Restaurateur Plans Hawaiian Feast
Call her “Auntie” if you like. That’s how Coeur d’Alene’s Chris Lovejoy is known among the children of friends and neighbors in her native Kauai. The name seems appropriate for her first North Idaho luau as well.
“It’s very informal in Hawaii,” Chris says with a shade of longing in her voice. “It’s slower, more relaxed, extremely friendly.”
And well-fed - a comfort Chris will share with deprived mainlanders on Saturday to celebrate the opening of her Coeur d’Alene restaurant, Lilikoi. The tradition is so important to her that she flew her mother, Kay Castillo, in from Hawaii last week with ti leaves, coarse Hawaiian salt, salt-cured salmon and fresh poi.
“Have to have poi,” Kay says, scooping two fingers through the air to demonstrate her poi-eating technique.
The gluelike poi might not tap Panhandle taste buds, but Kay’s kalua pig probably will. Kay, whose parents were Japanese, learned Hawaiian cooking in restaurants while Chris and her sisters played in the cane fields.
Marriage pulled Chris away from her laid-back island 22 years ago, but it didn’t change her tropical tastes. Friends who drooled at the gingery aromas escaping from her oven finally convinced her to open a restaurant in midtown Coeur d’Alene last May.
She named her cafe Lilikoi, after the passion fruit, and delighted diners with chicken, beef and tofu marinated in a secret sauce. Business was so brisk all summer that she had no time for her grand-opening luau until now.
Health regulations have no regard for tradition, so Chris and Kay will adapt some recipes.
They can’t embed hot lava rocks in a pig’s gut and cook the beast over more hot rocks in a hole in the ground. Instead, they’ll wrap a carefully seasoned pork roast in ti leaves and foil and pop it in the oven.
But the lomi salmon, chicken long rice, island-style potato salad and haupia, a custardlike coconut milk dessert, will be as authentic as the dishes Chris ate at luaus as a child. So will the hula demonstrations.
But most authentic and important to Chris is her mother’s eagerness to help.
“For luaus, everyone helps cook, decorate. The whole family participates,” Chris says, smiling as Kay greets one of Lilikoi’s cooks with her traditional hug and kiss. “It’s like a barn-raising feeling. It’s nice.”
Lilikoi’s luau will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at 842 N. Fourth. Cost will be $6.95 per person.
Nothing to sniff at
While other Sandpoint children played in cold Lake Pend Oreille this summer, Sawyer Clizer underwent surgery four times at Kootenai Medical Center.
The Sandpoint Middle School eighth-grader crunched his nose in a basketball game; then an ugly sinus infection complicated everything. He needed surgery on his sinuses and three neurosurgeries to remove abscesses in and around his brain.
Sawyer’s OK now and back in school. But his family is reeling from the bills. It has no medical insurance and is struggling to keep Sawyer in therapy until he’s fully healed.
Friends and family opened the Sawyer Clizer Fund at Panhandle State Bank, P.O. Box 967, Sandpoint 83864, for anyone willing to help. Be generous.
History lesson
Leave it to the Veteran Soldiers of Regimental Headquarters Company, 106th Infantry Regiment, (whew!) to rise again. The 106th helped keep Confederate troops out of Washington, D.C., during the Civil War and kept on fighting right through World War II.
The 106th’s men are getting together again this weekend at Coeur d’Alene’s Shiloh Inn - to party, not to fight. Hayden Lake’s Sam Bowman knows the details. He’s at 772-7071.
What was your favorite reunion? Tell Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; or send a fax to 765-7149, call 765-7128 or send e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo