underground oven, the imu is lined with hot stones and pounded banana stalks, then buried under soil so no steam escapes for several hours.

When a whole pig is cooked in an imu, what is placed inside its body cavity so the meat cooks through?

Hot stones are placed inside the pig's cavity so it cooks from within; cooks pick dense, dry rocks because a wet stone can crack or burst from steam trapped inside it.

Which plant's foliage, wrapped around the meat, gives kālua pig its characteristic flavor?

Ti leaves wrapped around the pork give kālua pig its mild, sweet, grassy note; the broad leaves also hold in moisture during the long bake in the imu.

Poi is graded as 'one-finger', 'two-finger' or 'three-finger'. What does that label describe?

Three-finger poi runs like applesauce, two-finger like pudding, and one-finger is the dense, freshly pounded paste called paʻiʻai.

Left at room temperature for a few days, freshly made poi does what?

Poi turns sour as Lactobacillus, yeasts and Geotrichum fungi ferment it; a few days on, it smells like plain yogurt, and some people stir in milk or sugar to soften the tang.

In Hawaiian belief, what had to stop the moment a bowl of poi was uncovered?

The spirit of Hāloa, the legendary ancestor of the Hawaiian people, was thought to be present whenever poi was served.

In lomi-lomi salmon, the luau side dish of salted salmon, tomato and onion, what does 'lomi' mean?

Lomi means to massage or knead: the salted salmon is worked by hand into the diced tomato and onion. Salmon is not native to Hawaiian waters; the salted fish arrived with 19th-century traders from the Pacific Northwest.

Haupia, the classic luau dessert, is a pudding made primarily from what?

Haupia is made from coconut milk, sweetened, set firm and cut into squares; the classic version has no gelatin, eggs or dairy, so it is naturally vegan.

What does 'laulau', the Hawaiian pork bundle named for its ti wrapping, literally mean?

Laulau doubles lau, 'leaf': the pork is bundled in taro leaves, then ti leaves, and steamed. Unlike its Samoan cousin palusami it has no coconut milk, onions or spices, and is eaten with poi or rice.

The word poke, as in the raw-fish dish, literally means what in Hawaiian?

Poke means to slice or cut crosswise into pieces: fishermen cut trimmings from the day's catch and ate them raw with sea salt and limu seaweed; the shoyu-and-sesame style came later with Japanese plantation workers.

ʻInamona, the roasted-nut-and-salt relish that seasons traditional poke, is made from which nut?

ʻInamona is roasted, mashed kukui (candlenut) with sea salt; the same oily nuts, strung on a palm-leaf midrib and lit one by one, served ancient Hawaiians as candles that burned about fifteen minutes each.

Which salted fish is traditionally bundled with the pork inside a laulau?

Salted butterfish (black cod) is the classic companion to pork in laulau; its fat and salt season the bundle as it steams for hours inside taro and ti leaves.

Spam musubi is a slice of grilled Spam on a block of rice, wrapped in a band of what?

A strip of nori, the dried seaweed used for Japanese onigiri, holds the rice and Spam together; Barbara Funamura of Kauai is widely credited with popularizing the snack in the 1980s.

Because it is so popular in the islands, canned Spam is sometimes given what tongue-in-cheek nickname?

Spam earned the nickname 'Hawaiian Steak' for its place at island tables; McDonald's Hawaii restaurants put Spam on the breakfast menu, and Burger King followed in its Hawaii stores in 2007.

Victor 'Trader Vic' Bergeron claimed to have invented the Mai Tai at his Oakland restaurant in what year?

His rival Donn Beach insisted it was a knock-off of his own Q.B. Cooler, and the two feuded over credit for decades.

The name Mai Tai is said to come from maitaʻi, a Tahitian word meaning what?

The classic recipe is rum, orange liqueur, orgeat and lime; Trader Vic's kept it unpublished for nearly 30 years, so competitors had to guess.

The Mai Tai reached Hawaii in 1953 when Bergeron wrote a cocktail menu for the Moana and which other hotel?

