We were in Hawaii on Steph’s birthday and we drove across the big island of Hawaii from Kona to Hilo and decided to grab lunch while we were in Hilo. We stopped in downtown Hilo and walked around to find a place to eat  at the first random place that looked interesting. We accidentally happened on Cafe Pesto, which we had read about before the trip, and decided it was right up our alley.

We both ordered Tahitian Limeades to drink, which were basically regular limeades that have a light coconut flavor and a crostini as an appetizer. The drinks were wonderfully refreshing on such a hot and muggy day.

The great part about Cafe Pesto was the ability to order great local food even on vacation. Unfortunately everything looked really good so we had a hard time narrowing it down and decided to order two items and split them so we’d both have the option of trying a couple of things. We decided to split a local grass fed burger and a “poke” salad made with locally caught Ahi tuna. It’s great to have local eating options available in more places, but unlike The Sink it wasn’t more expensive than the other non-local options available on the menu.

The salad was made with a bed of spinach, fresh shaved ginger and a raspberry vinaigrette. The seared Ahi was perfectly done and combined with the fresh light greens made for a wonderful cool salad that stole the show at lunch. The burger was good, but it wasn’t that different than the burgers we can get in Colorado or make ourselves with grass fed beef. However, they were served with purple Hawaiian sweet potatoes that were unique and superb. These sweet potatoes were sweeter than regular potatoes and have a thick starchier texture than the white regular potatoes they were paired with on the plate. Both types of potatoes were cut into chunks and roasted as a side. Unfortunately for the burger the purple potatoes really outshone everything else on the plate.

Ahi "Poke" Salad

All in all, it was a terrific and serendipitous local eating experience. Unfortunately we were too full to try a dessert, but there were several that looked pretty tasty. Happy birthday Stephanie!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Eating Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.