Maui is acquiring
a taste for dragon fruit

STAR-BULLETIN FILE Dragon fruit, used by Maui chefs in various recipes, has been described as a combination of kiwi and Concord grape

Three chefs at Maui restaurants I'O and Pacific'O are quoted on their use of dragon fruit in an Aug. 29 story in Nation's Restaurant News, an industry magazine.

It's sort of a restaurant-business equivalent of getting one's name up in lights, at least for a moment. Well, at least until one gets discovered by and receives national exposure on Food Network, anyway.

The article was about dragon fruit, but Kris Keller, Rick Person and Sean Christensen appeared at the beginning of the story, describing the fruit, its flavor and how they use it. ("Red-pink" and scaled like a dragon; as a serving dish for dragon fruit sorbet; a "combination of kiwi and Concord grape;" in salads or other dishes or "as an amuse-bouche or a palate cleanser" were among the comments.)

It turns out dragon fruit is going to be raised on the farm where a restaurant company co-owned by Louis Coulombe produces most of its produce and herbs.

You hear about chef-restaurateurs and gentleman-farmers, but in Hawaii there are not that many restaurateur-farmers. Coulombe believes they are the only ones.

O'o Farm in Kula was started in 2000 so I'O, Pacific'O and The Feast at Lele could become self-sufficient, producewise.

"We're making a big push this month ... trying to make people know that we're farming, recycling as much of the restaurant waste into compost, that we're farming organically," Coulombe said.

O'o Farm is one of two farms Coulombe and his partners established. "One is higher up (in elevation) where we can grow peaches, plums, apples, nectarines and all the crops that need some chill, and we have one at sea level where we grow the tropicals, the papayas, mangoes, bananas and a lot of different exotics," which is where the dragon fruit also will be raised, he said.

"It took us five years to bring the first one to a point where we can show it." The sea-level farm is a year-and-a-half-old and eventually will be incorporated into the restaurant company's plan to add ag-tourism to its business.

Right now, the produce-plots provide plenty for the palates of patrons.

Businesswise, it's not a cheap endeavor, given land and labor costs.

"We do an internal accounting for ourselves where we internally sell the farm product to our restaurants ... It's calculated into our food cost that way," Coulombe said.

The good news for the company is that "we've gotten our production high enough that it's breaking even, so it's not costing us any more than it would to buy from the wholesalers, but we get a better product and we think that maybe with that ag-tourism we'll really be making the difference for us between making a little bit of money, to being able to continue growing the farm aspect of the business."

Businesswise, it's very different from the traditional farm-to-restaurant route, with co-ops and other middlemen in between.

"Whatever we produce is what is sold. If we have too much of a product ... we can change the menu, so there's no loss -- and we always get top dollar for our product," Coulombe said.

Many uses for the produce are found so there is no waste, he said.

Everybody in the restaurant and food service industries boast about fresh ingredients, but few can say, as Coulombe did, "We grow our own" and it is harvested at least twice a week.

"Some of our servers go up to harvest in the morning, bring in the harvest and that's what's served in the evening. It doesn't get any fresher than that."

To resurrect the Food Network reference further up, Coulombe and company will be closed to the public Sept. 26 for a version of the popular show "Iron Chef."

"Two sous chefs (Person and Christensen) will be going around the farm to gather the ingredients they want to use in their cooking and our executive chef (James McDonald) will show up with the secret (main) ingredient," Coulombe said.

"We're making a big deal of it. It's our first annual Iron Chef competition" which is a company-only event. Other chefs may be invited to participate next year, he said.