We had Ono Seafood's Hawaiian Style Poke and Taro Brand Poi at the Pipi Kaula Prestige Pupu Potluck. So judge Soft Warm Juicy gave us a demonstration of how to eat this classic local grinds combo. Some folks say poke taste best with the poi, not with the rice, but with the poi.
At the blind tastings, we usually do a small pupu potluck so we have other stuffs to munch on besides the taste tested food. So far, people been going all out and bringing some winnah grinds. Here's a quick video highlight of some of the pupu potluck at the Pipi Kaula Prestige.
The Pipi Kaula Prestige was born out of a friendly arguement, between two friends, about who has the best pipi kaula....Highway Inn or Helena's Hawaiian Food. Tempers flared and nostrils too as they exchanged passionate words about their beloved pipi kaulas. Alas, there was only one way to settle this dispute. And so began the quest for the Pipi Kaula Prestige.
The Pipi Kaula Prestige was born out of a friendly arguement, between two friends, about who has the best pipi kaula...Highway Inn or Helena's. There was only one way to settle the dispute.
First thing, we came up with a list of about 5 competitors which were the popular places. Then after asking around, we found a handful of other places that made ono pipi kaula. We didn't know there were that many places to get pipi kaula. Lucky thing we asked around or we would've excluded some fierce competitors.
Second thing, we found out Highway Inn get 2 styles of pipi kaula, wet and dry style. At first we figured we was only tasting dry style pipi kaula. But then somebody pointed out that Helena's and People's Cafe pipikaula is semi-wet so do we exclude them for being half wet/half dry? In the end, we said, "if they call it pipi kaula on their menu, then we'll include it."
Third thing, some of the pipi kaula (i.e. Helena's short rib pipi kaula) is easily recognizable due to the short rib bone. We decided to try our best to disguise the identity by removing the bone and cutting the meat in to bite size pieces about 1 inch. To keep the playing field as level as possible, we did this for all the competitors.
Last thing, since we altered the original presentation of the pipi kaula by cutting in to bite size pieces, the judges only scored the competitors according to taste (70%) and texture (30%).
We had the judges sit at a table and had a blind server bring out the competitors one by one in random order. Prior to the tasting the judges discussed what they were looking for in a winnah pipi kaula. Since the pipi kaulas were refrigerated for short while, the blind server microwaved each competitor for about 30-45 seconds to bring them up to room temperature just before serving them to the judges. After the judges tasted each one, all the pipi kaula were made available for the judges to revisit before submitting their final scores.
