July 2009

When you think of Hawaiian coffee you think Kona coffee, right? But Kona Coffee is just a consortium of small coffee farmers, some who grow fabulous berries and some who don’t. What you get when you buy “Kona Coffee” is a blend of beans that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

As the Coffee Review (which bills itself as “The world’s leading coffee buying guide”) notes, Kona coffee “remains a bete-noir among many coffee professionals, who consider it an overpriced, weak-kneed imposter of a coffee they are forced to fuss over owing to the misguided enthusiasm of beach-besotted consumers.”

Well, I wouldn’t be that harsh. I remember in January when I was staying at the Moana Surfrider in Honolulu and I’d get up early, throw on some shorts and a t-shirt, and walk downstairs and sit on the veranda drinking a French-press Kona from the Honolulu Coffee Company next door while reading the local paper. That Kona tasted damn fine to me (or was I just another beach-besotted consumer?).

But after spending the better part of a day with Martin Amaro of Kauai Coffee Company, sipping his dark roasted estate peaberry, which has a slight chocolate taste to it, I have to say I like Kauai coffee better.

Photos by David Lansing.

Originally the Kauai coffee estate was a sugar plantation. But in the ‘80s it became clear that growing sugar on the islands was no longer profitable (same with pineapple), so the company burned the fields and planted patchouli (for fragrances), cocoa, macadamia trees, and some coffee trees. The idea was to see which would be most profitable, a decision that was rendered moot by hurricane Iniki in 1992.

Everything growing on the estate was wiped out. Including 400 acres of macadamia nut trees and the farm’s first coffee crop, which was about to be harvested. Miraculously, the coffee trees came back. Not so the macadamia trees. Which is when the company decided to stick with coffee.

Martin Amoro checking coffee berries at Kauai Coffee.

So the other morning I went into the fields with Martin and pulled some berries from the coffee trees and then went back to the processing plant to see how they’re washed and sorted, the greens from the ripes (the greens sink in the water bath and the ripes float), then dried in various stages, shelled and graded for size, density, and color, before finally being roasted and bagged. And I’ll tell you what—it’s a lot more complicated to make a fine cup of coffee than it is to make a good bottle of wine.

Which explains why the 10 ounces of dark roast Peaberry Estate Reserve I picked up to take home set me back $14.50. Still, I figured it was cheaper than a bottle of Chateau Margaux (and would last longer).

A couple of people wrote me to let me know there was a typo in Tuesday’s blog. “You’re supposed to be a writer,” one of them wittily noted. “You should know the difference between shave ice and shaved ice.”

Actually, I do. In Hawaii, it’s never called “shaved” ice and if you pronounce it that way on Kaua`i, Auntie and her friends will roll their eyes or worse.

That said, let me explain this island concoction which is to Hawaii what beignets are to Louisiana. This is an island treat, the only thing in the world that will truly satisfy you after a really hot day at the beach.

It is made by delicately scraping a solid block of ice with a blade (thus, the best shave ice is made with the sharpest blades) until you get a billowy mound that resembles fresh powder snow more than it does a snow cone. Then it’s doused in flavored syrup—preferably fruity and tropical, like lilikoi (passion fruit) or papaya or pineapple—and carefully domed (if done properly) on top of a scoop of rich ice cream to give it richness and added texture.

Some people, including Auntie, substitute a mash of sweet adzuki beans for the ice cream, but I think this is an apostasy. Even more heretical are those who would add sweetened condensed milk. They should be shunned. The thing to remember when ordering a shave ice is that it takes a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time to make. Because they have to, you know, shave that ice. So don’t be impatient. Because if you are, the wrinkled old ladies who spend their afternoons making one after the other at the Wishing Well truck near the pier in Hanalei will do more than just give you the stink eye; they’ll teach you Hawaiian words even Auntie doesn’t know (or so she swears).

By the way, my favorite Wishing Well shave ice is Lehua’s Delight—lemon and preserved island plum, called lihi mui, on top of macadamia nut ice cream. It brok’ da mouf.

