Yesterday, I posted about where to sleep in Kauai. Today, I want to tell you about how we ate! We kept it mostly Paleo. I only had 2 cheats, ice cream, which ended up not even being worth it :(, and fish tacos on homemade corn tortillas, which were absolutely worth it! Although, Hawaii is quite expensive, we found that if you choose lodging with a kitchen and shop at the farmer’s markets, you can have a fairly affordable vacation!
We mostly cooked, but by the time we had dinner every night it was dark and the lighting was poor, so I don’t have a lot of photos to share with you. But, I do plan to recreate some of the more memorable meals and share them here. We cooked simply, with minimal ingredients. Some of my favorite meals included fresh snapper topped with a papaya/avocado salsa, grilled grassfed rib-eye with chimichurri, and poke with farmer’s market greens.
Here is how our game plan went. When we arrived, we made a quick pit-stop at Costco near the airport for a few bulk items. We picked up a case of San Pellegrino (these were SO refreshing to have around), a case of Kona beer (for the half-paleo husband), pasture raised eggs, kalua pork and some avocados. Costco in Kauai has pasture raised eggs! We were very surprised to find that, but the eggs from the farmers market were much tastier.
After we got settled, we headed to Hanalei Harvest Market. Produce here is VERY expensive. We only picked up a couple of things for Indy, some papaya and sweet potato. Luckily I had brought ghee for her from home! We then popped into the Hanalei Coffee Roasters to pick up some really good, fresh ground coffee for the week.
On Tuesday we hit the Hanalei Farmer’s market, there is also a Saturday market in Hanalei. This is where we did the majority of our shopping. The prices are very reasonable and they have really fun tropical fruits to try! I bought every fruit that I had never seen before. I really liked the rambutan, it had a jelly like texture and tasted like candy!
<<<Indy looking very serious at the farmer’s market>>>
We also picked up really good fish at Kilauea Fish Market. They have poke here with no soy sauce, just some sesame oil! This place is near the lighthouse, so we stopped in and checked out the lighthouse and grabbed some poke for dinner. Our siblings told us about a gas station that sells grass-fed beef! Who would have thought? It is the Chevron in the Princeville Center. I thought this was Kauai’s best kept secret! The meat is really delicious and very reasonably priced. It comes in every Thursday around noon. We arrived around 5PM and there was still plenty to choose from! We picked up some rib-eyes and NY steaks.
We only ate a few meals out. We had some amazing ono tacos on homemade corn tortillas from Chalupa’s food truck in Old Koloa Town. These were completely worth the cheat! The other memorable meal out was at Bar Acuda in Hanalei. This place was really cute and used very fresh ingredients, making it easy to keep it paleo. They also gave Indy a bowl of fish roe, which she devoured! Nom-nom paleo offers a detailed review of Bar Acuda here. It gets really busy, so it is best to make a reservation.
The one cheat I regretted, was the ice-cream at Lappert’s. It had 4.5 stars on yelp, but I found the ice-cream to be way too sweet. On a positive note, we had our only family photo from the trip taken right after!
Have you been to Kauai? Which markets and restaurants do you recommend?
I ate at Chalupas too and LOVED it.
That’s awesome! The fish tacos were SO good!