Up and down the rows, farm workers spread out with their plastic buckets, white canvas bags, spools of twine and jugs of drinking water in search of trees with large caches of nuts scattered beneath them: easy picking. Then they crouch down and go to work, their quick hands darting across the ground, scooping up nuts and giving them a half-second’s consideration before either dropping them into the bucket or tossing them aside into the grass. 

Soon the swath of fenced-in orchard fills with the sound of a macadamia nut farm: the satisfying clatter of hard green orbs the size of golfballs hitting the bottoms of plastic buckets one at a time. This plays over the ambient sounds of the jungle; sweet songs of resident birds, twigs snapping underfoot of creeping mongoose and pigs, and the sound of a cool onshore breeze rustling the palm fronds, blowing in from the ocean just a few miles downhill.

The pickers are there because the trees drop their crop when fully ripe. This makes the macadamia industry on Big Island (and much farther afield places, too) reliant on a great deal of sometimes-tedious manual labor to bring its nuts to market. At the same time, it means that Hawaii’s macadamias are something truly handmade, where every buttery, savory morsel enjoyed by visitors at the free sample tables found inside its nut factories started with a similar searching finger, a half-second examination and a clatter into a plastic bucket. 

Technological improvements like using mechanical harvesters and deploying systems of nets beneath the trees have not been shown to be cost-effective, which is why the process is still painstaking and inarguably low-tech compared to the farming of other types of tree nuts. Speaking from hands-on experience, though, the work isn’t very strenuous; it takes quite a bit of flexibility to spend hours in a constant loop of crouching and standing, and requires some dexterity to sort through the scattering of green husks on the ground to find bucket-worthy specimens. 

There are hundreds of individual, mainly family-run macadamia farms on Big Island, and they are worked by armies of pickers ranging from business partners to longtime employees to casual day laborers to work-traders. For most of them, they’re paid based on the total weight of what they’ve picked at the end of the day, not by the hour, so quick hands and a rigorous pace is the winning formula. This means that the pickers take very few breaks, set on meeting their target harvest weight as quickly as they can and then spend the rest of the day relaxing.

End Of The Morning Shift, Arrival Of The Sheep Flock

The ambient air at the farm begins to feel like a sauna around 10:00am on hot summer days with little cloud cover. Many pickers will slow down slightly as the morning wears on, content on doing the most aggressive picking in the coolest part of the morning and then dialing it back as it gets closer and closer to mid-day. They’ve filled and emptied their plastic buckets dozens of times by now, pouring them into propped-open white canvas bags with a rattle, creating yet another signature mac nut farm sound. At this point there are roughly ten bags bursting with nuts and tied off at their openings reading to be picked up en-masse, many grouped together in stands leaning against tree trunks. The farm uses color-coded string to seal the bags, correlating to each individual picker so it’s always clear whose bag is whose when it comes time for the scales.

An orchard worker on a four-wheeler rumbles down the muddy lanes in between the rows, stopping to heave the 50-pound canvas bags onto the front and rear racks of his machine before motoring off to the other edge of the plot to pick up more. One batch of pickers start to head up to the processing barn around noon, opting to skip the hottest part of the day and get paid out now for their five-hour morning shift. A die-hard group, though, powers through the heat and can still be found crouched down along the rows of trees well after 2:00pm, wearing broad-brimmed straw hats and t-shirts tied around their heads like turbans.

Around this time is when the resident flock of sheep make their appearance. From some hidden side-paddock, they are released into the orchard and make their way across the property lazily browsing the weeds growing up around the base of the macadamia trees. They seem wholly uninterested in the nuts themselves, and don’t seem to get spooked when an enterprising picker squats down right beside the flock. The farm does not spray herbicides or pesticides in the orchard, instead relying on the instinctual weed control provided by the sheep, as well as the natural fertilizers they leave behind for the trees in the form of tiny brown pellets. 

In the lexicon of farming nerds, this is what is known as “integrated agriculture” – a system where there are very few external inputs, and where the waste products of the orchard (weeds and grasses) are utilized by the sheep whose waste products (manure) is in-turn utilized by the trees. In short, it is the “circle of life” playing out on a macadamia nut orchard inhabiting a swatch of rain-swept rocky lavafield outside the former town of Kapoho along Big Island’s Kalapana Coast. It’s just one of the approximately 700 different macadamia farms across the state that together produce thousands of tons of wet in-shell nuts every year – worth around $50 million annually during a bumper crop. It’s an industry that employs more than 3,000 people throughout Hawaii, making it one of the most lucrative and sought-after agricultural goods in league with coffee, pineapples, sugar and fresh flowers.

Hit The Scales, “Pau Hana”, And Start Up The Husker

When the afternoon sun finally gets too intense to bear, the full-time pickers will holler for the four-wheeler to finally come pick up their bags. They collect their gear and head up to the barn, which houses the scales, nut drying racks, sorting stations and the farm’s massive husking machine. The bags of just-picked raw nuts are poured into this bulky, unwieldy contraption the size of a bathtub suspended in the air with chains, which shreds away the green, spongey outer husk and leaves the exceptionally hard, dark brown waxy shells with nut inside.

The bags are weighed, the values are scribbled into a beat-up looking notebook, and the pickers are paid. They bid farewell to the processing crew about to fire up the husker, and make their way back down the driveway to the orchard’s entrance with smiles all around and a newfound spring in their step. For them it’s time for “pau hana” – a Hawaiian term referring to the time after a day’s work is done meant for relaxing, socializing and spending time with family.

A conveyor belt-like hopper brings the bulk nuts up to the husker, which rattles and shakes and makes a terrible racket of screeches, howls and whines as it spits out the perfectly clean marble-sized brown orbs. The machine is so ear-piercing that the processing staff must wear hearing protection, and their communication is largely hand gestures and nods while it’s in operation. The husked nuts tumble down a ramp into the sorting area, where assembly line workers conduct quality control and pick out old, broken and spoiled specimens, tossing the rejects down wooden chutes into waiting wheelbarrows. Those that passed the quality check make their way down into a long tube-shaped hopper made from lumber and chicken wire to dry. In the middle of a good harvest season, this sprawling, elevated cage will be overflowing with thousands of pounds of nuts, ready to be sold in-shell.

