Last night was the luau here at the hotel. The food was fantastic . . . well except for the poi – that was tasteless mush! I always like to at least try new foods because usually they are pretty good, but I didn’t need to have more than one taste of the poi. The luau menu consisted of seaweed salad (yes, this was actually good!), fish, pork, beef, chicken, rice, sweet potato, and fried banana (this was good too!)
The traditional luau food is cooked in an emu, which is a hole in the ground with the food being wrapped in leaves and placed on hot coals and covered and cooked for hours. They did the ceremonial uncovering of the pig in the emu (along with hula demonstrations and a Hawaiian guy climbing a coconut palm tree (see video below) – still trying to get this video sent to my email from my phone) , but for as many people as there were at the luau, the food was prepared in the kitchen as far as I know. It did, however, taste as though it was cooked in an emu.