Holuakoa Gardens and Café Slow Food Dinner

On March 21st the Holuakoa Gardens and Café in Holualoa hosted a Spring Equinox Slow Food 5-course dinner that used only locally sourced food. This meant foregoing bread, rice, pasta, and olive oil, among other dinner favorites. About 95% of the food was organically grown.

Here is the menu:

• Salad: Roasted Beet, Baby Fennel and Tangelo
• Soup: Hawai'i Pumpkin Soup; Holualoa fresh goat milk Chevre
• Entrée: Holuakoa Spicy Lamb Sausage with Figs; Roasted Eggplant; Cherry Tomato Compote; Preserved Myer Lemon
• Entrée: Grilled Mahi Mahi; Heirloom Tomatoes; Baby Leeks; Rainbow Swiss Chard; Macnut Pesto
• Dessert: Warm Triple Banana Compote with Honey Macnuts; Homemade Vanilla Ice-Cream and Hayden Mango Syrup 

For 5 years, owner-managers Barbara Gerrits and Chef Wilson, who created the menu, have together dedicated the Holuakoa Gardens & Café to the three principles of the Slow Food movement: 1. Quality and taste, 2. Environmental sustainability, and 3. Social justice. Among the full house of diners were many of the local growers who supply the restaurant with their daily fresh food. In addition to simply enjoying the unique menu and sampling their fellow growers products, they had a chance to meet, network and learn from each other. For Hawai'i Island this Grow Local/Eat Local dinner was an educational and culinary tour-de-force, a sumptuous model not only for restaurants but also for ordinary households striving to increase the proportion of locally grown foods into their daily eating habits. Chef Wilson is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York. Barbara Gerrits is owner-manager.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.