The ground around the processing facility is absolutely littered. Cast-off nuts can be found in every nook and cranny along the assembly line, and they rain down from the catwalk with a quiet pattering when a worker makes their way from the inspection station to the drying hopper. Finally the last bag of raw macadamias is poured into the elevator, run through the husker and trickles past the sorting station towards the veritable mountain of drying nuts. The workers shut down the machine, stow their earphones and get ready for their own “pau hana”, and at that point the only ones still working on the farm are the sheep.

The first settlers also brought sugarcane, bananas, kukui nuts (also known as candlenuts), ginger and gourds. Some of these crops – the most prominent example being sugar – would become huge commercial industries much later in the islands’ history, usually as a result of European opportunism. Beginning in the mid-19^th Century, many foreign peoples and plants began to arrive in the islands, and what had for countless generations been a largely sustainable, insular and staple-based patchwork of small feudal farms was thrust into a new era of large-scale commercial agriculture, with sprawling, seemingly unending plantations of cash crops like sugarcane and pineapple.

Agronomists were tripping over themselves trying to figure out which of the world’s crops could be commercially viable in this highly specific Hawaii climate, which led to a great deal of experimentation, speculation and failed test plots. Into this rapidly changing landscape came William Purvis, a young manager at the Pacific Sugar Mill along Big Island’s Hamakua Coast close to the picturesque Waipio Valley. Purvis was an investor and plant collector, and had just returned back above the equator from Australia where he first encountered macadamia nut trees. 

The macadamia is native to Australia, specifically the regions of New South Wales and Queensland, and has been an important source of “bush food” for Aboriginal peoples since prehistory, who called the nuts “bauple”, “gyndl”, “jindilli”, and “boombera”. The genus name “Macadamia” was coined by German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller after his friend John Macadam – a Scottish philosopher and doctor. Mueller in his own right was a much-lauded scientist and the secretary of the Philosophical Institute of Australia.

Upon first encountering the trees in the outback, the young globe-trotting Englishman Purvis first regarded macadamias as little more than a curiosity, eventually finding a use for the trees as wind breaks along the borders of sugarcane fields at the plantation he managed. The trees are exceptionally long-lived – some living more than 100 years – and some local legends tell that those first few trees Purvis planted close to the sugar mill grounds are still alive today. Over the years, the nuts became very popular with Big Island locals, and word spread across the archipelago of these savory, buttery delights growing on ancient, prolific trees that are very well-suited to Hawaii’s climate.

There was immense business potential in this new, long-overlooked crop, and the first commercial processing facility for macadamia nuts opened its doors in 1934 in Honolulu. This was the genesis of the Hawaiian Macadamia Nut Co., the brainchild of Ernest Van Tassel, who several years prior had established Hawaii’s first macadamia seed farm – a 75-acre hilltop plantation on Oahu known as “Nutridge”. For years, tins of Van’s Macadamia Nuts were a common sight in Honolulu as well as in the outer islands.

Today, more than 20,000 acres of land in Hawaii are dedicated to this thriving industry, with an annual production value of roughly $175 million. Most of the large-scale farms are found on Big Island, which makes macadamia nuts an essential cash crop propping up much of the island’s economy. From growing macadamia saplings to hand harvesting the nuts to trucking the bags to market to processing them into finished products, this industry employs more than 3,000 people statewide and offers a crucial source of reliable income on an island with few economic opportunities for many locals. Hawaii’s mac nut crop is grown on more than 700 different farms, and many of these are smallholder, family-run orchards that have been worked for many generations.

A Resilient Industry, Challenged By Pests And Climate Change

Although macadamia nut trees were brought to Hawaii simply as an accessory to sugarcane production, the years since have seen them largely switch places. Since the days of William Purvis, Hawaii has seen a steady, healthy growth of its nut industry and a near-complete decline of its sugar plantations. The trees that were once planted along property borders to slow gusts of wind have become cash crops in their own right, inhabiting tens of thousands of acres of farmland and making their way into everything from cookies to shortbreads, kettle corn to skin care products, cooking oils to nut milks.

But the macadamia’s meteoric rise in Hawaii hasn’t been without challenges, too. The invasive insect plaguing Australia’s nut orchards known as the Macadamia Felted Coccid has made it to the islands, and today can be found in all of Big Island’s macadamia growing regions. Controlling the pests mainly consists of diligently pruning the trees to give local predators easy access. In some cases, pesticides are used to stunt their proliferation. The bugs don’t impact the quality of the nuts themselves, but rather leach nutrients from the trees and slowly diminish their output over time.

Another check to Big Island’s booming mac nut industry is climate change, which has brought much wetter weather to its windward side. In 2018, the weather station at Hilo International Airport recorded its third highest rainfall year on record. This can spell disaster for macadamia farmers, where long stretches of cloudy damp can cause the flowers on the trees to rot, preventing the nuts from setting and leaving the tree bare come harvest time. This would suggest that plantations in dryer Big Island micro-climates, like those in the districts of Ka’u and South Kona, will fare better than their East Hawaii counterparts in the face of changing rain patterns.

An Impressive Nutritional Profile, and A Hard Nut To Crack

A single macadamia tree can produce upwards of 60 pounds of nuts per year. Once they’ve been husked, shelled and roasted, the little yellow orbs provide an excellent source of monounsaturated fatty acids (popularly known as “good fat”), as well as flavonoids and tocopherols (vitamin E) – both potent antioxidants which some research suggests helps prevent cancer and heart disease. The nuts are naturally cholesterol-free and are very low in sodium when left “unsalted”.

Just a single ounce of macadamias – roughly a dozen individual nuts – contain two grams of protein, making it a great source of nutrition for health food-types and vegans. They also contain vitamin A and several essential B vitamins like thiamine, riboflavin and niacin, as well as iron. Macadamia nut oil has been shown to contain Omega-3s, which are known to reduce the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. A University of Hawaii School of Medicine study in 2000 even reported that eating macadamias can have a positive effect on blood cholesterol levels. All of this means that the nuts have a nutritional profile that exceeds olive oil and most other tree nuts. 

