Luau Trivia
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53 free Luau trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
52 free luau trivia questions with answers. Hosting a luau? These 50 luau trivia questions cover everything a themed party guest might reasonably be quizzed on: how the feast began when Kamehameha II broke the eating kapu in 1819, why the word lūʻau really means taro leaves, and how kālua pig, poi, lomi salmon, haupia, laulau and poke are actually made. The second half moves from the table to the party itself: hula and the queen who once banned it, the ukulele's Portuguese roots, lei-giving customs and Lei Day, the fire-knife dance's Samoan origins, and the tiki-bar world of Don the Beachcomber, Trader Vic and the Mai Tai. Elvis's Blue Hawaii, Lilo & Stitch, Spam musubi and the Blue Hawaii cocktail round it out. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few genuinely hard ones for the resident Hawaii buff. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publication, so the dates, names and recipes here are the real thing rather than luau-party folklore.
30 of 53 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which son of Kamehameha the Great broke the eating kapu in 1819 by dining with women?
Kamehameha II
Kamehameha II, born Liholiho, was urged into the public meal by his mother Keōpūolani and his co-ruler Kaʻahumanu in 1819, ending the kapu that kept men and women from eating together.
Q 02What is the name of Hawaii's 1819 taboo-breaking that let women eat forbidden foods and dine with men?
ʻAi Noa
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.
Q 03Under the kapu system, pork was forbidden to Hawaiian women as a body form of which god of farming and rain?
Lono
Lono counted the pig among his body forms, so women could not eat it; most kinds of banana were barred too, as the form of another god, until a king's public meal with women in 1819 swept the rules away.
Q 04Before 'lūʻau' became the everyday word, a large Hawaiian feast was called what?
ʻAhaʻaina
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.
Q 05Kālua pig, the centerpiece of a luau, is slow-cooked in an imu, which is what?
An underground oven
An underground oven, the imu is a pit lined with banana stumps and leaves, then covered over so that trapped steam keeps the pig moist while it cooks for hours.
Q 06When a whole pig is cooked in an imu, what is placed inside its body cavity so the meat cooks through?
Hot stones
Hot stones are placed inside the pig's cavity so it cooks from within; cooks choose rocks that hold little moisture, because steam trapped in a damp stone can make it burst in the fire.
Q 07Waikiki bartender Harry Yee began dropping which flower into tropical drinks in 1955?
An orchid
An orchid replaced the sugar-cane sticks that drinkers chewed and left in the ashtrays: Yee said he wanted the ashtrays easier to clean and 'wasn't thinking about romance'.
Q 08Poi is graded as 'one-finger', 'two-finger' or 'three-finger' to describe what?
How thick it is
How thick it is: the label counts the fingers needed to scoop up a mouthful, so runny poi is three-finger and the thickest is one-finger.
Q 09Left at room temperature for a few days, freshly made poi does what?
Turns sour
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.
Q 10In Hawaiian belief, what had to stop the moment a bowl of poi was uncovered?
All arguments
All arguments had to stop because the spirit of Hāloa, the legendary ancestor of the Hawaiian people, was believed to be present once the bowl was open at the family table.
Q 11In lomi-lomi salmon, the luau side dish of salted salmon, tomato and onion, what does 'lomi' mean?
To massage
To massage: lomi means to rub or knead, and the salted salmon is worked by hand into diced tomato and onion. Salmon is no island fish; Hawaiians met it in the 1800s through work in the Pacific Northwest trade.
Q 12Samuel Kamaka's oval-bodied ukulele of the 1920s is named after which fruit?
Pineapple
Pineapple: friends told Kamaka his new oval ukulele looked like one, an artist among them painted the fruit on its front, and he patented the 'pineapple ukulele' in 1928.
Q 13Laulau, Hawaii's steamed pork bundle, doubles the Hawaiian word 'lau' to give which literal meaning?
Leaf leaf
Q 21The Mai Tai reached Hawaii in 1953 when Bergeron wrote a cocktail menu for the Moana and which other hotel?
The Royal Hawaiian
The Royal Hawaiian and the Moana belonged to the Matson shipping line, which hired Bergeron in 1953 to write their bar menus; the fruit juices of today's island versions were added only later.
