Hawaii's Loco Moco and the First Plate Lunch President, Explained Video: Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes
What the plate lunch says about the history of Hawaii, President Obama, and America, according to This American Life regular Sarah Vowell.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlj2sdEelak
Sarah Vowell's latest book, Unfamiliar Fishes , will be out at the end of this month, although the book trailer is out now. (I know, of all the things you could be watching, a book trailer might rank low. But trust me!) In it, Vowell lends her distinctive voice to one of Hawaii's distinctive regional foods: the plate lunch.
It's a novel use of a book trailer and certainly made me curious about how loco moco, a hamburger dish topped with gravy and a fried egg that originated in 1949 (apparently as a snack for teenagers who were tired of American sandwiches but didn't want to bother with time-consuming Asian foods) relates to a new book examining the impact New England missionaries had on the island in the 19th century.
Vowell deftly unpacks a small portion of the history of Hawaii through a series of slides depicting the messy, symbolic hodgepodge of plate lunches and along the way reminds us that President Barack Obama is our first "plate lunch president." I know I'll be adding this to the list of books I want to read.
Video: Riverhead Books /Penguin