Macadamia tree saplings will grow for several years before starting to produce. At ten to twelve years old, the trees will hit full production and keep fruiting consistently for many years. They drop their nuts when fully ripe, so virtually all harvesting involves picking them up from the ground by hand. And although getting to this point may sound long and tedious, it isn’t even the hardest part of the process; macadamia shells are incredibly tough, as anyone who has tried to open one by hand can attest to. Conventional nutcrackers, pliers, vice grips, hammers, rocks – all barely put a dent in their waxy, dark-brown shells. It takes around 300 pounds per square inch of pressure to crack them, giving the macadamia the title of “hardest of all nuts”, and similar physical properties to aluminum.

Where To Learn More About Mac Nuts On The Big Island

For visitors to Hawaii Island who want to catch a few glimpses of its storied macadamia nut industry in action, there are two large processing centers outside the main commercial centers of Hilo and Kona. They are open to the public, give out free samples, offer self-guided tours of their factories, and feature well-stocked gift shops and showrooms with a wide variety of sweet and savory products on display.

Hilo-Side: Outside the town of Keaau, along the main highway leading into the city of Hilo, is the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Visitor Center. The center is open daily from 9:00am to 4:00pm, and their website can be found at www.maunaloa.com/pages/visitorcenter

Kona-Side: Outside the town of Waimea, along the Kohala Coast in the hills above the small port town of Kawaihae (KAH-VIE-HIGH) is the Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company’s factory and showroom, affectionately known as the “Nut House”. It is open daily from 9:00am to 4:30pm, with a website found at www.hawnnut.com/

Where Hilo’s market succeeds in its variety and quality of fresh fruit, produce, coconuts, and other assorted farm goodies like honey, macadamia nuts and coffee, it falls short of an equally diverse clothing, handicraft and souvenir section catering to visitors hunting for something to take home to remember their trip by, or to give as gifts to friends and family members. Farther down Kamehameha Avenue, there are plenty of high-end souvenir and fine-art stores selling everything from volcano-themed fused glass pieces to handmade pottery to watercolor landscape paintings, but they are often being sold here for “gallery” prices.

So, budget-minded Big Island visitors looking for a place to pick up souvenirs with more of a craft fair vibe, and without spending a stack of money, should check out Kona Farmers’ Market. It’s located off of Ali’i Drive near the looping seaside commercial road’s northern end, where it intersects Hualalai Road across the street from Hale Halawai Park, and is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 7:00am to 4:00pm. 

The market inhabits an oceanfront parking lot full of white pop-up tents, found beyond a long shoulder-high wall of mortared black lava rocks running parallel to Ali’i Drive for a few blocks. Laid out on plastic folding tables beneath the tent eaves is a little bit of everything: hand-carved tiki statuettes, feathered wooden masks, shell necklaces, aloha shirts, fine jewelery, as well as mats, baskets, boxes, belts and hats made from wicker and woven palm leaves. Some locally made goods are strikingly inexpensive: five dollars for a hand-woven sliding gift box made of palm straw; just a few dollars more for a zippered sunglass case of the same material.

Hanging from the corner of one stall’s tent is a collection of “Ikaika Warrior Helmets” – feathered and beaded carved coconut shells in colors of turquoise, auburn and gold. The shells are lacquered and glisten in the sunlight, bringing out their deep brown colors and fine, smooth grains. Another shop is selling carved wooden turtles and dolphins piled in small plastic cups, interspersed with necklaces and bracelets featuring similar wooden carvings of the island’s iconic sea life. Then there are the flower leis – both plastic and real – hanging on display racks in bunches, featuring the many different colors of the legendary hibiscus flower, along with strings of smaller, sweet smelling flowers like plumeria and “puakenikeni”.

The lei stands give way to the flower sellers, whose elegant arrangements feature blood-red heart-shaped anthuriums, aromatic torches of white ginger flowers, heliconias, orchids and much more. Some stands have combined together displays of flowers, fruits and veggies, with the produce laid out on tables and the flowers below in five-gallon plastic buckets of loose stems grouped together on the pavement.

And to Kona Farmers’ Market’s credit, its sprawling oceanfront parking lot market space of several dozen white pop-up tents does feature a handful of stalls selling fresh tropical fruit. Their folding tables are strewn with similar neatly stacked pyramids of perfectly ripe produce as those found in Hilo, just in much less abundance and sometimes crowded out by the ranks of trinket sellers. At the sometimes hard-to-find produce table, there are usually several different West Hawaii specialties being offered up like Kona-grown mangoes, jumbo avocados the size of softballs, and multiple varieties of papayas, as well as Kona and Ka’u coffee, macadamia nuts and small-batch honey in its many different enticing golden hues.

But there are also noticeable absences when compared to its more farmer-oriented East-side counterpart: Kona’s market doesn’t have a regular full-service coconut seller, meaning visitors won’t get the opportunity to snap a video of a burly local swinging a machete cutting away the nut’s husk and dropping in a straw before serving it to a delighted customer. There also aren’t as many of the staple crops which make up traditional Hawaiian cuisine available, either, such as the bulky, starchy roots of the taro plant known as “corms,” the soft golden-brown globes of sweet-smelling breadfruit, or the leaves and roots of the much-beloved purple sweet potato. Nevertheless, occasionally these types of crops do make their way onto the assorted folding tables found along Ali’i Drive, and some foodie visitors do get lucky in being able to plan a night of traditional Hawaiian cooking around what’s available at the market just down the street. But in general, Hilo’s cornucopia of staple crops is much more varied, reliable and easy-to-find.

A One-Of-A-Kind Gift, and A Show Of Support For Big Island-Based Craftspeople

Many of the locals on Big Island, whether native Hawaiian or not, are talented craftsmen and craftswomen who make supplemental income selling their wares at informal community markets. Wages on the island are famously low, so residents tend to get creative and sometimes have several different side-hustles going at once, often including staffing tables at farmer’s markets to hawk their wares. Everyone seems to be involved part-time with growing or making something in some small-scale enterprise, whether it’s keeping bees or tending fishponds, growing fruit or weaving palm fronds, collecting coconuts or searching for shells. In the case of the foraged coconuts, drawing on some ingenuity and skill they turn these cast-off items into handsomely polished feathered helmets, bought up by the suitcase load along Ali’i Drive as fond memories of Hawaii for fifteen dollars a piece.

In their spare time, other locals specialize in wood carving, basket weaving, lei making and shell and flower arrangements, taking advantage of the abundance of colorful wild and farm-grown flora and natural materials like hardwood, lava rock and collected shells. All of this makes the handmade items for sale at Kona Farmers’ Market more than just a material gift – it’s a piece of Big Island handiwork that often times shares a long history of traditional Hawaiian craftsmanship, and that goes to support the livelihoods of real local artisans.

