Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/226563
travel As business grew, so did the movement, but it can't hold a sugar- restaurant. An inn opened 10 years cane stalk to what's going on in Maui ago; a bakery two years back. The right now. Inn at Mama's Fish House is in growth mode again, with a new To be fair, Hawaii's Valley Isle has a bit more reason to have its food – in the parlance of proud born-and-raised locals who apply it to their origins as well – "grown here, not flown here." The Hawaiian archipelago is not only the most remote state in the union – 4,000 kilometres from the nearest California fish and chips place – it is also the largest human population living in such isolation on the planet. Given that more than 85 per cent of the state's food is imported, even the slightest disruption in the supply chain would be catastrophic. It happened in 1985, when airline pilots and barge company employees went on strike and the Hawaiian Islands quickly realized that the local supply chain only had enough food for a week. But today, Perry Bateman isn't interested in discussing his island home's local culinary infatuation as a means of food security. The executive chef of Mama's Fish House – long included on culinary bucket lists not just in the state, but the entire U.S. – much prefers to point out a more important benefit of eating his home's bounty. "It just tastes better than anything from anywhere else," he says, shrugging. It's Thursday just before the dinner rush and Chef Perry is giving me a tour of his kitchen as we dodge what seems like a majority of the 325 employees this economic powerhouse, launched exactly 40 years ago, employs. Chef Perry, a local from Haiku town 15 minutes west of here, worked the Mama's line for six years before taking over more than 15 years ago. He seamlessly weaves the culinary and the economic – his restaurant's role in Perry Bateman isn't interested in discussing his island home's local culinary infatuation as a means of food security. The executive chef of Mama's Fish House much prefers to point out a more important benefit of eating his home's bounty. "It just tastes better than anything from anywhere else" expanded lobby and luxurious adults-only rooms with private courtyards as more price-conscious options to the larger two-bedroom beachfront, garden cottages. But fuelling Maui's food revolution is as important as ever to this original, even as it enters middle age. For its 40th birthday, Chef Perry convinced the Christensons to buy the food suppliers a gift in the form of a $10,000 buoy. In doing so, Mama's became the first private company in the state to subsidize what's more technically known as a FAD – a fish-aggregate device – to facilitate deep-sea fishing. "We needed our guys to catch more fish, so we dropped a line offshore for fish to come and explore," Chef Perry says as blurs of white plates carrying the local seafood his investment coaxed out of the sea fly by. "Hawaii has the best fish in the world, okay?" he continues. "We don't need to be importing fish from the mainland. The way the currents flow and flush our shores, the stuff you often worry about in other parts of the world isn't that fostering today's localism-on-the-plate over four decades, to how it's much of an issue here," he says, referring to paranoia around eating one of the biggest business players on the island. "If this place closed, bigger, more mercury-laced species. you'd see it in the New York Times," he says. "On the North Shore of Maui, few places give jobs to so many." His evangelic boosterism has given Maui farmers preferential treatment, so much so that local producers have replaced most of the res- And throughout his sermon, he keeps bringing it back to Mama's taurant's mainland suppliers in recent years. Increasingly, Mama's – as Fish House founders Floyd and Doris Christenson – about how they well as other Maui eateries – is vigilant about working with producers eschewed "vacations to Vegas" and poured profits back into a menu who are flying under the radar on other islands. "I was watching the that not only searched for local ingredients, but celebrated the people news last year and saw a guy in Kauai who has a clam operation," Chef who brought them to the kitchen, famously putting the names of the Perry says. Perhaps noticing my salivating, he delivers the bad news: people who pull fish out of the ocean next to the tantalizing seafood "But he can only give us 30 pounds a week – we run out in two nights." plates on the menu, a practice that continues today. 42 p40-47_Travel-Maui.indd 42 | november 201 3 Fortunately, his fat prawns – from a small family operation on bcliving.ca 13-10-23 2:06 PM PHOTO SEAN MICHAEL HOWER (MAMA'S FISH HOUSE RESTAURANT) N o offence to your preferred local food