Adela Visitacion and friend Millie Chan teamed on Adela’s Country Eatery in 2019 in Kaneohe. The duo makes pasta in-house that incorporates colors and flavors from local ingredients like avocado, moringa, Okinawan sweet potato, and ulu (breadfruit). Taro special is particularly memorable, pairing earthy purple pasta with shrimp, taro leaves, mushrooms and coconut cream sauce.

James Martin (da bald guy) parks his sea blue food truck next to blue picnic tables in the Kahuku Sugar Mill parking lot on Oahu’s North Shore. His boldly flavored plate lunches include peeled garlic butter shrimp, furikake crusted salmon drizzled with poke sauce, and chopped rib eye steak tossed with caramelized onions and Hawaiian BBQ sauce. Of course rice and mac salad are plentiful.

The North Shore is most famous for surfing, but eaters are more interested in the shrimp trucks. For a long time, the big debate over shrimp supremacy raged between Romy’s and Giovanni’s. The two establishments are down the street from each other. Romy’s graduated to brick and mortar and raises its own shrimp on-site, but I prefer the greasier, more flavor forward Giovanni’s. Their heavily graffiti’d shrimp truck offers several varieties, but traditional Shrimp Scampi remains the truck’s north star.

Leonard DoRego, a descendant of Portuguese immigrants, opened his eponymous bakery with wife Margaret in 1952 and soon after started offering malasadas. The original Kaimuki location still sells different baked goods. Really though, it’s all about donuts, and at their four Malasadamobiles on Oahu sell only malasadas. The O.G. malasada is warm, sugar dusted, egg rich and almost custardy inside. Leonard’s staffers also coat the donuts in li hing mui sugar, which is powerfully sweet and tart. The version with haupia (coconut) custard is also an afterthought by comparison, though you should consider malasadas filled with guava custard.