So, visitors can feel good about spending their money here, and will often be surprised at how far it goes. It would be easy to find thoughtful gifts for parents, siblings, spouses, children – even assorted uncles and aunts – at Kona Farmers’ Market and make it out of the parking lot having spent less than one hundred dollars. This makes it a great one-stop-shop for loading up on mementos before heading to the airport, or for finding that exceptional piece of handiwork to decorate the office, car, living room or dorm room. The market’s vendors are notoriously non-pushy, most acting more or less disinterested in customers unless asked a question about a specific item. This makes for a very laid-back, no-stress trinket shopping experience with plenty of curious exotic fruits to snack on while you browse.

How To Get There

Kona Farmers’ Market is located just off of the town’s main coastal commercial thoroughfare known as “Ali’i Drive”, which winds down the coast southward to the small beach resort and golf course town of Keauhou. The market is located near the northern terminus of Ali’i Drive, across the street from a well-manicured waterfront park and green space known as Hale Halawai Park, which abuts the calm, inviting turquoise waters of Oneo Bay.

It’s found on the same city block as the Kailua-Kona Public Library, at the corner of Ali’i Drive and Hualalai Street, within a stones throw of several excellent restaurants, shopping centers and places to stay. Neighboring the market along that same northern stretch of Kona’s tourist row is the Kona Inn Shopping Village, Kona Islander Inn, Kailua Village Condos, Kamana Kitchen Indian Cuisine, Papa Kona Restaurant and Bar, Kai Eats and Drinks, Pa’akai Poke and Deli and many others. There’s even bicycle, snorkel, beach and board rentals found one block away at the rental shop called Boss Frog’s. 

In the end, its central location makes Kona Farmers’ Market an ideal jumping off point for an afternoon of sunny beaches, breezy bike rides and casual shopping around Kona Town, and a great morning stop to pick up fresh fruit before a day trip of jungle hikes or excursions to the island’s many far-flung idyllic beaches. If visitors looking for trinkets and fruit happen to unluckily find themselves in Kona Town on a Monday or Tuesday when the market is closed, have no fear! A quick drive over Saddle Road will bring you to Hilo’s market, located in a hard-to-miss spot along its iconic bayfront and open every day of the week from 7:00am to 3:00pm. 

There simply is no better place on the Big Island of Hawaii to feast on mounds of buttery, world-renown and locally-grown Hawaiian macadamia nuts than at Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company’s spacious showroom located in the hills above the small West Hawaii port town of Kawaihae.

It’s a high-ceiling storefront awash in sunlight filtering through its ranks of bay windows, which illuminates a maze of tables, counters, bins and display racks overflowing with cans and pouches of the company’s namesake nut in a dizzying variety of island-inspired flavors. Within seconds of stepping through the door into what’s informally known as the “nut house”, visitors are tempted with free samples of island-grown coffee from its various coffee growing regions, such as Kona, Ka’u and Hilo, all with their own distinctive aromas, flavors and bodies.

The coffee stand gives way to a small cafe serving up full-sized espressos, smoothies and scoops of homemade ice cream. The air inside the showroom smells downright heavenly: wafts of freshly brewed coffee mixed with the smell of buttery peanut brittle and roasted nuts dusted with delectable toppings, which leads many visitors with rumbling stomachs to seek out the store’s long wooden table filled with free samples of its macadamias in flavors both sweet and savory.

“There simply is no better place on Big Island to feast on mounds of buttery, world-renown and locally-grown macadamia nuts than at Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company”

This samples station is the focal point of the entire facility for most visitors. They crowd around the table gingerly working small metal tongs, picking the nuts out of larger bowls two and three at a time and dropping them into the disposable paper cups provided. Some seem partial to the sweet varieties; Kona Coffee Glazed, Butter Rum Glazed and Coconut Glazed, and gleefully fill up their respective cups again and again with the glossy sugar-coated delights, scarfing them down by the handful. 

Others like the savory flavors best; Island Onion, “Chili Peppah”, Wasabi, Soy Sauce – even SPAM flavored for the truly adventurous foodies who want to try something distinctly Hawaiian. This group does a better job of savoring each nut, but nonetheless can still be spotted upending their cups from time to time with a satisfying crunch as if to take a shot of liquor. Then there are the visitors who are nut-purists, who forego the fancy sugar and spice variations and focus their attention on the sample bowls full of lightly salted and salt-free dry-roasted macadamias. These nuts are in their most un-doctored form, with the subtle buttery flavors brought out by the roasting process really coming through, not overpowered by the tastes of onions and chilis and soy sauce.

Some people never make it past the free samples, and spend most of their time in the showroom lingering around them hoping that uniformed employees will materialize from behind a side-door and refill the bowls as they do from time to time. Others load up several cup-fulls and take off down the aisles, browsing the different sized packages of the same nuts they are simultaneously trying, found in sizes ranging from snack-size pouches to formidable five pound bulk bags. They find other island-made products, too, interspersed with the cans, bags and pouches of nuts: honey, granola, cooking oils, chocolates, cookies, bags of bulk coffee and enticing-looking kettle corn.

In one corner of the showroom is the entrance to a long, wide hallway lined with still more racks and baskets of goodies lining one wall. The hallway’s opposite wall is a made up of a row of windows looking out onto the factory floor where employees adorned in hair caps and gloves dart to and fro running the network of curious looking machines with funny names: Lid Capper, Flavor Panner, Can Labeler. This is what is called “The Cannery”.

At the bottom of every window is a placard giving a brief explanation of each machine’s purpose, and visitors making their way from window to window down the hall can get a good step-by-step idea of how macadamias go from bulk raw shelled nuts to the flavorful morsels found in their sample cups. Pouches and bags of finished product slowly roll off the assembly line in a slightly hypnotizing and unquestionably mouth-watering procession. Soon they will be packed up and shipped off to supermarkets and grocery stores across the entire island, as well as to neighboring islands, the U.S. mainland, and to the doorsteps of international customers on nearly every continent.

