WELCOME TO SMOKIN FIRE FISH
Experience the Hawaiian Food Story
In some parts of the world it seems appropriate to look back nostalgically to the past, to an authentic food based on local ingredients, but such a search for past authenticity is moot in Hawaii. My encounters with Hawaii’s food are just one recent echo of the encounters of a long succession of immigrants who have labored to create foods in these distant Islands, to turn a wilderness into a Paradise.
Rachel Laudan, The Food Paradise
Our Story
Smokin Fire Fish was birthed out of Chef Chris' desire to share the food story of the Hawaiian Islands to Portland. Hawaiian Local Food came about because Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Portugese, Filipino, and Puerto Rican immigrants used the ingredients they had available to them, along with the food memories they brought with them from their homelands. Food was the universal language that brought workers from such diverse backgrounds together and formed community.
Similarly, Chef Chris' Food Story was formed by a life that led him to home and professional kitchens in Hawaii, Korea, Micronesia, Palau, Southern California, the Phillippines, and more. He's always held Hawaiian Local Cuisine dear to his heart because the story so closely reflected his own culinary education.
Chef Chris' heart is to introduce the core of Asian foods that influenced Hawaiian Cuisine to honor his ancestors and the countries that played a major part in the Hawaiian Food Culture. He hopes to educate and honor the countries that he has been privileged to learn from.
Join us on a food journey to discover how the foods of Asia and the South Pacific got remixed into what is known as Hawaiian Local Food.