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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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Accurate Plumbing

<title>🚧 Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Big sister duties</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @AccuratePlumbingHawaii, making his sister do all the heavy lifting.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Big sister duties

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Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 — the new pop-up operating in the former space of The Pig & The Lady in Chinatown — says her nickname came from two different situations.

“Guava” because she would go to Andy’s Sandwiches & Smoothies in Mānoa.

“I went almost every day in high school to get a guava cream smoothie that fixed all my problems," she says. “My Instagram (account) was always 

[{"type":"text","text":"“Mama” pays homage to Cadavona’s time living in New York City."}]

“I started feeding people during the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City,” she says. “Everyone missed their mom’s cooking; feeling safe, loved and nurtured. I called myself ‘Mama Guava’ to provide that care for myself and the community around me.”

Mama Guava’s pop-up launches the first week of October. It will be open for lunch from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays for the next five to six months. Takeout will also be available, and Cadavona plans to accept catering orders.

Cadavona, who was working in New York for the past six years — and went back and forth from the East Coast to Hawai

i this year for private chef gigs and events — officially moved back to O

ahu last month to prepare for the pop-up. She says she was “born into” cooking, since her entire family cooks, and started out in the food industry by helping with her mom’s banana lumpia side business.

“I went to Cinnabon’s at age 15; I stayed around food, moving onto Zippy’s, Nobu, The Pig & The Lady, and MW Restaurant before moving to New York City,” she says. This is happening because one day, I asked Andrew (Le), ‘Can I do a pop-up dinner one night in September?’ and he said, ‘How about six months?’

“Andrew (from The Pig & The Lady) has been a huge influence on my career as a chef,” she adds. “I worked here 10 years ago when I was a kid. He really shaped my palate and work ethic, so I’m really happy and grateful to be in this space.”

Cadavona started doing pop-ups in New York City because she wanted the community to experience the heart behind Hawai

i food,” she says. “I wanted them to taste the love that comes from our food, because I was missing it bad and I knew how it made me feel. I wanted them to feel the same way.

“My food (for the pop-up) is Filipino-inspired, but it’s mostly everything that I like to eat and that I enjoy cooking myself, with some influences of New York City,” she adds.

[{"type":"text","text":"We got a preview of the pop-up’s menu during a recent media event."}]

The guava tea — green tea with calamansi, guava and mint — is a refreshing option on a hot afternoon. The citrusy calamansi flavor is nicely balanced by the sweeter guava.

Meanwhile, the banana turon matcha latte is like a banana lumpia in drink form. Served cold, it’s thicker and on the sweeter side, as far as matcha lattes go, but we enjoyed the flavor, which is reminiscent of the popular Filipino street food. 

Lunch began with a watermelon salad, comprising cherry tomatoes and mint tea vinaigrette. While the cubed watermelon was refreshing, the dish featured a strong vinegary flavor, due to the plentiful vinaigrette.

Banh xeo is a popular savory Vietnamese dish that typically features a thin crepe filled with a protein (like pork) and veggies, and is served with fresh lettuce. This unique version features a Filipino twist, as the annatto (reddish-orange hued) crepe is filled with longanisa and egg, and served with a chili vinegar. Cadavona notes that she likes longanisa and mung beans. The crispy crepe delivers a satisfying crunch, while the fresh herbs complement its savory filling.

“I cooked Vietnamese food for one third of my career — here at The Pig and The Lady, and in New York,” Cadavona says.

The tako poke comes on a bed of rice with a side of salt and vinegar chicken skin “chips.” Tako sometimes has a rubbery texture; not so with this version. The salt and vinegar chicken skin “chips” had us swooning because of their delicate, ultra-crispy texture.

Of the dishes we tried, the curry fried fish was my favorite. The fried fish is served with dill yogurt, coleslaw, pickled onions, fresh dill and mint atop roti bread. The roti bread pays homage to Cadavona’s love for Indian and Singaporean cuisine.

“I was going to do a curry dip, but I thought it would be more fun to dust the curry fresh on top (of the fried fish), so you get the aroma with the fresh herbs,” she explains. “You cut it down the middle and eat it like a taco.”

This pancit “pad see ew” features the wide noodles characteristic of the Thai stir-fried dish, but with ingredients you’d normally find in pancit.

“We are using local veal, so it’s more tender and a lot leaner,” Cadavona says. “It has everything a pancit would have — celery, all the vegetables — and I added bean sprouts for texture. There are fried shallots, fresh scallions and a hint of calamansi.”

Flavorful and comforting, Mo’s hot pot broth is inspired by what Cadavona eats when she’s craving hot pot. For the pop-up, the broth will be served with sliced pork belly, blanched watercress, fish sauce, fresh cilantro stems, scallions and cracked black pepper.

“I really like making soups, and I needed a soup on the menu,” she says.

Cadavona’s specialty dessert is banana lumpia, a fitting tribute to her days of helping her mom’s business.

“Ever since I was a kid, I have been making banana lumpia,” she says. “We would get thousands of orders. It’s going to be my opening dessert, until we bring in more and we have the bandwidth.”

