So you and your partner have decided to get married on Maui, and you are halfway through the details. You’ve found the perfect venue, a friendly local wedding planner, great accommodations, and of course, Barefoot Minded, the best Maui wedding band!
And now you’re wondering about the food. To carry out a true Hawaiian celebration, it is important to incorporate Hawaiian-themed elements in every aspects of the reception, including food.
Hawaii’s amazing cuisine incorporates five distinct styles of food. The first habitants of Ancient Hawaii were Polynesian voyagers who paddled across the Pacific Ocean from Polynesia. They brought plants to the islands: taro, coconuts, sugarcane, sweet potatoes and yams.
After first contact in 1778, European and American foods arrived along with missionaries and whalers, who introduced salted fish and also built large sugarcane plantations.
Later on Christian missionaries brought New England cuisine while whalers introduced salted fish to the islands’ residents.
As pineapple and sugarcane plantations grew, so did the demand for workers, attracting many immigrant groups to the islands between 1850 and 1930. Immigrant laborers from China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Portugal arrived in Hawaii, introducing their new foods and influencing the region’s cuisine and cultural life.
The blend of these cuisines formed a “local food” style that is unique to Hawaii, resulting in plantation foods like the plate lunch, Spam musubi, loco moco, Kalua pig, ahi poke, mac and cheese, coconut shrimp, shoyu chicken, banana bread, haupia pie and many more. If you decide to serve local foods at your Maui wedding, we guarantee that all your wedding guests will be pleased!
And when everybody is full enough, it’s time to burn calories by dancing to Barefoot Minded’s award-winning wedding music!
