WAIMEA — Rose Wong of Waimea grew up in a plantation family on the Big Island. “I remember my dad taking the kau kau tin for lunch,” she said. “Of course, my mother made it in the morning — back
WAIMEA — Rose Wong of Waimea grew up in a plantation family on the Big Island. “I remember my dad taking the kau kau tin for lunch,” she said.
“Of course, my mother made it in the morning — back then the women had their place; now we’re all over the place. It gets a little confusing,” she laughed.
Wong’s mother ran the household. When the children were on a school break they joined their father in the fields. “Working on the plantation was my summer job,” she said.
Kau kau means “eat” in Hawaiian. Plantation workers carried lunch into the fields in a double decker tin with an arched handle. In the past, the tins were made of aluminum. Today, they are stainless steel.
The kau kau tin at Wrangler’s Steakhouse in Waimea is a popular entrée on the lunch menu — only instead of two layers, there are three.
The first layer is rice with kim chee (pickled cabbage) and ume (a pickled plum); the second tier is teriyaki flank steak; and the third is tempura shrimp and vegetables.
“Rice was a big part and the meat on top,” said the Wrangler’s Steakhouse cashier.
“All the plantation workers carried them. They’d eat together in the shade of a tree and share,” she said. “I used to want to get into my dad’s tin when he got home to see if he had anything left.”
The kau kau meal was representative of the different cultures of the plantation workers.
Sanae Morita, a Kaua‘i Museum volunteer, grew up in Kekaha in a plantation family as well.
“The thing you hear the old folks say, is that they shared what they had and that’s how they learned to appreciate the foods of other cultures.”
“There were Filipino, Portuguese and Japanese blending their cultures,” Morita said.
She echoed Wong’s reference to the importance of the rice as a starch in the lunch, adding, “There was always some little pickled thing.”
Morita recalled seeing workers carry the tins into the field, “but not just the tin. It was always in a little denim sack,” she said.
The kau kau tin is still a viable lunch pail.
“My son is in construction,” said Morita. “He takes leftovers in his kau kau to work and all the other workers ask him about it.”
The gift shop at Wrangler’s Steakhouse sells the stainless steel kau kau tin. Rather then pack last night’s meal into Tupperware, Morita’s son upholds Kaua‘i tradition by storing lunch in the kau ka u tin.
