Let’s Talk Food: Friday food trucks at Prince Kuhio Plaza

Every Friday, Prince Kuhio Plaza has a Big Island Park N Grindz in the back parking lot of the kitchen/children’s/men’s store of Macy’s. The food trucks or stalls there last Friday included:

Ukrainian Food

• Mushroom potato and purple sweet potato pirojki were the selections available. And pirojki. You might know it as pierogi, a traditional Polish turnover. My daughter-in-law, Ariana, tasted it and said it was very good.

Borinky Baby

• Borinky Baby has a medium-size food truck that sells funnel cakes in two sizes, 6 and 8 inches. It also can fry up for you crack bacon, Oreos and Twinkies or fusion potato chips in spicy teriyaki or roasted garlic.

Texas Island BBQ

• David and Mannilyn Costa moved from Houston to open up a state-of-the-art food truck. Both were in the gas and oil business for many years and decided to move to Hilo to start up their new business. Their menu includes pulled pork with two sides (Texas barbecue baked beans or french fries), chipotle sausage with two sides, prime beef brisket with two sides, three baby back ribs with two sides or smoked chicken (leg and thigh) with two sides. Texas Island BBQ is at the HPM parking lot Tuesdays and Thursdays and Makuu Market in Pahoa on Sundays. Texas Island BBQ also is available for catering by calling 319-9131 or emailing at food@texasislandbbq.com.

RPG — Restaurant Production Grinds

• Local dishes such as crispy ginger chicken, furikake chicken katsu, loco moco, Hawaiian chop steak, the Tunda Combo (kalbi, crusted mahimahi, garlic shrimp, fried saimin and furikake rice) or the Special of the Day — prime rib with garlic mash and vegetables — are available at the RPG food truck. Owner Chef Willie Leong worked at various restaurants in Waikiki and then at Kaleo’s in Pahoa. He also was the culinary instructor at Big Island Substance Abuse Council prior to opening his food truck. From 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thrursday, RPG is located on 69 Waianuenue Ave., across the street from Big Island Juice Company. The truck is at Prince Kuhio Plaza from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Fridays and noon-4 p.m. Sundays. RPG also is available for catering by calling 765-4363 or emailing at rpgrindz@outlook.com. As local food is popular, there is usually a line in front of RPG, but it’s worth the wait.

Foodie bites

• Pierogi, also known as “varenyku,” are dumplings of Central and Eastern European origin. Unleavened dough is wrapped around a savory or sweet filling and is baked or boiled. It is popular in Poland, Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine.

• Funnel cakes were made popular by German immigrants in Pennsylvania who served them during holidays and festivals. The name comes for the batter being poured through a funnel into hot oil. It is now a common dish served at state fairs.

• After the Civil War, beef became very common in Texas and slow smoking was a popular way of cooking. This method could have gotten its influence from the Caddo Indians who cooked venison and other game over wood fires in Texas 10,000 years ago. Then, the Spaniard shepherds spit-roasted kid goat and lamb “pastor” in the 1600s. Mexican “barbacoa” is meat sealed in maguey leaves and buried in hot coals along the Rio Grande for a couple of hundred years. In the early 1800s, the Southern pit barbecue was introduced to Texans. Black slaves barbecued to celebrate the cotton harvest before the Civil War. Today, Juneteenth holiday is a barbecue party to celebrate the freeing of slaves in 1865. Texas barbecue is sometimes served with a signature sauce but some of the most famous barbecue restuarants in Texas serve their barbecued meats with no sauce at all.

• Local Hawaiian cuisine includes the foods of different countries such as China, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan, Puerto Rico and Portugal, so RPG’s furikake chicken katsu has Japanese origins with the furikake of nori sprinkles and katsu, or breading of panko. The origin of panko also has an interesting history in Japan as the Portuguese introduced their “pao,” or bread. The bread was then made into panko to coat pork and chicken. Frying also was introduced by the Portuguese as prior to their presence, Japanese food was steamed or boiled and never fried. Thank you, Portuguese, for making it possible for the Japanese tempura, tonkatsu and chicken katsu.

• When priests and monks went to China to learn Buddhism, they brought back noodles. Today, Japanese saimin is part of the everyday foods of that country. Thanks, Chinese, for the saimin, somen, soba and udon.

• Kalbi is Korean in origin.

• Loco moco is very local and a Hilo invention that spread throughout the state and even on the mainland.

• Garlic shrimp’s origins are Spanish and its name is “gambas al ajillo.” If it were more like a shrimp scampi, then its origins would be Italian.

Email Audrey Wilson at audreywilson808 @gmail.com.