Once the pop-up starts, Cadavona says customers can look forward to breakfast/brunch in the near future.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I truly believe in simple food done well,” she says."}]

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Open 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, starting in October  

Mama Guava Monique 092225

<title>🚧 Mama Guava is Chinatown’s new Filipino-inspired pop-up</title>

The pop-up, located in the former space of The Pig & The Lady, is opening the first week of October for lunch only. Chef/owner Monique Cadavona explains the menu is based on what she likes to eat and cook, along with both Hawaiʻi and New York influences.

Mama Guava is Chinatown’s new Filipino-inspired pop-up

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Government & Politics

Kevin Auger, the director-designate of the City and of County of Honolulu's 

newly formed Department of Housing and Land Management

, says Iwiliei-Kapālama is a model, or pilot, of what the future of transit-oriented development can be — mixed-income communities that are walkable, climate-ready and connected.

"It's not just about what gets built, but about how we build it — with transparency, with urgency and with people at the center of every decision," he told Aloha State Daily in an email.

There have been long-term plans in the works for the redevelopment of the area, and just last week, the city took a step forward in its effort to do so.

, or RFP, looking for a multidisciplinary planning and development team to prepare a TOD plan dubbed "Transforming Iwilei-Kapālama: Connecting People and Places,"  which the RFP says is a "coordinated TOD and infrastructure investment program for development around the Iwilei-Kapālama sub-corridor." 

"In plain terms," Auger says, "the city is trying to go beyond just talking about future growth and planning, actually beginning to activate the planning efforts with real developments that can deliver more affordable housing. Over the years, many plans have outlined what a walkable, transit-oriented, affordable neighborhood could look like in Iwilei-Kapālama — this effort is about putting those ideas into action. It’s the difference between having a blueprint and starting construction."

The effort is spearheaded by DHLM and the city Department of Transportation Services.

high-opportunity TOD district," the city said in a June 4 announcement that this is the first time the Iwilei-Kapālama subcorridor will be master planned through a formalized joint city and state effort. The city noted, too, that the area includes major city and state properties, direct access to two Skyline stations, and proximity to existing parks, schools and public services. 

Auger says that this effort is "directly aligned" with the city's 2025 to 2028 strategic housing plan 

, "which, again, calls for an aggressive approach to active public land to deliver more affordable housing, especially around transit."

The city owns about 7 acres within the Kūwili Station TOD redevelopment area, he says, including 

Iwilei Center and the former First Hawaiian Bank building

 on North King Street, as well as several parcels near the Kūwili station that were acquired to "support affordable housing and transit-oriented development."

"Altogether, more than 75% of land in the district is under city or state control, making it one of the rare areas where large-scale, publicly guided redevelopment is truly possible."

For Auger, this effort is the kind of work the city's housing plan envisioned: coordinated, focused on implementation and rooted in long-term community impact.

"What makes Iwilei-Kapālama so exciting is the scale of what's possible," he said. "We're not just talking about one building or one project — we're talking about a chance to shape an entire complete neighborhood, built around transit, with housing, mobility and infrastructure planned together from the ground up."

These types of public-private and intergovernmental partnerships are essential, he says. 

"No single agency can tackle housing alone. But by bringing together the city, the state and the development community under a shared roadmap, we can move faster, smarter and more equitably. This RFP sets that roadmap in motion."

This is different from, but closely related to, a request for qualifications, or RFQ, issued earlier this year for the 

redevelopment of the city-owned Iwilei Center

Auger says that RFQ is a "site-specific solicitation to select a development partner for that one city-owned property, which occupies approximately four acres of land."

By contrast, "Transforming Iwilei-Kapālama: Connecting People and Places" is a "district-wide initiative" to master-plan the 17-acre Kūwili Station Transit Oriented Development area and coordinate infrastructure and connectivity efforts across the broader Iwilei-Kapālama Skyline sub-corridor, he said.

"Together, these two efforts are strategically timed to be undertaken as parallel," Auger says, also noting that the master-planning effort ensures that projects like the Iwilei Center redevelopment aren't being done in isolation, "but instead help advance a larger vision for a walkable, transit-connected, mixed-income neighborhood centered around the Kūwili and Niuhelewai rail stations."

According to the city, the RFP initiative is backed by a $2 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration's TOD Pilot Program, awarded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, along with a $700,000 State TOD Capital Improvement Planning Grant from the Office of Planning and Sustainable Development.

Proposals are due by noon June 26. More information can be 

0605 0848 Iwilei Kuwili Reimagined

<title>🚧 Honolulu takes next step in Iwilei-Kapālama redevelopment</title>

The city has put out a request for proposals to find a multidisciplinary planning and development team to prepare a transit-oriented development plan dubbed "Transforming Iwilei-Kapālama: Connecting People and Places."

Honolulu takes next step in Iwilei-Kapālama redevelopment

Arts & Entertainment

Hawaii History

For Larry Kimura, language is more than the nouns, verbs and object markers.

“We’re talking about [the] way a people behave and a way a people live their lives,” he said. ”… Language is important, very key, very vital in offering you a better way of living.”

