Maui eating places the tourists often overlook

"Don't ask," says Bonnie Friedman. "Just taste it."

We're standing in the parking lot of a mom-and-pop store, far from the sun-kissed beaches and resorts, and she's unwrapping the dubiously looking and uniquely Hawaiian snack she's just purchased inside: Spam musubi.

It looks like an enormous piece of sushi, but where you'd expect to find a pink sliver of raw tuna or salmon there's a slab of Monty Python's favorite mystery meat. With added teriyaki flavor.

I really don't want to, but to humor the food critic and cookbook writer I take a cautious bite. Then a big, enthusiastic bite. And another. It's really good.

Maui, like all the Hawaiian islands, has two very separate and distinct cuisines: What the tourists eat - grilled mahi mahi, coconut prawns, teriyaki chicken with pineapple rings on top, etc. - and what the locals eat.

"Ono grinds" sounds like something you really didn't want to see at Studio 54 back in the 1970s, but it's just Hawaiian slang for "good food."

I'm taking Friedman's Tour da Food to get a taste of it. And as I consider grabbing another Spam musubi for later, I'm discovering that this eating-local quest has some wonderful side benefits: Not only is the chow decidedly less expensive than what they serve in the resorts, it's an edible microcosm of Hawaii's history - and it's taking me to some beguiling parts of the island tourists rarely visit.

"As gorgeous as the resorts are, if people only eat in those restaurants," says Friedman, "they're missing Hawaii."

She starts me off with a malasada, a hole-less Portuguese doughnut. They come from the Home Made Bakery in Wailuku, which will sell them only straight-out-of-the-oven hot: between 5 and 10 a.m., and from 4 to 10 p.m.

"The Portuguese arrived here from the Azores in 1878 to work as cowboys, and also on the sugar plantations, and they brought these with them," Friedman explains.

"Mardi Gras is called 'Malasada Day' in Hawaii because traditionally they needed to get rid of all their sugar and butter before Lent. They'd make up a big batch of malasadas and take them out to the cane fields to share with the Japanese and Filipino workers. That's how they became ubiquitous in Hawaii."

This sharing of food in the cane fields led to another uniquely Hawaiian cuisine: the plate lunch. Traditionally, it's a serving of some sort of protein - it could be Hawaiian kalua pig, or Filipino adobo, or Japanese teriyaki beef, or Korean Kalbi ribs - accompanied by a big scoop of macaroni salad and two scoops of rice.

"It's the story of Hawaiian immigration served up on a plate," said Friedman.

Another Hawaiian belly buster you see on menus is Loco Moco - a mound of rice topped with hamburger patties and eggs, and smothered in gravy. Locals eat it for breakfast.

"People in Hawaii love to eat, and they're totally unapologetic about it," said Friedman. "They say that people here don't eat until they're full - they eat until they're tired."

Our quest begins in Wailuku, Maui's administrative capital, a place most visitors pass through only on their way to the Iao Valley. But it's refreshing to visit a place not entirely given over to the care and feeding of tourists, and this colorful old plantation town is full of intriguing and inexpensive eating places.

Some require serious sleuthing to find. One of our stops, for example, was the Wailuku Industrial Park, where Friedman led me into TJ's Warehouse, located in the Maui Chemical and Paper Products building. Inside sprawled a vast Asian market with a huge selection of bento boxes and an okazu, a Hawaiian deli. Behind the sneeze guard was everything from Kinpira gobo (Japanese braised burdock root) to corned beef hash.

Friedman went straight for the misoyaki butterfish. "This is what Nobu makes for $45 a plate, and here it costs $3," she said. "And I think it's just as good - maybe better."