At the end of the hallway is a mini-theater of wrought iron chairs set in rows facing a flatscreen television. A short narrated informational film about the farming and processing side of the business is shown on a continuous loop, which helps to fill in the information gaps left by the placards, and to answer the frequently asked questions about nut aficionados. The theater is the natural endpoint to the self-guided tour, and from there visitors usually meander back past the factory windows and informational placards to the sample table to load up one more time before hitting the checkout counter.

A Boon To Hawaiian Agriculture, And A Great Place To Shop For Gifts

Macadamia nuts are native to Australia, where Aboriginal peoples utilized the hearty, prolific wild trees as a crucial source of “bush food”. It wasn’t until the late 19^th Century that an Australian plant collector and sugarcane plantation manager named William Purvis came to Hawaii’s Big Island with the archipelago’s first macadamia nut sapling in his luggage. Purvis planted it along the island’s eastern Hamakua Coast, where legend tells that it is still growing to this day.

Hawaii became the first large-scale mac nut producer in history, and for decades held the title of biggest crop yield. Since then, competition from countries like Australia, South Africa and China have bumped Hawaii from the top slot, although the tens of millions of pounds of in-shell nuts produced every year in the islands is still a remarkable feat considering their tiny geographic size. Today, there are hundreds of independent small-scale growers across the state who harvest tens of millions of dollars worth of nuts every year.

Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company is supplied by roughly 200 different independent Big Island nut farms, many of which are multi-generational and multi-family enterprises that depend entirely on the orchards for their livelihoods. So, visitors to the company’s showroom can feel good about the products they are buying; that they’re supporting local small-scale farmers making a living on an island with limited economic opportunities for many people, as well as the roughly 60 full-time employees who run the factory and showroom.

It’s also a great place to find gifts for friends and family members back home. Many of the tables in the showroom are taken up by gift displays, from assorted samplers of nuts and chocolates to colorfully painted cookie tins wrapped up in bows. The tins, adorned with motifs like beautiful tropical flowers, sea turtles, and dolphins are sure to still delight long after the scrumptious morsels inside have long since been eaten. There are neatly stacked pyramids of individual dark, milk and white chocolates, some of which feature mac nut “fines”, in their miniature plastic jars. For visitors who find themselves planning a trip to Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company during the holidays, keep an eye out for table displays of seasonal chocolate peppermint bark made with macadamia nut pieces and either milk or dark chocolate.

How To Get There

Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company’s factory and showroom is located along Maluokalani Street, which is found off of Akoni Pule Highway, otherwise known as Highway 270, roughly one mile northwest of the small industrial Big Island port town of Kawaihae (“kah-vie-high”).

It can be a bit tricky to find on the first visit, partly because the factory is located in a part of town that seems incongruous to an upscale foodie destination. Surrounding the factory are car repair shops, concrete companies, auto detailing businesses and other industrial type stores, leading many newcomers to wonder if they are in the right place. But fear not, as the long, curving and slightly steep one-lane concrete road leading to the factory’s parking lot will eventually come into view, with its border of well-manicured hedges.

It’s a great place to stop and pick up car, beach and hiking snacks, some truly gourmet coffee and perhaps a few small gifts for envious friends back home. And Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company is conveniently located just up the road from some spectacular Kona-side beaches including Puako – otherwise known as “Beach 69” – Mauna Kea Beach, Hapuna Beach State Recreation Area and Spencer Beach Park. It’s also very near Pu’ukohola Heiau National Historic Site – the massive stone castle by the sea – which is covered in its own dedicated article. 

The alluring perfume of its fresh-baked shortbreads greets visitors all the way out in the parking lot, where wafts of the buttery, inviting aroma stream out from behind the nondescript building and make stomachs grumble. The smell only gets more intense upon entering the product showroom – an elaborately decorated and well air-conditioned maze of colorful candy boxes stacked in neat piles on shelves.

Just a few minutes spent perusing the cornucopia of Hawaii-inspired treats and trying to keep track of which one sounds the most delicious is enough to make your head spin: cookies, brownies, biscotti, toffee, jars of honey, locally grown macadamia nuts and coffee beans covered in chocolate, macadamia nut shortbread, chocolate covered animal crackers, even the traditional Japanese dessert made with sweet bean paste known as “manju”.

Most of these goodies are offered in several different flavors, and in versions like milk, dark or white chocolate-dipped. For example, the macadamia nut shortbreads alone are available in coconut, lemon, pineapple, taro, coffee, green tea, chocolate chip and more. The factory even bakes plain butter shortbread without the macadamias for customers frequenting its showroom who have nut allergies.

And just when visitors to Big Island Candies think they have spotted the most delectable-sounding goodie of them all, they come upon the shop’s holy grail: chocolate-dipped brownies. And even these come in several different flavors, including a “milk chocolate-dipped peanut butter brownie” that seems the have the most tantalizing name of them all. Then there are the specialty brownies for those wanting to explore new takes on the classic treat: soft and fruity passionfruit mochi brownies or the rich, pungent and aromatic dark chocolate-dipped coffee brownies.

After some length, the shelves of sweets turn from shortbreads and brownies to cookies, and more brightly colored boxes of purples, browns and greens assembled in their neat stacks appear: gingerbread cookies, Hawaiian salt cookies, bite-sized macadamia nut cookies, chocolate chip mac nut cookies, guava cookies, Kona coffee cookies – even cranberry mac nut oatmeal cookies. Then come the specialty chocolates: milk chocolate macadamia nut toffee, dark and milk chocolate-covered mac nuts, crispy rice chocolate crunch – and for the really adventurous, Hawaiian Red Chili toffee. Big Island Candies even sells homemade chocolate macadamia nut rocky road, crafted with a healthy amount of mini marshmallows.

Before long, visitors usually find themselves staring through the store’s transparent wall out onto the factory floor, where blue-gloved employees wearing green shirts, hair caps and facemasks tend workstations carefully dipping stacks of shortbread and brownies into vats of warm chocolate and laying them out on sheets to dry. 

There are dozens of individual stations scattered throughout the factory floor, many with signs hanging overhead stating their purpose: baking, hand-dipping, packaging, quality inspection. These are undoubtedly to aid the spectators standing behind the glass, who might otherwise see just a bustling beehive of activity of freshly dipped treats being wheeled on carts from place to place around the immaculate room. Here it’s not uncommon to see groups of young children with faces pressed up against the glass, marveling and drooling at the sight of tubs of liquid chocolate, like something out of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. 

