This comes up a lot because, in Japan, the Loco Moco is probably the most well-known, best marketed dish from Hawai'i. Naturally, people think of it as Hawaiian food. Generally though, Hawaiian food is the term for food that native Hawaiians were eating in some form or other, a long, long time ago, pre-Captain Cook. They did not have beef on the islands back in those days, so there would have been no hamburger on which to place the egg in a loco moco. White rice was also to come later.
I should acknowledge here that a lot of descriptions of Hawaiian cuisine, including the Wikipedia entry at this time of writing, define it not only what native Hawaiians ate back in the day, but as an amalgam of all the food that arrived to the islands along with its diversity of immigrants, beginning with the plantations in the 1800s. I personally disagree with this definition, but I don't mean to be close-minded about it; I can see the logic in calling all things from Hawai'i Hawaiian, as it is the adjective that one would find in the dictionary. But doing so can be problematic in that it doesn't allow for the distinction between early native Hawaiian things and post-contact Hawai'i. This can be a genuine issue; for example, saying that someone is Hawaiian implies at least some native Hawaiian lineage. In my case, I have no Hawaiian ancestry (so far as I know), so I would say that I'm a local Hawai'i boy, but not Hawaiian. This would make a difference on a census form, and it could affect me if I were applying for financial aid to help pay my college tuition, as some loans and grants are specifically for people of native Hawaiian ancestry. If I were to go to a record store and ask to be introduced to some Hawaiian music, I might expect to be pointed in the direction of Keali'i Reichel or Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, both artists from the islands who continue a long tradition of our island music. But I would not expect the clerk to recommend Bruno Mars or Nicole Scherzinger, both of whom were born in Hawai'i. So far as I know, neither of them are of Hawaiian lineage, nor are they trying to perpetuate Hawaiian culture through music. This is not, in my view, to lessen their connection to the islands in any sense. They are to me a homeboy and a homegirl. But the difference is that they're going beyond the islands and taking things into a larger scale. They're pop singers from Hawai'i. They're not Hawaiian, but they're local-born progeny. Hawaiian music and pop music from Hawai'i, both are good for the people who like them, and they're distinct from each other.
So it is with food. If people begin to lump together Hawaiian food with local food, a part of Hawaiian culture will be confounded through this blurring of events.
Below is a video of a Loco Moco. The guy in it is not me; I just found it on YouTube. I wanted to post some Loco Moco picks that I took myself, but I have them stored on a hard drive, and I couldn't find it--I figured this way would be faster.
This Papa Ole Loco Moco is a little bigger than the average kind.
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