Adam is writing a book about food across America. He went to the North Shore to visit the shrimp trucks and brought us along: Roy Yamaguchi, Hiroshi Fukui, and Ed Kenney----Dean Okimoto was with us for awhile but had to leave. I believe we hit seven stops, eating our way across the north shore, finishing up at Matsumoto Shave Ice.---------I hope he changed his mind after hearing some of us speak. Hawaii has a long history of lunch wagon trucks. It was out of convenience back then, especially at construction sites or work places since all you had to do was go to the truck and have your meal without going too far. Actually, that was preceded by the "vegetable man"------which was a guy in a truck selling things like cabbages, vegetables, and eventually anything under the sun, to eventually warm manapua. We used to have a "manapua man" come with his truck thru Waipio valley every week, that was a treat, no different than the ice cream man , which came later.--------anyway-------a story on Hawaiis plate lunch wagons would be more appropriate--------all ethnic based foods on the plate lunch, which typically has two scoops rice, a scoop of mac salad, shredded green cabbage and whatever protein you ordered, such as: shoyu chicken, teriyaki beef, chicken katsu, boneless chicken, Hawaiian plate, mixed plate, beef stew, curry stew, -----yes we grew up on this. What is the answer to , "plate lunch mentality?"---------------these dishes reflected our plantation immigrant past-------a lot of "soul" in the food, I guess you can call it our very own soul food.