A Curious Piece Of Hilo History With A World-Class Gift Shop

Big Island Candies was founded by Allan Ikawa and his wife Irma in 1977, investing every penny they had to launch the confection company. They started out very small: a shrink wrap machine and a chocolate melter pored over for long days within a small warehouse along the city’s industrial district. 

They experienced many setbacks over a half-century in business, but still kept at it and slowly yet steadily managed to build the company into a well-renowned, multi-island brand, which to this day still uses 100 percent Big Island-sourced coffee and macadamia nuts while creating its vast catalog of goodies. All this makes the candy shop a sweet, enduring fixture of Hilo’s foodie scene, a one-stop-shop for gift-seeking visitors wanting to bring back something truly special, and a great pit stop on an around-the-island road trip to load up on beach, car and hiking snacks. After all, no Big Island gift basket is truly complete without a box or two of locally made, mouthwatering shortbread in decadent tropical flavors like passionfruit, guava and Kona coffee. 

Tables of gift baskets are scattered around the showroom floor, many including assortments of the most popular sweets. The largest gift basket contains ten boxes and four bags of everything from biscotti to brownies to cookies to chocolate covered macadamia nuts. A smaller version of the basket features seven boxes and four bags and includes some specialty items like cocoa-dusted almonds and chocolate covered Kona coffee beans. The baskets are customizable, too, so shoppers can pick and choose which treats they think their loved ones will like the most. 

Then there are smaller, beautifully designed gift boxes tied up with colored ribbon, which come in prints like: Flower Focus, Cherry Blossom, Torch Ginger, Goldfish, Purple Wonder, Amauu Fern and Green Maidenhair. These are eye-catching, travel-friendly samplers of all the delicious things Big Island Candies has to offer, perfect for envious friends and family members back home. They make scrumptious gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, homecomings and graduations, and their ornate boxes decorated with iconic Hawaiian plants, flowers and fish are such to be treasured for years to come.

For those visiting Big Island Candies who haven’t had a chance to try the island’s world-famous coffee yet, you’re in luck! One corner of the showroom is inhabited by a small cafe serving up steaming cups of fresh-brewed Kona and Ka’u coffee grown on small farms on the island’s western and southern flanks. The sound of a whining blender fills the store from time to time as barristers mix up smoothies in flavors like strawberry, mango, cappuccino, banana and pina colada – most of them made with Big Island’s world-famous tropical fruit. The cafe even offers “ice cream pies” – individual-serving frozen pies made with Big Island Candies’ signature original cookie or chocolate shortbread crust and the island of Maui’s very own Roselani Ice Cream.

And nothing rounds out a one-of-a-kind gift basket of Hawaiian chocolate and shortbread goodness better than a Big Island Candies-branded reusable tote; a way to savor the sweet memories even after all the cookies, brownies and chocolates are long gone. These are very inexpensive – just one or two dollars per bag, and they make terrific last-minute gifts for candy lovers.

The sweetshop’s goodies are so well-renown, in fact, that they’ve had to open another retail store within the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu to keep up with demand, which offers the same fare as its Hilo flagship factory and showroom located on Hinano Street.

How To Get There

Big Island Candies is located roughly two blocks west of the entrance to Hilo’s Airport Road leading to Hilo International Airport (ITO), and half a block from Hilo Urgent Care, just off of Highway 11 otherwise known as Hawaii Belt Road.

The street address of the candy factory and showroom is 585 Hinano Street, where visitors will know they are in the right place simply based on the alluring smell of shortbread wafting out to greet them in the parking lot. Big Island Candies’ Hilo location is open daily from 8:30am to 5:00pm, and most of its offering of sweets and treats can be found within the company’s online product catalog found at bigislandcandies.com. Orders can be placed online as well as over the phone and can be shipped anywhere in the world. 

For those who missed the chance to pick up sweetbreads, cookies, chocolates, toffee and brownies while they were on Big Island, have no fear! The company’s second location is found at 1450 Ala Moana Boulevard within Honolulu’s Ala Moana Shopping Center on the island of Oahu. This satellite location is open from 10:00am to 8:00pm Monday through Saturday, and from 10:00am to 6:00pm on Sundays.

After a busy day of candy sampling, shortbread smelling and gift basket designing, visitors to Big Island Candies will no doubt work up an appetite, and thankfully there are several excellent restaurants within walking distance of the sweets shop, including the locally beloved Hawaiian Style Cafe Hilo, Sakura Sushi and Grill, Sombat’s Fresh Thai Cuisine, Liquid Life Hilo and the Hilo Lunch Shop. “The Full 9 Yards”, another locally owned candy shop with plenty of Hawaiian flare, is located less than a block away from Big Island Candies within Manono Street Marketplace, and is open Tuesday thru Saturday 10:00am to 5:00pm. 

It began with local fishermen in the islands saving the cut-off parts of their catch and adding seasonings to them to eat as a snack. In the 1970s, poke became increasingly popular and eventually evolved into an entire subsection of contemporary Hawaiian cuisine. It is most commonly prepared with cubes of yellowfin tuna also known as “ahi”, and skipjack tuna called “aku”, along with embellishments like green onions, sesame oil, Maui onions, sea salt and the pungent seaweed known as “limu”. Some poke batches are seasoned with soy sauce, wasabi paste, chili peppers and fish eggs, while a more traditional form includes roasted, salted ground candlenut.

Most of these varieties and several more are served up daily at Suisan Fish Market, which has been selling fish and poke out of the same location at the mouth of the Wailoa River along Hilo’s bayfront for several generations. The business has seen its fair share of setbacks, including the crashing of two massively destructive tsunamis into the city’s usually-sheltered bay of rocky black sand beaches in both 1946 and 1960. But the owners stuck it out, and over the years have seen Suisan grow to become the largest food distribution company on Big Island. 

Suisan runs warehouses all over the island, but maintains its original windswept riverfront fish market as a place for retail sales, and informally as a historic landmark. The store smells strongly of fish immediately upon entering, undoubtedly a testament to the freshness of the catch, but for people who are bothered by the smell it could be a bit too much. Visitors first come upon refrigerated display cases full of vacuum sealed large fresh fish cuts of various species, informed by the plastic notecards attached to the racks. This is the place to pick up a mouth-watering ahi steak for a backyard barbecue, or to find a juicy slab of mahi-mahi for an unforgettable batch of fish tacos.