It’s amazing how large the Kauai Coffee estate is. I mean, I could tell you that they farm over 3,400 acres of ocean-front property on the southwest side of the island but that wouldn’t really mean anything to you, would it? Instead, you have to do what I did which is get in a SUV with Martin Amaro who works there and go for a drive in the fields. It will take you more than half an hour to go from the south end of the estate to the north and along the way you’ll see some of the most spectacular, undeveloped coastline in Hawaii.

We’d been pulling cherries from six-foot-high trees in various parts of the estate (the harvest won’t start for another couple of months) when Martin said he wanted to show me something special. We drove down a series of winding red dirt roads (there’s a lot of iron in the soil here) until we got to a bluff and Martin stopped the car.

I got out and walked over to the edge and there below me was the most beautiful bay you could imagine. The water was calm and lapped up on a deserted sandy beach protected by a ring of green trees. The amazing thing was there wasn’t a soul on the beach or in the water.

“That’s our secret beach,” Martin said.

Camp 1 Beach. Photo by David Lansing.

Because the beach is miles away from the highway and at the end of a dirt road on the Kauai Coffee estate, hardly anyone knows it’s here.

“Is it open to the public?” I asked him.

“Sure,” said Martin. “All beaches in Hawaii have to have public access. But why you going to come if you don’t know it’s here?”

So here’s the secret: In order to get to the beach you have to check-in at the Kauai Coffee visitors center and buy a $15 annual pass. That may seem kind of steep (although if you lived on Kauai and could use it whenever you wanted, it would be a bargain), but I’d certainly pay 15 bucks to have this gorgeous bay all to myself.

Later we took the rutted road down to the beach and got out. There are beautiful picnic spots in the grove of trees and some basic services—a picnic table or two, trash cans—for visitors. Martin says it’s such a gorgeous setting that he’d like the company to do more with it. “Maybe make it accessible for weddings and such,” he said.

I don’t know. Sitting on the sand with my feet in the water, tossing stones out over the glassy water, I kind of liked having the bay—which, by the way, is called Camp 1 Beach—all to myself.

Because I’ve seen most of Hawaii, people are always asking me what’s my favorite island. Depends. On which one I was last on. So for the moment it’s Kauai. Because that’s where I am.

I’ve been coming here for 17 years now, beginning back when I didn’t know the difference between shave ice and a snow come (we’ll get to that another time). I’ve climbed every mountain, forded every stream, followed every rainbow, etc., etc. So I’m going to share a few of my favorite things about the island (this is beginning to sound like a Broadway musical, isn’t it?).

But before I spill the adzuki beans, I need you to make me a little promise: Go to Kauai, have an amazing time, and then go home. Because I swore on a slab of Spam musubi to my Auntie and all the other sources who opened up the island to me like a just-cracked green coconut that you would not get all misty-eyed and love-struck on your last day and accidentally-on-purpose miss your flight.

Don’t forget that Kauai is not just “The Garden Isle” for visitors. It’s also paradise to the locals who live here year-round. An island so beautiful and magical that Mitzi Gaynor was probably thinking about opening up a beauty salon when she washed that man right out of her hair on Lumaha`i Beach during the filming of South Pacific. And don’t forget Puff the Magic Dragon. He lives here too, you know. By the sea. And frolicks in the autumn mist in a land called Hanalei (Auntie says Puff became a vegan in the 80s and can be spotted every once in awhile selling his homemade pineapple chutney from the rear of a pickup truck at the Hanalei Farmers Market). But, as we all know, dragons need their space. So go and frolic. But take heed of the bumper sticker you’ll undoubtedly come across on a rusted-out pale blue VW bus, circa 1968, that says “Kauai. Beautiful to Visit. But Don’t Move Here.”

Auntie means it in the nicest way.

Tomorrow: a secret beach even most locals don’t know about.

Left L.A. around five yesterday afternoon so with the three hour time difference by the time I got to the Ko´a Kea hotel along Po´ipu Beach in Kauai it was almost midnight, West Coast time, but only around nine in Hawaii. So I was kind of hungry, but not really. I thought maybe I’d just sit at the hotel’s restaurant bar, the Red Salt, and have a couple of pupus and maybe a glass of wine and then trundle off to bed.

