Salt, smoke, and Sunday markets

The kiawe goes on at half past five, well before anyone is allowed to sell anything, because the smoker takes two hours to come up and the market opens at eight. By six the smell has crossed two rows of empty tables. By seven there are three people standing near it who are not vendors and are not, strictly speaking, supposed to be in the lot yet, and nobody says anything about it.

The smoker belongs to a lomi salmon stall and gets lent out most weeks. Pono Plate Co. uses it for the smoked ahi belly it only sells on Sundays, cut from the parts of the fish that never make it into the daily bowls. The arrangement has no paperwork. The lomi stall gets a plate, the borrower cleans the grates, and both of them have been doing it since the market moved to this lot.

salt from the pan

The salt comes off a family pan on the west side of Kauaʻi, flown over in five pound bags, red with the alaea clay that lines the drying beds. It costs more than any salt on a supermarket shelf and gets used on almost nothing, a pinch on the belly right before it goes out. The cook is specific about this. Put it on early and it pulls water out of the fish. Put it on late and it does the one thing you paid for.

Prices at the Sunday stalls hold steadier than the rest of the island. Twenty-two dollars for a bowl, six for a bag of the smoked belly, four for rice from a mill on the North Shore. By eleven the belly is gone. By half past twelve the case is empty, and the cook starts breaking down while a few people still ask, hopefully, what is left.

The market runs every Sunday through the winter, weather permitting, in the lot behind the old warehouse row. Bring cash. The card reader works when the signal does, which is most of the time and almost never at nine in the morning, when the whole lot is trying to use it at once.