Q 22Which liqueur gives the Blue Hawaii cocktail its signature color?
Curaçao
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.
Q 23Which potent rum cocktail, invented in 1934, became the best-known drink of Hollywood tiki bar Don the Beachcomber?
Zombie
Leaf leaf: lau is Hawaiian for 'leaf', and the pork is wrapped first in edible greens, then in an outer leaf that is peeled off after steaming. In everyday use the doubled word now means any wrapped package.
Q 14The word poke, as in the raw-fish dish, literally means what in Hawaiian?
To slice
To slice, or cut crosswise into pieces, is what poke means: fishermen cut up trimmings from the catch and ate them raw with sea salt and seaweed; soy sauce and sesame oil came later with plantation workers from China and Japan.
Q 15ʻInamona, the roasted-nut-and-salt relish that seasons traditional poke, is made from which nut?
Kukui
Kukui, or candlenut, is roasted and mashed with sea salt to make ʻinamona; the same oily nuts, strung on a palm-leaf midrib and lit one after another, served Hawaiians as candles.
Q 16Which salted fish is traditionally bundled with the pork inside a laulau?
Butterfish
Butterfish, salted, is the classic companion to pork in laulau; its fat and salt season the whole bundle as it steams inside its leaf wrapping.
Q 17Spam musubi is a slice of grilled Spam on a block of rice, wrapped in a band of what?
Nori
Nori, the dried seaweed of Japanese rice balls, holds it all together; Spam itself became an island staple in World War II, when the canned meat arrived with the US military amid wartime rationing.
Q 18Because it is so popular in the islands, canned Spam is sometimes given what tongue-in-cheek nickname?
Hawaiian Steak
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.
Q 19Trader Vic said he built his first Mai Tai in 1944 around a 17-year-old rum from which island?
Jamaica
Jamaica: Bergeron said he took down a bottle of 17-year-old J. Wray & Nephew; within a few years the drink's success had drained the supply, and he blended other rums to imitate it.
Q 20The name Mai Tai is said to come from maitaʻi, a Tahitian word meaning what?
Good
Good, or 'the best': Bergeron said a friend visiting from Tahiti took one sip and cried 'Mai tai roa ae!', which he glossed as 'out of this world, the best', and the name stuck.
The Zombie hid its heavy load of rum behind fruit juice and caught on so fast that a rival was selling a copy of it at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Q 24Which explorer's 1947 raft voyage across the Pacific helped feed America's post-war tiki craze?
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl sailed the balsa raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days to show that South Americans could have made the trip; his bestselling book about it followed in 1948.
Q 25What was the Oakland bar Victor Bergeron opened in 1934 called before it became Trader Vic's?
Hinky Dink's
Hinky Dink's opened in 1934 as a small Oakland saloon; after a trip to Cuba and a look at Don the Beachcomber, Bergeron gave it a tropical makeover and the Trader Vic name.
Q 26The fire-knife dance performed at luau shows comes from which Pacific islands?
Samoa
Samoa's warriors once showed their skill by twirling and catching a toothed war club, a display called ailao; the luau version swaps it for a machete wrapped in burning cloth.
Q 27What is the fire-knife dance called in its homeland?
Siva afi
Siva afi is the name used at home. Freddie Letuli said he first lit his knife in 1946 after watching a fire-eater rehearse beside him in San Francisco: he asked for some of the man's fuel and wrapped the blade in a towel.
Q 28Hawaii celebrates Lei Day on which date every year?
May 1
May 1 was picked to ride on May Day: Honolulu residents were urged to wear lei that day in 1928, and territorial lawmakers made Lei Day an official holiday the following year.
Q 29At a hukilau, the Hawaiian beach gathering celebrated in a famous song, what does the whole crowd do?
Haul in a fishing net
Haul in a fishing net: huki means 'pull', and family and friends lined the beach to drag a long seine ashore; a church fundraiser in Lāʻie later turned the custom into a visitor attraction.
Q 30The island of Niʻihau is famous for lei made from what?
Tiny shells
Tiny shells that wash up on Niʻihau's beaches are strung into lei so prized that a single intricate strand can sell for thousands of dollars, and a 2004 Hawaii law protects the name from fakes.