Matson Navigation hired Bergeron in 1953 to write cocktail menus for its Waikiki hotels, the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana; island bars soon added pineapple juice and a dark-rum float to the drink.

Which liqueur gives the Blue Hawaii cocktail its signature color?

Blue curaçao gives the drink its color; Harry Yee mixed the first Blue Hawaii at the Hawaiian Village in Waikiki in 1957 after a Bols sales rep asked him to showcase the Dutch distiller's blue liqueur.

Tiki culture is usually dated from the opening of Don's Beachcomber in Hollywood in what year?

Don's Beachcomber opened in Hollywood in 1933, just as Prohibition ended; its Zombie became the house's most notorious drink, and Monte Proser poured a copy at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Donn Beach, the 'founding father' of tiki bars, was born with what name?

Donn Beach was born Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt in Texas in 1907; he legally took the new name after his Hollywood restaurant became Don the Beachcomber.

What was the Oakland bar Victor Bergeron opened in 1934 called before it became Trader Vic's?

Bergeron's saloon opened in 1934 as Hinky Dink's; a 1937 trip to Cuba and a visit to Don the Beachcomber inspired the tropical makeover and the Trader Vic name.

The fire-knife dance performed at luau shows comes from which Pacific islands?

The fire-knife dance is Samoan, descended from ailao, a warrior's display of twirling a serrated war club; Samoan dancer Freddie Letuli added fire to the blade in 1946.

What is the fire-knife dance called in its homeland?

The Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu hosts the annual World Fire Knife Dance Competition.

Hawaii celebrates Lei Day on which date every year?

Lei Day falls on May 1 and was first celebrated in 1928; Honolulu's main festivities are held at Kapiʻolani Park, where a Lei Queen is crowned each year.

Lei Day was dreamed up in 1927 by which poet, then working at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin?

Don Blanding, a poet writing for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, proposed the holiday in 1927; colleague Grace Tower Warren coined 'May Day is Lei Day', and the first Lei Day was held in 1928.

The island of Niʻihau is famous for lei made from what?

Queen Emma was photographed wearing multiple strands of them; the shells (pūpū) are gathered by hand on the beach.

Which ukulele-playing Hawaiian king was nicknamed the Merrie Monarch and brought hula back to court?

Kalākaua, who reigned 1874–1891, earned the name Merrie Monarch for reviving hula and other suppressed arts; Hilo's week-long Merrie Monarch Festival, begun in 1964, is named for him.

In Hawaiian, the word 'ukulele' roughly translates as what?

'Jumping flea' is the usual gloss (ʻuku, flea; lele, to jump); legend ties it to Edward Purvis, a small, fidgety officer at Kalākaua's court who played the instrument expertly.

The ukulele evolved from instruments brought to Hawaii in the 1880s by immigrants from which country?

The machete, cavaquinho and rajão arrived with plantation workers from Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde.

The three Madeiran cabinet makers credited as the first ukulele builders reached Honolulu in 1879 on which ship?

The Ravenscrag landed Manuel Nunes, Augusto Dias and José do Espírito Santo in Honolulu in August 1879; two weeks later the Hawaiian Gazette reported the newcomers 'delighting the people with nightly street concerts'.

Which wood is traditionally preferred for a Hawaiian-made ukulele?

Koa, a Hawaiian acacia, is the traditional ukulele wood; Kamaka, the Honolulu maker founded in 1916, built its reputation on koa instruments and invented the oval 'pineapple' body shape.

Modern hula danced to guitar and ukulele, as opposed to ancient hula kahiko, is called what?

Hula ʻauana takes its name from auana, 'to wander' or 'drift'; it is danced to guitar, ukulele and song, in more modest costume than the chant-and-drum hula kahiko.

Hula students in training were traditionally placed under the protection of which goddess?

Laka, goddess of hula and the forest, watched over students; every hālau kept a kuahu, an altar dressed with her sacred plants such as maile and ʻieʻie.

Elvis Presley wore a red aloha shirt on the Blue Hawaii album cover. Which designer made it?

Shaheen founded his company in 1948 and became known for higher-quality prints after statehood, when the older tropical designs were considered tacky.

