This is a piece that was killed by the new online food publication, Chow. Bummer for me but hey, it happens. And more fodder for Hawaiirama! This is part 1.

In September 2006, Alan Wong threw a luau. And it was no ordinary luau. Wong was doing the cooking along with some of his top proteges and the food was drop dead amazing. For those who don't know Alan Wong, he took the James Beard Award for best chef in the Pacific Northwest in 1996, a year after opening his eponymous restaurant in a working class neighborhood in Honolulu, Hawaii. For the past decade, Alan Wong's has consistently rated among the top restaurants in the country according to many critics. I've eaten there a dozen times and never had a meal that was less than spectacular. Alan called this special luau "New Wave Luau: 2." (Warning -- annoying music with hyperlink) The luau will bring together the many talented chefs who have passed through his kitchen, just as Wong himself passed through the kitchen of the Andres Soltner, the French maestro who manned the piano for decades at Lutece in New York City.

The event's name was a play off his bestselling cookbook the "New Wave Luau", which has become something of a Bible for home cooks seeking to replicate the flavors of Hawaii and its so-called Hawaii Regional Cuisine, or HRC. This style fuses east and west but with strong overtones of Hawaii's own unique culinary melting pot. The HRC movement, founded by fellow celeb chef Roy Yamaguchi, Wong and others, also emphasized local products, like Alice Waters but with an Asian, tropical tilt. Think mango and papayas, bok choi and choi sum alongside luscious locally grown asparagus and tomatoes, a world where truffle oil and ponzu co-exist happily on the plate yet the shoyu and tofu are both made in Hawaii.

The New Wave Luau: Part II is supposed signify the next generation and the next development of HRC. And it has changed -- some. "My sauces are more acidic and less sweet. We don't pineapple or papaya on the plate as much and we don't build our entrees a mile high," he says. But a look through the list of Wong's graduates who will be tending the toque at the event reveals many are cooking in resort kitchens of modest repute or small, relatively unknown store-front restaurants. Not to say that Wong's grads lack talent. Hawaii's resorts are difficult places for innovative chefs, between cost pressures and union kitchen staffs. And Hawaii's real estate is so pricey that few young chefs have the cojones to sign a lease on their own. A storefront is often all they can afford. Regardless this implies that the rule for great food cities, such as New York and San Francisco -- great restaurants tend to beget more great restaurants -- has short-circuited here in the islands. NEXT: PART 2.

—Alex, 10/23/06