On our final day on Maui during our recent trip to Hawaii, we had some time to kill before we went to the airport to fly to Kauai. We spent some time at the Sugar Museum, then headed back over to Paia to have some lunch. We had walked past a place on Baldwin Ave. a couple times that caught my wife's eye, a place called Hana Ranch Provisions. She wanted to check it out for lunch and here's what we experienced.
Hana Ranch is a working cattle ranch coupled with a sustainable farming operation located just outside of Hana on the east side of Maui. The original Hana Ranch dates back to the early 1940's when it was a 14,000-acre cattle ranch started by Paul Fagan, a retired entrepreneur who moved to Maui from San Francisco. When the sugar plantations ceased operations, Fagan turned the land into a Hereford cattle ranch and eventually built a small inn - the Ka'uiki Inn, later known as the Hotel Hana-Maui. (The hotel property is now known as Travaasa Maui, an all-inclusive resort and spa.)
Hana Ranch has been sold a handful of times since the mid-80's to investment groups who parceled out tracts of land with each sale. In January of 2014, a group known as Hana Ranch Stewards, LLC, a subsidiary of Colorado-based Bio-logical Capital, an investment group that oversees sustainable farms, bought 3600 acres of the ranch. The goal of the company is to provide locally-grown foods for Hawaiians who must import 85% of what they consume on the islands.
Linh Phu is the culinary manager for Hana Ranch Stewards, and along with Le Cordon Bleu Academy-trained chef Gary Johnson, the company opened Hana Ranch Provisions in October of 2015. It is located in what was the former Dazoo Korean/farm-to-fork restaurant in the Paia Plaza building along Baldwin Ave. in Paia. (see map) Their goal is to only serve foods that are exclusively grown on their ranch near Hana. What they can't source from their ranch, they turn to local farms and fishermen for the foods they serve.
We walked into Hana Ranch Provisions around 12:30 p.m. and took a quick look at the lunch menu to see if we wanted to dine there. After seeing some interesting things, we decided to have lunch in the restaurant. There's a number of tables that were up front near the window that were already filled, so we ended up toward the back of the restaurant along a wall with a number of tables and banquette seating along the wall. The decor was sort of rustic with large window to the kitchen in the far back.
There's a bar area in the middle part of the restaurant. It looked like a nice place to belly up for an afternoon drink. Hana Ranch Provisions runs a happy hour between 5 and 6 p.m. through the week.
Next door to the restaurant is a small bakery and coffee shop that features pastries, grab-and-go sandwiches, and coffee drinks. The space also sold locally made ceramics and cutting boards, as well as gardening supplies, cook books and pickles, jams and sauces made from fruits and vegetables grown at Hana Ranch.
On the wall near the bar was a listing of foods Hana Ranch had grown and that were being used in today's meals served at the restaurant. Basil, beets, kale, tomatoes, papaya, beef and ginger were just a few of the things listed on the board that day. I understand that they grow their own mushrooms at Hana Ranch and those are harvested in the late summer months for use in the restaurant. Those have to be delicious.
Our server that day was a wonderful young lady by the name of Carlie. She had a breezy and personable demeanor and we immediately liked her. Like most people in restaurants that we met in Hawaii, she had a bit of a story as to how she made it to Hawaii. She grew up in Fort Collins, CO and moved to Maui after she got out of college. She was on the island for 3 years before she got island fever and needed to get back to the continent. Only this continent was Europe, of which she traveled around for awhile. And while she was in Europe, she realized that she really missed Maui and decided to move back. "This is home," she told us. We were happy for her and jealous of her at the same time.
The menu at Hana Ranch Provisions isn't very deep and features burgers, fresh fish sandwiches, salads and soups. Other foods are available when they're able to source them in the restaurant. We hadn't had a burger while we were on Maui and we decided we'd do that for lunch. I got a Maui Brewing Company Big Swell IPA to go along with my lunch. (Carlie had me try some of the Mosaic Mo'Betta American Imperial IPA, a seasonal beer from Maui Brewing, but I found I liked the Big Swell better.) Cindy found a 2014 Daniel Chotard Sauvignon Blanc Sancerre from France on the wine list that they were serving by the glass.
For a starter, Cindy wanted to try the beet soup that they had that day. It was a beet puree topped with drizzled sour cream and some sort of a crunchy noodle assortment. She was floored with the taste of the beet soup. She gave me a couple spoonfuls to try and it was sweet and earthy. I never liked pickled beets until I tried some of Cindy's grandmothers that she jarred each year. The soup reminded me of some of her homemade beets.
Cindy got the burger topped with avocado slices, pickled caramelized red onions and Swiss cheese all served on a brioche bun. A small side salad came with her burger. She was more than happy with the taste of her burger made with grass-fed beef.
I had the Ali'i (it's basically Hawaiian for "king") burger that was topped with a garlic aioli and Swiss cheese. It also came with caramelized pickled onions and sautéed locally grown mushrooms on a brioche bun. I asked Carlie if they had fresh tomato slices in the kitchen and she said that they did. I had her add those to the burger because I've never had tomatoes that taste as good as they do in Hawaii. I don't know if it's the soil or the growing season or what. There's nothing like a good ripe Hawaiian tomato. A side of locally grown greens came with the burger.
The burger was - in a word - fabulous. The taste sensations going on with the burger and all the toppings were numerous. The burger patty was cooked to a medium temperature giving it a bit of a pink hue in the middle with plenty of juice oozing with each bite. With all that was going on with the burger, I was very pleasantly surprised that the brioche bun held up very well. It was a fabulous gooey mess that required a number of napkins during the course of the meal.
The burgers were so good and the service from Carlie was so superb that we didn't want to leave Hana Ranch Provisions. But we had a flight to catch to Kauai and it was time to head to the airport just up the road. My wife is very much into farm-to-fork restaurants and Hana Ranch Provisions may be the ultimate destination for sustainable farm-raised foods on Maui. This was a great find and one that will be one of the more memorable meals we've had during our trips to Hawaii.
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