So I’m looking at the cocktail menu, searching for the wines by the glass, when I come across a page listing the house specialties. Now I’m a sucker for interesting cocktails. In fact, when I travel, I only bring home two types of souvenirs: sea salt and cocktail recipes. I probably have at least twenty unique sea salts. But I have well over two hundred one-of-a-kind cocktail recipes. I figure some day I’ll put them all in a book and call it something like Drinks I Have Known. You know the classic Sinatra tune, “My Way”? Well, to paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes, Bad cocktails, I’ve had a few/But then again, too few to mention.

Anyway, the bartender, who looks a bit like Karl Malden back when he was doing “The Streets of San Francisco,” comes over and the first thing he does is what the classic old-timey bartenders always used to do which is to take a clean cloth and wipe the bar in front of me until it’s spotless. I like this. I also really like, in general, bartenders, like this guy, who look like they may have been mixing martinis back in the Mad Men era. You just have to figure that a guy who has really made a career out of mixing drinks but would laugh if you ever called him a mixologist probably could make a pretty damn fine cocktail, and I love damn fine cocktails.

(Sidenote: One of these days, maybe soon, I’m going to tell you how to make the perfect Manhattan—not a perfect Manhattan, which is made with equal parts dry and sweet vermouth, but the perfect Manhattan, which is made with equal parts Dubonet and sweet vermouth. You’d think that it would be impossible to screw up this cocktail since it has only three ingredients and is simple to make, but I’ve ordered them at a hundred different bars over the years and have only had maybe one or two really good ones, the best being at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. But that’s a different story.)

The bartender at the Koa Kea on Kauai makes the perfect Red Coral. Photo by David Lansing.

So the bartender, whose name is Jim, finishes buffing up the bar, puts a single white cloth cocktail napkin carefully in front of me, and asks me what I’d like.

“You got something special?” I ask.

“Yes, sir,” he says without a moment’s hesitation. “A Red Coral.”

Great name, right? I mean, I have no idea what it is, but it just sounds great. Red Coral. Sometimes the drink makes the name. I mean, not to regress, but would a Manhattan taste as fine if it had been called Queens or Bronx? No, sir. No one would ever order a Bronx straight up.

Of course, I order the Red Coral. And Jim makes it right in front of me, another thing I really like. I don’t trust bartenders who go down to the end of the bar and use a bunch of bottles and mixes I can’t see down by the ice sink. It’s just not right. If you’re using good quality ingredients, make the damn drink in front of your customer. That’s what I say.

Another thing I really like: Jim free pours. No guns measuring out a perfect one-ounce shot of some crappy unnamed booze. He tips a bottle up and I silently give it the “one-and-a-two-and-a-three” count, which gives you a good shot-and-a-half pour. Pours everything into a classic steel cocktail shaker, mixes it up good, puts a strainer on it, and pours the frothy red mixture into a good-sized martini glass until the liquid almost starts weeping over the rim of the glass. Damn fine pour.

The drink is a marvel. Boozy (it’s got three different types of Stoli vodka in it) and sweet-tart (the fruit component is a little pomegranate juice with just a touch of grenadine for sweetness). And in the Red Salt bar, with its clean white-and-black décor, the color of the drink just seems right. Like a crimson bikini on a white sand beach.

The only problem I had with it was that it went down so smoothly that, after eight or nine hours of travel and very little food, I was toast before my pupus came. Still, it was worth it. And, fortunately, it was a short walk beneath a full moon to my room.

Ko´a Kea Red Coral

In a cocktail shaker with chipped ice, add:

– 1 1/2 ounces of Stoli vanilla vodka

– 1/2 ounce Stoli cranberry vodka

– 1/2 ounce Stoli raspberry vodka

– 3/4 ounce pomegranate juice

– a splash of grenadine

Shake it up good in the cocktail shaker and strain into a martini glass. The drink will be frothy at first—almost like a smoothie—but then slowly settles into a deep crimson