Recently, I was looking through old files, trolling for recipe inspiration for a Twitter campaign. It was a revelation.

When you’ve worked in the food business as long as I have, you’re aware of the constant evolution, of course. We try to anticipate where food is heading and to catch the wave for our clients.

But it’s only by looking back over decades that the true magnitude of change becomes evident. Old recipes often called for bouillon cubes instead of chicken or beef broth. A daring cook added a bit of curry powder, garlic powder or a touch of paprika. “Parsley” meant curly parsley, not the flat-leaf Italian kind. Nuts were pretty exclusively for desserts and baked goods. [more…]

What’s hot in San Francisco? I asked popular chefs who were serving up extraordinarily delectable small plates at the Hawai’i Chamber of Commerce of Northern California’s Five Star Aloha gala Thursday evening. The event honored chef Roy Yamaguchi, one of the founders of the Hawai’i Regional Cuisine movement.

Ty Mahler, executive chef of Roy’s San Francisco said that right now, he’s crazy about abalone from New Zealand, tasty morsels that are ready to cook, no tenderizing needed. As a seasoning, he’s enamored of purple Iranian peppercorns that have a chocolately, leathery taste. Ty’s abalone was incredibly tender and delicious. And he spooned me a sample of the pepper so I could taste in isolation — it was very fragrant, intriguing and complex. [more…]

Tucked beneath the Koolau Mountains on the leeward side of Oahu is Nalo Farms, salad bowl to Hawaii’s top chefs. There I met Dean Okimoto, owner and president. As we walked past neatly tended rows of produce, he explained that the greens he grows are different from their Mainland cousins. “Our environment is hotter — 74 to 90 degrees — and we have volcanic soil.” The conditions produce a different leaf structure and flavor.

Tiny leaves of arugula are more tender in the Islands and the additional sunlight makes the flavor more pungent. Because the leaves are thinner and lighter in weight than the Mainland variety, you get more volume. “One ounce of salad looks more like two ounces,” Okimoto said. [more…]

I just returned from Honolulu Tuesday night, after a week away for the Les Dames d’Escoffier annual conference and a few days of vacation. Les Dames is an organization of women leaders in the food, beverage and hospitality industries and membership is by invitation. The Hawaii chapter staged a brilliant conference that included a luau at the Bishop Museum and a trip to Kualoa Ranch, where we toured the gardens, learned all about poi, and boated in the ancient native Hawaiian fish ponds. This is land familiar to fans of Jurassic Park, LOST and other productions.

During any downtime, I was busy getting my fix of local foods — saimin, shave ice, plate lunch, malasadas, laulau and a Hawaiian breakfast — Portuguese sausage, eggs and rice drizzled with soy sauce. I also needed to fit in breakfast on the veranda of the historic Moana Hotel, tropical drinks with paper umbrellas, dinner at Alan Wong and 3660 on the Rise, and time for family and Honolulu friends.

But this isn’t a story about my trip. It’s really about a thoughtful presentation by the conference’s keynote speaker, Rachel Laudan, a culinary historian and author of The Food of Paradise, a book that had been recommended to me 12 years ago by Zanne Stewart, who was then executive food editor of Gourmet magazine. Laudan’s speech aligned perfectly with my craving for the local foods of my Hawaiian culinary heritage. [more…]

I am a constant reader, with ecclectic tastes. On my nightstand you might find a British murder mystery, military history (Civil War or World War II), political biography, contemporary fiction, or a literary classic (anything I never got around to reading in English Lit or any leftover paperbacks from my sons’ English classes).

Right now, I’m reading The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, A Memoir, by Bill Bryson, a hilarious look back at growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa.

Bryson takes us back to American food tastes then:

“Like most people in Iowa in the 1950s, we were more cautious eaters in our house. On the rare occasions when we were presented with food with which we were not comfortable or familiar — on planes or trains or when invited to a meal cooked by someone who was not herself from Iowa — we tended to tilt it up carefully with a knife and examine it from every angle as if determining whether it might need to be defused. Once on a trip to San Francisco, my father was taken by friends to a Chinese restaurant and he described it afterward in the somber tones of someone recounting a near-death experience.” [more…]

I was food editor of the Honolulu Advertiser as the Vietnam war drew to a close. Having been exposed to the proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants in Paris, I fully expected an immediate onslaught of Vietnamese restaurants to blossom across the Hawaiian Islands. So I rushed out to do my Vietnamese food story, interviewing native food experts to give my readers a taste of the cuisine to come. I waited…and waited. I was young — in my 20s — and didn’t have enough seasoning or sense of history to realize that such anticipated bounty doesn’t happen overnight.

However, I have been intrigued by why Filipino food hasn'’t caught on. Preparing to speak at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone’s first Worlds of Flavor conference on Asia in 1997, I researched demographic trends to gauge which Asian immigrant groups would likely have the biggest impact on American food marketing in the years ahead. I was surprised that in the period 1981 to 1995, the largest group of Asians immigrating to the U.S. hailed from the Philippines.

While we were seeing a proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants (second largest number of immigrants in this period) and Indian restaurants (fourth largest), where were the Filipino eateries? [more…]

My son David graduated with an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College this past weekend. Our family gathered in Wellesley outside of Boston, for the commencement. A celebratory dinner plays an important role in any momentous event, so food was front and center of our weekend planning.

Surprisingly, food also played the starring role at the graduation ceremony since the commencement speaker was Gary Hirschberg, chairman, president and CE-Yo (that’s for yo-gurt), Stonyfield Farm. In addition to Hirschberg, an honorary degree was bestowed on Irving W. Rabb, former vice chairman, Stop & Shop Supermarket Companies. I was pleased to see that Babson, ranked #1 for entrepreneurial excellence, recognizes successful food entrepreneurs with the same respect it gives to achievements in science, technology and any other fields of business. [more…]

My kitchen and I were featured in a half page color photo on the cover of the House & Garden section of the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Chronicle design editor Zahid Sardar wrote, “It is easily one of the best San Francisco kitchens we’ve spotted because the story of food — from garden to stovetop — is clearly told.”

Zahid also found an interesting story angle. The remodel was the first for a young architect to springboard his career, while the remodel, the first for me, catapulted my new business, Sandy Hu Food Marketing. [more…]

You can’t be a “local” in Hawaii without loving plate lunches. A Hawaiian plate lunch recognizes just two food groups: meat and starch. Whatever the main dish — teriyaki beef, fried mahimahi or pork katsu (breaded pork cutlet) — it comes with macaroni salad AND two scoops of rice, with a nominal nod to vegetables by a bit of shredded cabbage, a lettuce leaf, or a few pieces of kim chee (Korean pickled vegetables).

This uniquely Hawaiian food expression is now gaining ground in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado — nine states in all. The mastermind is Honolulu’s Eddie Flores, who came to the United States as a 16-year-old Filipino immigrant and built a multi-million foodservice empire on a Hawaiian plate lunch franchise. [more…]

The San Francisco Bay Area is fortunate to have a diverse group of very talented chefs specializing in Asian and Pan-Asian cuisines. But getting recognition for their talents isn’t always so easy. Like food products and everything else, there’s active competition for media attention and it’s tough to stand out from the crowd.

It’s all the harder for those who grew up in an Asian culture where calling attention to yourself and promoting your achievements are considered inappropriate. So, as an Asian person in public relations, I recommended and volunteered to orchestrate a media session for the Asian Chefs Association. [more…]