What did the 1966 Hawaiian workplace custom promoting aloha shirts become known as on the mainland?

Aloha Friday, begun in 1966, spread to the mainland as Casual Friday; the Hawaii Fashion Guild had earlier handed two aloha shirts to every state legislator in a 1962 campaign called Operation Liberation.

A popular folk etymology splits aloha into alo, meaning 'presence', and hā, meaning what?

Hā means 'breath', giving the folk gloss 'the presence of breath'; linguists instead trace aloha to a Proto-Polynesian word meaning 'love, pity or compassion', but the folk version is what most visitors hear.

In Disney's Lilo & Stitch (2002), on which Hawaiian island does Stitch crash-land?

Stitch crash-lands on Kauaʻi, where Lilo lives in the fictional Kokaua Town; the film's backgrounds were painted in watercolor, a technique Disney had largely abandoned after Dumbo in 1941.

In Blue Hawaii (1961), Elvis's Chad Gates dodges the family fruit business to take what job?

Chad takes a job as a tour guide with his girlfriend Maile's travel agency rather than join the family pineapple company; Angela Lansbury played his mother at 35, only nine years older than Presley.

Hawaiian pizza, the ham-and-pineapple staple of many luau party menus, was invented in which country?

Sam Panopoulos created it in Canada in 1962 at his Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, naming it after the Hawaiian brand printed on his cans of pineapple.

Which Oahu-born musician developed the lap-style 'Hawaiian' steel guitar around 1890?

Joseph Kekuku, from Lāʻie on Oahu, began sliding a steel bar along the strings as a schoolboy around 1889; he later toured Europe with the show The Bird of Paradise, and the sound fed into American country music.

Which member of the Hawaiian royal family wrote the farewell song "Aloha ʻOe"?

Liliʻuokalani composed Aloha ʻOe in 1878 after a horseback visit to the Boyd ranch at Maunawili, working out the tune on the ride back to Honolulu.

A traditional luau was eaten sitting on the floor over mats woven from what?

Hala (pandanus) leaves are woven into lauhala mats; diners sat on them along a centerpiece of ti leaves and ferns running down the middle of the floor.

Fermented and distilled ti roots yield which traditional Hawaiian liquor?

ʻŌkolehao was first distilled from fermented ti root in the 1790s; the same sweet, molasses-like baked root was eaten as candy, and ti was planted around houses to keep evil spirits away.

A woman wearing a plumeria over her right ear is, by modern Polynesian custom, signaling what?

A flower over the right ear says she is available; over the left, taken. Plumeria, called melia in Hawaiian, is not native: the physician William Hillebrand introduced it in 1860, and it became the go-to lei flower.

Besides taro leaves and coconut milk, lūʻau stew is usually made with chicken or what?

Octopus (heʻe, usually called squid in Hawaii) is the classic partner: squid lūʻau simmers the taro leaves in coconut milk for hours until the leaves' throat-itching calcium oxalate is cooked out.

Which Hawaiian singer did Donn Beach book to entertain at his large public luaus?

Alfred Apaka headlined at Don the Beachcomber in Waikiki in the early 1950s, where Bob Hope heard him in 1952; Beach claimed credit for turning private, home-based luaus into big public affairs.

What is the name for freshly pounded, undiluted and unfermented taro, the thickest form of poi?

Paʻiʻai is the pounded taro before any water is added; wrapped in ti leaves it keeps for days, and thinning it with water turns it into poi.

Haupia, the coconut pudding of the luau, was originally thickened with what starch before cornstarch became common?

Polynesian arrowroot, or pia, was the original thickener: starch washed from the grated tuber and dried; cornstarch replaced it in the 20th century as pia fell out of cultivation.

In Lei Day pageantry, which island is symbolised by the yellow ʻilima lei?

Oʻahu's is the yellow ʻilima; each island gets a colour and flower, Maui's the pink lokelani rose and Kauaʻi's the purple mokihana.

By Hawaiian custom, what should you never do with a lei you have been given?

Toss it in the trash and you are, by custom, throwing away the giver's love, which a lei represents.