Beyond the full cuts of fish is another, larger display case crammed with all of Suisan’s prepared food. Several different types of classic poke are available, made with raw ahi, aku, hamachi, and salmon. Then there are the many side dishes, like crab and lobster salad, kim chee, octopus, sweet potato and seaweed salad. All the to-go bowls and plates they serve include a side of either brown rice or “hapa” – meaning mixed white and brown rice. Their pricing is based on number of scoops: 1-Choice Bowl, 2-Choice Bowl, “Small Kine” Bowl and Plate, all with their corresponding number of side dishes. 

All these delicacies are available for purchase by the pound in bulk containers, too, and sometimes Suisan will only sell certain varieties by the pound. Refrigerated cases at the far end of the store contain packages of dried fish and containers of freshly made poi, as well as smaller pre-packaged portions of fish steaks and cubes. Much of its inventory is based on availability, as the company has built its business around the freshest fish possible, so it’s not uncommon to see half of the display cases empty, especially after the mid-day lunch rush.

How To Get There:

Suisan Fish Market can be found on Lihiwai Street along Hilo’s iconic waterfront, just off of Kamehameha Avenue. Look for the blue building with glowing neon red sign right next to the river’s mouth. The shop is situated half a block from the eastern entrance to Banyan Drive, the historic winding thoroughfare of towering banyan trees, picturesque beach parks and the city’s most luxurious hotels. It’s open from 9:00am to 3:00pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and closed on Sunday and Wednesday. Other sights within walking distance of Suisan include the serene and always green Liliuokalani Gardens, Reed’s Bay Beach Park, and the palm-lined rocky outcrop jutting out into the bay called Coconut Island, or “Moku Ola” (Island of Life) in Hawaiian. 

The restaurant is named after its owner and one-woman-show, Sombat Saenguthai, who cooks, serves and grows the herbs for the vast majority of the delicious entrees being served up in its small dining room, and in the stream of brown paper bag takeout orders constantly being run out the door. 

Her menu is varied but not overwhelming: appetizers of spring rolls and basil rolls, fried tofu and chicken satay, with add-ons like the legendary green papaya salad, bean thread noodle salad, and even shrimp and squid salads. Noodle dishes range from the staples pad Thai and pad see ew, to lesser known variations like pad lard nah with its mound of flat noodles cooked with broccoli and a thick, savory sauce, to pad kee mow with chili peppers, mint and basil. She even makes a Thai version of the classic Chinese noodle dish chow mein. 

For those wanting something a bit lighter, Sombat’s served bowls of Tom Yum and coconut soup, made with mushrooms, onions and an assortment of Thai spices. Or choose from the list of vegetarian specialities: coconut vegetable soup, veggie fried rice, bean-thread noodles with vegetable stir fry, and sweet and sour vegetables.

The curries at Sombat’s are legendary: pineapple curry made with chunks of fresh, locally grown pineapples, veggies and coconut milk; Penang Curry with it’s salty, sweet lime-zest of string beans cooked in coconut milk; green curry with eggplant and sweet basil, yellow curry with carrots and potatoes, red curry with bamboo shoots and red chili peppers, and Massaman Curry with peanuts and potatoes. These come with either Jasmine or brown rice, and in variations like chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, fish, seafood combo or vegetarian.

Last but not least is the assortment of fried rice, like spicy fried rice, Thai fried rice and pineapple fried rice, as well as the menu of stir-fries: sweet and sour, eggplant, garlic and pepper, ginger and bean sauce and sauteed cashew. For drinks, Sombat’s makes a terrific Thai Iced Tea – a thick, sweet concoction made from strongly-brewed black tea with flavors of star anise, tamarind, cardamom and others, similar in flavor to masala chai tea. And for dessert: homemade ice cream, Thai tapioca with coconut milk, and fried banana spring rolls.

How To Get There:

Sombat’s Fresh Thai Cuisine is located near the downtown strip of Hilo – Big Island’s largest city – very near to Hilo International Airport. It can be found less than a block away from the intersection of Kamehameha Avenue running along the city’s bayfront, and Highway 11, otherwise known as Hawaii Belt Road, which from there heads south towards Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. 

Sombat’s can sometimes be closed on random days with little advance notice, so calling in an order ahead of time is smart. The restaurant is currently open for take-out only from 4:00pm to 8:00pm, Monday through Saturday. It is just one of the stores comprising Waiakea Kai Shopping Plaza, which has great spots to grab a coffee or beer such as The Sippen Siren coffee shop and Joann’s Lounge Bar.

But those visiting Kona town preferring a traditional Hawaiian plate to a contemporary one can be hard-pressed to find a truly authentic experience. This is because the simple, humble dishes of Hawaii’s old days are overshadowed by more popular ethnic and continental cuisine, and in some cases can be an acquired taste. 

There is one eatery in Kona, though, that specializes in the islands’ traditional foods: Kanaka Kava. It’s a small open-air, no-frills eatery set back from Ali’i Drive along the town’s commercial waterfront strip open for late-lunch and dinner serving local plates and coconut-shell cups full of “kava”. Otherwise known as “awa”, this is a traditional Polynesian drink made with the roots of an indigenous pepper plant grown throughout the Pacific Ocean for its mild sedative and relaxing effects.

A typical dinner course from the open-air diner includes a sectioned wooden bowl with rounds of baked Hawaiian sweet potato (uala), a generous helping of kalua pork, a serving of squid luau (squid meat cooked with coconut milk and taro leaves), a mound of seasoned diced raw fish (poke) and a bowl of fermented taro (poi). It’s a meal traditionally eaten with fingers, although western utensils are available. 

Kanaka Kava also makes poi bowls, which are helpings of fresh Big Island-made poi topped with bananas, blueberries, coconut flakes, goji and acai berries, granola and almonds, all covered with a healthy drizzle of honey. Hemp seeds, cacao nibs, papaya fruit and chia seeds are all available as add-ons.

Besides bowls of kava, the restaurant serves fresh coconut water, kombucha, gingerade, yerba mate, hot cacao and its own homemade version of POG (blended passionfruit, orange and guava juices).

Seating in the outdoor patio is limited; there’s only enough tables for a few groups of diners at at time. Even so, the place never seems to get too busy and its wait staff are always laid back and friendly, and the food comes out surprisingly fast. There’s open mic nights and musical events throughout the week, catering to a local bohemian hippie crowd.

