Get aloha (and dinner) at nighttime market in Hawaii

November 10, 2017 at 4:21PM
Bananarama Bakery at the Night Market at Kaimu, Hawaii.
Bananarama Bakery at the Night Market at Kaimu, Hawaii. (Marci Schmitt — Seattle Times/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

In 1990, the Big Island village of Kaimu, Hawaii, got famous when the Kilauea volcano buried most of it beneath more than 50 feet of lava.

What remains of the community where the road ends has re-energized with a weekly night market that draws lines of cars to fill a parking lot ($3 a car) edging a sprawling black field of lava rock that is younger than Taylor Swift.

Officially known as the Wednesday Night Ho'olaule'a Market, it's a big tent with a wide ethnic mix of Hawaiian-style food vendors, a few craft booths, and a stage where you can hear live music while you sip a cold beer.

On a recent Wednesday, I wandered beneath the tent, sniffing the aroma of good foods, and faced a tough choice for dinner. Among options:

• Mom & Pop's Kau Kau Corner, with rib-eye steak and garlic shrimp, $19.

• Big Island Flatbread, with $8 gyros.

• Stickman Hawaii, with vegan black bean soup, $4.

• A no-name lumpia stand, offering the Filipino crispy roll filled with beef, pork, banana or sweet potato, three for $5.

• Healani's Kitchen, offering Broke da Mouth Hawaiian Pastele Stew, made with pork and banana dumplings, $10.

• Bananarama Bakery, with Lilikoi (Hawaiian passion fruit) Cream Pie, $5.

I popped for Aloha Lehua Cafe's Hawaiian Nacho Plate, $10, with kalua pig, tomato-laden lomi-lomi salmon, and slatherings of a secret sauce piled high on homemade tortilla chips. Rich and salty, probably unhealthful — and really delicious when washed down with a Big Wave golden ale from Kona Brewing.

It was the perfect thing to gobble while listening to local musicians calling themselves the Kingdom of Hawaii — three guitarists, a ukulele player and a drummer, on a stage draped with green, red and yellow flags of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.

If you go

Ho'olaule'a Market: 5-9 p.m. every Wed. at the south end of Hwy. 137 in Kaimu, on the big island of Hawaii.

about the writer

about the writer

Brian J. Cantwell, Seattle Times

More from No Section

See More
FILE -- A rent deposit slot at an apartment complex in Tucker, Ga., on July 21, 2020. As an eviction crisis has seemed increasingly likely this summer, everyone in the housing market has made the same plea to Washington: Send money — lots of it — that would keep renters in their homes and landlords afloat. (Melissa Golden/The New York Times) ORG XMIT: XNYT58
Melissa Golden/The New York Times

It’s too soon to tell how much the immigration crackdown is to blame.