ABOVE: Noodles made from "sea asparagus," an alga farmed on Oahu's North Shore, at Adela's Country Eatery. The Kaneohe restaurant has long been noodling around with sustainable, locally sourced ingredients.
Six years ago, husband and wife Richard and Millie Chan opened Adela's Country Eatery in Kaneohe, Oahu, with their friend Adela Visitacion. Their specialty is noodles, house-made with local ingredients in a variety of colors: rose taupe kalo (taro), neon green malunggay (moringa), yellow ulu (breadfruit), purple uala (sweet potato) and pale green avocado. Recently, Chan began to think about what was next and contacted the University of Hawaii to ask who was working on creating food products from the sea. Adela's was already using the most sustainable ingredients from the land. Now it was time to tap into Hawaii's largest resource.
Rock Du of UH's Department of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering answered the call. Du studies the nutritional value of algae because it will help Hawaii, which has limited ag land and imports up to 85 percent of its food, on its path to food security. Meeting Chan was kismet: Du wanted to test his theories, and Chan wanted to make food from the sea. Together they created Aunty's Hapa Hawaiian Food Lab and have been experimenting with noodle and cheesecake recipes using spirulina, ogo (seaweed) and sea asparagus grown from seed sourced at Olakai Aquaponics Farm on Oahu's North Shore.
The current noodle iterations have a chow mein-like texture—bouncy like ramen but served like pasta, tossed with Adela's signature sauces, such as garlic butter with portobello mushrooms, moringa sauce and coconut cream. By themselves the noodles have a faint brininess, but the allure is their nutritional value: high in omega-3 fatty acids, protein, vitamins and minerals. "It's something new," Du says. "In the beginning we had a lot of different opinions about the flavor profile, consistency, mouthfeel. But we're getting close to perfecting it."
Rock Du and Richard Chan in the laboratory in Adela's Country Eatery.
Last Earth Day, April 22, Adela's welcomed the public to Aunty's Hapa Hawaiian Food Lab to learn about Du's research and sample the new noodles. The saltwater tank is a miniature marine eco-farm. Inside, ogo from Kahuku thrives in clear water, kept clean by sea asparagus growing on top: The succulent acts as a protein skimmer and natural filter. The low-maintenance system is not only sustainable, it shows that anyone can grow these foods at home.
But until then there's always the mad noodle science going on at Adela's. "I'm not reinventing the noodle," Chan says. "I just want to build food independence by replacing part of the grain with ingredients sustainably grown in Hawaii."
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