Winter hours through March — Kimo's fishing Monday and Tuesday mornings. Evenings are the best time to talk story.

Home-kitchen catering · Hawai'i Island · Since 2003

Grinds made
the way Auntie
and Uncle cook.

Plate lunch, poke bars, laulau, and kalua pig from the imu — cooked slow, seasoned right, packed into real foil pans because that's how everybody's family does it. We cook for weddings under the tent, first-baby luau, grad parties, and small weeknight gatherings for folks who heard about us from somebody's cousin.

Where we go
Hilo, Puna, Ka'ū, Kona, Waimea, Hāmākua, Volcano
How to book
By referral. Weekends first. Plan 6–12 weeks out.
What we cook
Plate lunch, poke bar, pūpū trays, full imu luau

We cap the calendar at about forty jobs a year. Thirty-seven are already on the board for this year. Two open dates remain for fall.

Plate Lunch

Two-scoop rice, one scoop mac, and your choice of kalbi, mochiko chicken, shoyu pork, or garlic shrimp. Packed hot in a clamshell or laid out buffet-style with a sterno line and chafers.

Poke Bar

Ahi shoyu, spicy ahi, tako, limu-style, salmon shoyu — scooped to order from the bowl at your event. We pick up fish at the Suisan auction the morning of. Nothing sits.

Imu Luau

For the big milestones. Kalua pig from the pit, laulau, lomi salmon, poi, chicken long rice, haupia. Ten-to-twelve-week lead time because we dig the imu properly.

Twenty-two years of feeding families.

We started cooking for folks out of our Pāhoa kitchen back when our oldest was still in diapers. A neighbor from down Kahakai Boulevard asked if we could do the food for her daughter's eighth-grade graduation — Mele said yes before she finished the sentence. Then her sister called. Then the cousin on Kona side. We never really advertised. The phone just kept ringing, and one day we bought a second rice cooker, then a third, then an eighteen-quart Zojirushi that still runs the big jobs.

These days we cook for maybe forty gatherings a year. Everything is made the day of the event in real pans — not catering trays flown in from somewhere. If we can't drive it to you the same morning, we don't take the booking. That's the rule. Haupia gets made the night before because it has to set. Everything else is cooked after sunrise.

More about how we got here →

Recent gatherings

A small sample from the last season. Names shortened out of respect for our families.

  • Sep · Waimea Wedding reception under a tent on the Parker side. 120 guests. Kalbi, mochiko chicken, poke bar, and a late-night musubi tray after the dancing.
  • Aug · Hilo First-birthday luau at a family house in Kaumana. Full imu spread for 85. Kimo lit the fire at 3:40 a.m. new!
  • Jun · Volcano Retirement party at the cabin off Wright Road. Small and quiet — 28 plates of shoyu pork and one enormous haupia.
  • May · Kealakekua High-school graduation. Two-protein plate, edamame, fried saimin cakes. The kids cleaned the spicy ahi before the speeches started.

What our families say

"Kimo cooked for my mom's 80th up in Honoka'a. The kalua pig was so soft we didn't even need knives. Auntie Mele stayed until every last pan got cleaned and the rental tables folded."

— K., Honoka'a

"We had three generations at the table and nobody had one complaint. The mochiko chicken disappeared before the pork even came out of the pan."

— The R. family, Hilo

"Fair number, showed up an hour early, left the kitchen cleaner than they found it. They knew my tūtū by name by the end of the night."

— J. & M., Waimea

Thinking about a gathering?

We book by referral, and the calendar usually fills six to eight weeks out. If somebody pointed you our way, read the contact page and we'll take it from there.

How to reach us →