Samuel Hideo Yamashita is the Henry E. Sheffield
Professor of History at Pomona College.
Robert Ji-Song Ku is associate professor of Asian
and Asian American studies at Binghamton University of the State
University of New York.
Christine R. Yano is professor of anthropology at
the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
The book is valuable in its scholarly review of existing articles,
books and some first-hand interviews. . . . Yamashita's "Hawai'i
Regional Cuisine" book is a valuable addition to our food history
in Hawai'i. Let's hope he continues the research.--Lynette Lo Tom
"The Hawai'i Herald"
One of the strong points of this book is the use of interviews. In
addition to the 12 original founders of Hawai'i Regional Cuisine,
Yamashita goes to great lengths to bring in the voices of workers
and new chefs to humanize this continuing story. . . . [He] has
accomplished what he set out to do: make a wonderful contribution
to U.S. food history and Hawai'i's history. Indeed, Yamashita's own
transformation from a specialist on Japan into a food historian
over the past 15 years underscores his dedication to the field, and
leaves the reader asking for seconds.--Jonathan Van Harmelen "Nichi
Bei Weekly"
For every imaginary bite you might take while reading this
essential book, Yamashita seasons our perspective with his bracing
account of how invasion and colonialism decimated the Pacific
Rim--preparing the ground, so to speak. It's this undercurrent that
made the regional cuisine movement more than just about locally
sourced greens and tableside bottles of chili pepper water at fancy
restaurants.--Don Wallace "HONOLULU Magazine (online)"
From plantation food sharing to Hawai'i Regional Cuisine, this
magnificent book reaffirms the insight that food cultures, like
diasporas, flow across national borders and in the transactions
establish connections and create new ideas and practices. Moreover,
the islands' regional cuisine implicates the foundations of
Hawaiian food culture, including horticulture, aquaculture, and
food preparation and consumption, and Hawai'i's history of
conquest, colonization, migrant labor, and resistance. In sum,
Hawai'i Regional Cuisine offers substance as well as delightful
pleasures.--Gary Y. Okihiro, professor emeritus, Columbia
University and visiting professor, Yale University
There is little theorization on the nature of the relationship
between a social movement and changes in everyday aesthetic
judgment that leads to the redefinition of good food. In Hawai'i
Regional Cuisine Sam Yamashita deftly navigates that relationship
between professionalism, aesthetic form, and local cultural
assertion, with aplomb and style, by digging deep into the mundane
materiality of shoyu and chili pepper water. He shows us how
everything began to change in 1991 when the racially crafted
separation between cuisine and local cooking began to fall apart in
the practices of Hawaiian chefs.--Krishnendu Ray, author of The
Migrant's Table and The Ethnic Restaurateur
Thirty years ago the joke was that the restaurant food was reason
never to visit Hawai'i. In this excellent study, Sam Yamashita
brings an insider's knowledge and a historian's rigor to explaining
how a dozen pioneering chefs reversed this judgment. In doing so,
they created a new genre of high cuisine, shattered the race,
gender, and class barriers of culinary industry in the Islands, and
fostered fresh ways of fishing and farming. A telling tale of what
a few determined and intelligent people can accomplish.--Rachel
Laudan, author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary
Heritage and Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
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