Chef Alan Wong came to our farm and cooked an unbelievable meal for his Big Island farmer friends this past Friday.
He does this every year, bringing along staff from his Alan Wong’s Restaurant as well as the Pineapple Room, and it serves several purposes. Touring farms and breaking bread with the farmers gives his staff a totally new confidence level when they describe the ingredients that make up dishes on the menu. Instead of just a word on the menu, the ingredient becomes a product of a friend.
And as for the farmers, Chef Alan and his staff have become our friends. Can you imagine it? Chef Alan and his staff cooking for the farmers?
Farmers look at the people they supply as the customer. Customers are never wrong! And so farmers are always attempting to please the customer.
Chef Alan reverses this role. And the farmers are very, very grateful. Now, we all want to try even harder to make sure everything we supply to Chef Alan is absolutely top notch. I know I speak for all the farmers when I say this.
For all us farmers, Alan Wong’s Restaurant is no longer an abstraction. It is made up of people—real people.
We went together down to Roy Tanaka’s tilapia farm, and because it was drizzly and muddy Chef Alan had to choose between wearing slippers or waterlogged shoes. Who knew that Chef Alan wears slippers! Chef Alan and his staff are real people; they did not let a little Hilo rain stop them from checking out the fish. It impressed me and I know it impressed Roy.
Richard (left) and Roy Tanaka
Roy’s farm is elegant in its simplicity. Water from a waterfall was piped into a series of tanks, each one dropping to the next, aerating and cleaning as it passes by. His plumbing joints were not glued so draining his tanks was just a matter of disconnecting some joints or repositioning angles. Harvesting the fish was simple when the water level was lowered to a manageable level. Alan’s crew enjoyed talking to Roy. They got it that there was definitely more there than meets the eye.
Alan Wong with tilapia
Leigh Ito of Alan Wong’s staff
Chef Alan and Leigh Ito had too much fun catching dinner. Chef Alan and his staff cooked the tilapia for us that night.
Thanks to Roy, we are setting up a similar system on fish farming at our farm. Since we have a difficult time raising our workers’ pay, we are attempting to grow food for our workers. Every Thursday we distribute fruit and vegetables to them.
We have running water going into our reservoir, so we diverted some and utilized the same principle that Roy uses.
Tilapia at Hamakua Springs Country Farms
Tilapia fish are vegetarians and we are attempting to feed them some of the waste stream from our operations. And their waste goes into the reservoir that we use to irrigate our crops. We may then be able to decrease a certain amount of fertilizer input.
Our objective is to see how much of a zero waste farm we can achieve. Thanks to Roy Tanaka for helping us. He even gave all the tilapia fish for stocking our tanks.
Stay tuned for Part 2: “…And Then They Cooked For Us.”