How To Get There

Kanaka Kava is located between Kuakini Highway and Ali’i Drive along the waterfront of downtown Kona, near the well-known and easy-to-spot volleyball court. It’s part of a complex of other bars, restaurants and shopping centers comprising the northern end of the seaside commercial thoroughfare.

The restaurant and kava bar opens every day of the week at 3:00pm and closes at 10:00pm on Monday through Thursday and on Sundays, and at 11:00pm on Fridays and Saturdays. A menu of food and drink items with prices included can be found at https://www.kanakakava.bar/bar-1

Contemporary Hawaiian cuisine is a curious mixture of dishes from many different cultures; from Portuguese sausages to Japanese noodles to American Spam to traditional Hawaiian raw fish and taro-based staples. Popular local dishes in the islands are usually variations of some traditional or imported food slapped together with ingredients from a oftentimes vastly different cuisine, creating a culinary identity that is distinctly modern Hawaiian.

Few other common dishes illustrate this mash-up better than the ubiquitous Hawaiian Plate Lunch. Everyday in the islands, tens of thousands of these meals are enjoyed, often packed up in cardboard takeout containers by local eateries like Big Island Grill. In its most common form, the plate includes one entree, two scoops of white rice and one scoop of macaroni salad. The pairing of noodles and rice side by side might seem to be a peculiar East-West collision by some food critics, but the locals don’t seem to mind.

Big Island Grill serves up another great example of how contemporary Hawaiian cuisine can throw seemingly incongruent ingredients together into a dish that surprisingly works: the “loco moco”. This is a mound of rice topped with a hamburger patty and fried egg, all drenched in a generous helping of brown gravy and topped with green onions. It’s a combination reportedly thought up by the owner of a handful of restaurants in the city of Hilo who lived half-a-century ago.

For a plate lunch that resembles traditional Hawaiian food a bit more, Big Island Grill’s “kalua” pork with cabbage is a taste of the old days. Preparing this dish in old-time Hawaii involved cooking a whole pig in an underground earth oven called an “imu”, imparting a strong smoky flavor to the meat. Kalua pork is succulent and tender, similar to the barbeque pulled pork in Southern U.S. cuisine, and is one of the most common plate lunch entrees in the islands, together with chicken katsu (Japanese fried chicken), loco moco, poke (Hawaiian diced raw fish), and teriyaki beef. 

All of these plate lunch options are served up daily at Big Island Grill, in a casual no-frills atmosphere of friendly, easygoing wait staff and modern amenities. Its indoor dining area is roomy and well air-conditioned – a welcome relief for diners seeking refuge from the beating Kona sun. A colorfully painted mural of Hawaiian sea life adorns one corner of the restaurant, while a handful of glittering art installations are slung across the opposite wall. All of this makes for a comfortable, laid-back environment perfect for enjoying a tall glass of iced tea – one of the restaurant’s specialties – or a mimosa or glass of beer from Kona Brewing Company located just down the road.

How To Get There

Big Island Grill is located in downtown Kona along Kuakini Highway roughly two blocks uphill from the seaside commercial strip known as Ali’i Drive, at the corner of Hanama Place. It’s open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:00am to 2:00pm with options for dine-in, takeout and delivery. Their menu can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/bigislandgrill/menu

But somehow, out of the dearth of exceptional ethnic cuisine on the island (besides East Asian food, of course), there is one restaurant found along Ali’i Drive in the town of Kona that offers up a truly authentic Indian culinary experience that could go toe-to-toe with the best of Rome, Singapore, Seattle and even traditional eateries on the subcontinent itself. Kamana Kitchen

That is perhaps the word that lends itself to Kamana Kitchen most: authentic. For those who’ve ever adventured through that part of the world, all it takes is one taste to bring on the nostalgia. The enticing smell of slow-cooking curries, roasting tandoori meats and fresh-baked buttery garlic naan meets diners seated at tables in the small open-air patio found on the first floor of Ali’i Drive’s Waterfront Row Shopping Center. 

Servers stream in and out of the adjacent building’s double doors with large silver trays of steaming plates; everything from piles of aromatic rice to stacks of seasoned flatbreads to bowls of stewed vegetables and meats cooked in thick, creamy, colorful sauces. There are biryanis (rice cooked with spices, herbs and nuts) with veggies, shrimp and lamb, as well as fish curries made with coconut milk, and slabs of fried pakora with its seasoned batter and mixtures of cheese, potatoes, meats, herbs and vegetables. For appetizers, both vegetarian and meat samosas are served up with their triangles of crispy pastry and heavily seasoned fillings (think Indian Hot Pocket). 

One of Kamana Kitchen’s most popular dishes is the tandoori mixed grill; basically a meat-lovers ideal with an assortment of chicken, lamb, shrimp and kebab marinated in yogurt, herbs and spices and cooked inside a special Indian clay oven known as a tandoor. The portion size of the mixed grill is in essence two meals, especially when combined with side dishes of rice, naan and the green onion, cucumber and yogurt-based side known as “raitha” – traditionally eaten to cool the palate from the hot, spicy tandoori dishes.

The restaurant caters well to vegetarian and vegan diets, too, with dishes likes mixed vegetable curry, the chickpea-based chana masala, and the cumin-heavy cauliflower and potato dish called aloo gobi. Then there’s the host of paneer dishes, made with large juicy chunks of homemade cheese cooked with veggies like peas, spinach and tomato, as well as plates of daal (lentils slow-cooked with herbs and spices). 

How To Get There:

Kamana Kitchen can be found right off of north Ali’i Drive on the first floor of Waterfront Row Shopping Center, across the street from the daily Kona Farmers’ Market. Follow the red and orange signs for the restaurant past an open-air jewelry seller until the dining patio with its enclosing white fence comes into view. The dining area is right at the edge of the wharf, offering a great view of the adjacent bay, open ocean and the occasional arriving and departing cruise ship.

Kamana Kitchen is open for lunch from 11:00am to 3:00pm, and then for dinner from 5:00pm to 9:30pm Wednesday through Monday, and is closed on Tuesday. Dine-in, takeout and delivery options are available with typically fast service. A full menu with prices included can be found at https://www.kamanakitchen.com/our-menu/