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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Serving up danger
on the roadsideThe first time I drove by this particular house, there was a crude sign in the front yard advertising pasteles for sale.
It was so charming, I almost stopped, until I realized that I had no idea what a pastele was. When I found out later that a pastele is a mixture of green banana and pork, wrapped in ti or banana leaves and boiled, I was glad I hadn't stopped. Call me traditional, but in my book, bananas go with ice cream and chocolate syrup, not swine.
When I drove by the house a while later, the menu had grown to pasteles and laulau. In recent months it has expanded to include Spanish rice and pickled onion. There's now a sign on the fence posting the hours of operation. For a culinary enterprise being run out of ice chests on a driveway, business was booming. Which means it won't be long until it's shut down. If there's one thing neighbors will not abide, it's a successful financial venture taking place right under their noses.
Since I don't live in the neighborhood, I'm not jealous of folks who have managed to find a way to make a few bucks on the side. Roadside vendors are a tradition in Hawaii. You can always buy flowers or fresh fish or fruit as you cruise around the island.
Buying cooked food from unlicensed vendors seems a bit more dicey. I'm not a fan of big government, but I am a big fan of the government making sure that people who sell food to others wash their hands after going to the potty and assuring that the food is prepared without the assistance of roaches or other creepy-crawlies.
I was grossed out after watching a kid in a well-known fast-food roast beef sandwich restaurant rub his hands through his hair and then use those very same hands to place roast beef on a bun. But at least the offense happened before my eyes and I could ask the restaurant manager if he would kindly dip the kid's hands in boiling water before he got to my order.
TO BUY FOOD from a roadside vender, you have to be something of a thrill seeker. You are probably OK on the pickled onions or pickled mango. The vinegar kills off all life forms except the insidious Mayogermeous gaggus spores that cling to the inside of any empty mayonnaise jar, no matter how many times it's been cleaned.
Health officials recently warned that anyone buying food from roadside venders are "playing Russian roulette," although it might be more accurate to say they are playing "parasite poker," "E. coli craps" or "the salmonella slots."
It might be better for the owners of the pastele house if their neighbors rat them out to the health cops and they are forced to close. If I were operating an unlicensed eatery out of my house, I'd live in fear that the first time one of my customers came down with a tummy ache, they'd end up owning the place. And that would steam me like a manapua. A licensed one.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com