Kimura, a professor of Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, is often called the godfather of the Hawaiian language revitalization movement. He was "instrumental in the conceptualization and realization of core programs created in the 1980s that brought Hawaiian language to the spotlight,” his university bio notes.

Kimura was a member of ‘Aha Pūnana Leo founding team and its first president. He says ‘Aha Pūnana Leo — the first Hawaiian medium preschool which now has a number of locations across the Islands — helped initiate the establishment of Hawaiian immersion programs within the state Department of Education.

He also was a producer and coordinator of Ka Leo Hawai‘i, a radio show that ran from 1972 to 1988, where Kimura interviewed individuals across the Islands who were among the last traditional native speakers of the language, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi; a founding director of  Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center at UH-Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language, Ka Haka ‘Ula o Ke‘elikōlani; helped develop culture-based education programs at what is now known as ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center; lead of Kaniʻāina, a digital voice collection of Native Hawaiian speakers, and more, according to his biography.

[{"text":"Early life","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]

Kimura was raised in the Hawai‘i Island community of Waimea, in a Japanese and Hawaiian family.

His father was a native speaker of Japanese and his mother was a native speaker of the Hawaiian language. His maternal grandfather was monolingual and only spoke Hawaiian, Kimura said, while his maternal grandmother, whose first and preferred language was Hawaiian, spoke little English.

“But by the time we came, and there were four of us, things had changed a lot, and one major impact was the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.”

Although the bombing took place before he was born in 1946, Kimura said it affected the “social and political situation” of their upbringing. The ideal promoted at that time was to become an American, and to do so, you needed to speak English, he said.

Kimura said he heard both the Hawaiian and Japanese languages spoken daily, “but we were always, always reminded that we needed to speak good English in order to get ahead in this world.”

He later attended Kamehameha Schools on O‘ahu, which offered a several weeks-long enrichment course in the Hawaiian language during his eighth-grade year. But when he was in high school, Kimura said Hawaiian language was offered as an elective course.

He took the class through his 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade years. Kimura said the class “made me become fluent enough to begin to write to my grandmother in Hawaiian because I was a boarder in Honolulu.”

“That’s how my grandmother discovered, I guess, ‘oh, this mo‘opuna, this little grandson, is into Hawaiian. She never knew that I was always interested in Hawaiian.”

[{"text":"A brief history","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]

 by the state Department of Education, Hawaiian was the main language used in Hawai‘i’s public education system when it was established by King Kamehameha III in 1840.

But English eventually became the medium of instruction, and three years after the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, teaching and learning in Hawaiian was banned in public education, the DOE website states.

“Many Hawaiian elders have told of being punished for speaking Hawaiian at school. Hawaiian language would not be heard in schools for the next four generations,” the website notes.

The state Legislature voted to remove the 90-year ban in 1986, and the 

 that in 1987, it worked with the DOE to “develop curriculum for the first elementary indigenous language immersion classes in the U.S.“ The first 

, or Hawaiian language immersion schools, were established that year at Keaukaha Elementary in Hilo and Waiau Elementary in Pearl City, the site states.

In 2019, UH-Hilo launched Kaniʻāina, or “Voices of the Land,” a digital, spoken-language repository that includes recordings of Ka Leo Hawai‘i.

 that Hawaiian was the predominant language in Hawaii, but by 1985, fewer than 50 children were Native speakers.

Kimura estimates that there were fewer than 2,000 Native speakers in the early 1970s, most of whom were in their senior years, but census estimates show more than 25,000 people now speak Hawaiian at home, he says. 

[{"text":"Kimura says he knows how valuable the Hawaiian language is.","type":"text"}]

“It is unique to a people, like all the languages of the world are unique to a people, and all the languages of the world have not only a uniqueness, but value and … beauty, a way of living life on earth. … The word for Hawaiian is kanaka, which is just a person, a human being, making ourselves, humankind better for what we are.”

[{"text":"But work to perpetuate the language continues.","type":"text"}]

Kimura, for example, has given Hawaiian names to astronomical discoveries made in Hawaii.

That includes the first black hole to ever be photographed, which was detected with the help of telescopes on Maunakea. Called  Pōwehi, or "embellished dark source of unending creation," the name was sourced from the Kumulipo, a Hawaiian creation chant, according to a 

 that UH-Hilo would lead a three-university consortium that was awarded a five-year, $6.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Native American Language Resource Center. This is the first award of its kind to “lead, advocate for and implement training and resource development for indigenous language education pathways in the U.S.,” the university said at that time. Kimura told Aloha State Daily that representatives from various endangered languages will meet with an advisory committee in March.  

Larry Kimura 0125

<title>🚧 UH-Hilo professor helps perpetuate the Hawaiian language</title>

Growing up, Larry Kimura heard Hawaiian spoken at home but didn't have a chance to really learn the language until boarding as a student at Kamehameha Schools. In the decades since, he has worked to save the language, doing everything from recording then-rare native speakers in the ‘70s to now naming astronomical discoveries made by Hawaii's telescopes.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Big sister duties

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Big sister duties

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Daddy Day Care

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Man’s best friend

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Fruitful tree

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Morning kine action

Most read