Pueo's Fotothing

Mmm a Fresh Bowl of Hamura Saimin!
Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii, USA

Here is a close up look at the dish folks who live in Hawaii call Saimin. The origination of the dish is attributed to the "Plantation Days" of Hawaii when folks of different ethnicities were thrown together to be the labor force for sugar cane production. Just like "Pidgin English" is the language mixing from the various ethnic backgrounds that made up the sugar workers, Saimin reflects this multicultural heritage. The noodles are Asian in origin, most likely Chinese. The soup base is Japanese, usually having bonito (salt/fish flakes) in it. The green onions probably Fillipino. The Bok Choy (cabbage) likely Korean. There are often other things that swim in the saimin such as slices of linguisa (Portugese Sausage), eggs scrabled or boiled (various in origin), and fishcake Japanese (in this bowl that bright-pink stuff this is "kamaboko" style). Over time other things have made their way into the saimin bowl including ham, spam, wonton, carrots, snow peas, and other vegetables. I believe Hamura's Saimin noodles are made fresh each day from wheat flour and eggs. Depending on what size/style of bowl you order I think you get more stuff but I just ordered the medium here so it was pretty basic: noodles, soup, ham, and fishcake but there were a great variety of interesting condiments I had a choice of adding (that's the next picture I'll post). Yum!

A good description of saimin can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saimin

And a good bowl of the dish can be had at the legendary Hamura's Saimin (as was this one) in Kauai (see the description of Hamura's in the last photo).