Kauai Is Heaven For Snackage Lovers!

Please welcome back my wife, Dorothy, for another guest post! She sure has an eye, and taste, for some intriguing snacking in Kauai.

Squid-flavored chips. Love them. Ono means good in Hawaiian

The population of Kauai may be small—around 70,000 residents—but they come from all over the world. And everyone loves snacks.  To satisfy these folks and tempt curious others like us, Kauai offers a huge selection of snacks from mainland U.S. and Asia.

Greg grew up in Shanghai, where he and his brother became addicted to chan pui mui, dried plums seasoned with licorice, sugar, and salt. You can’t just reach into the package, grab a couple, and pop them into your mouth. No, you need to work your way through three layers of different kinds of paper to reach each moist, cellophane-wrapped flavorful plum.

When Greg and his brother, Bob, were kids in San Francisco, they bought boxes of Wong Wing Kee preserved plums and raced each other to see how fast they could scarf down the most.

If you want your plums without so much work, you can go Hawaiian, and buy a bag of red li hing mui, which are only seasoned by salt and sugar. At first bite these plums may be off-putting, but they quickly can become almost addictive.  You can even buy li hing powder made up of ground up plums, including the pits, to sprinkle on fresh fruit or ice cream.

But warning here: that powder, or the plums themselves, are often sweetened at least in part by aspartame, a powerful chemical sweetener that can linger after the fruit is gone. Aspartame may have some negative health effects for some people. We only by the plums flavored with sugar and salt.

Neither of us either likes or trusts aspartame, so we always read the labels on the bags of dried fruits. Once you find you really like chan pui mui, you are happy to carry a handful of wrapped fruit in purse or pocket in case you get a case of the eats between meals. Chan pui mui can also help lessen nausea on a whale watching or Na Pali coast voyage.

Another popular type of snackage here is arare, Japanese crunchy crispy rice crackers that are seasoned by soy sauce and maybe other seasonings.  They often appear in different shapes and often in bags with mixed shapes. Arare are also sometimes part of a bag of mixed goodies, labeled ‘King’s choice” or some other fancy name.

Pick up a package that looks appealing and read the label to find out what’s inside the bag. Maybe buy a couple of bags and be a taste explorer.

Japanese fried peas, either coated with spicy wasabi or just with a delightful crunchy coating are popular as well.

Just look all the choices available to you!

Another category of snacks not familiar to most mainlanders is dried seafood of various sorts—Costco has big bags of dried squid, octopus, ahi (tuna) and more.

Bags and bags of tempura squid snack at Costco

And lastly, of course there are the usual variety of familiar mainland chips and candies. The locally made potato chips, plain or onion-flavored, are terrific.

So, if you come to Kaua’i and love to snack, check out local stores such as Times market and also Costco, if you’re a member.  There’s lots of snack exploration to add to your list of activities.