‘Alex vs. America’ Goes Hawaiian for an Aloha State Battle Royale

Halfway through Season 3, host Eric Adjepong lit up the inset on the Alex vs. America map: This competition was reaching across the Pacific. He invited three celebrated chefs from Hawaii to challenge Alex with the very best of their spectacular state’s unique ingredients and influences. Alex knew that the islands’ signature breeziness belied the throwdown’s true difficulty: this culinary terrain was undiscovered territory for her. “There’s all types of advantages that people think I have, but I also don’t know how to do a lot of things,” she admitted. “You know [Hawaiian cuisine is] rustic, but it’s loaded with technique. And people that cook this food really know how to put those things together.”

This battle was a bit like Eric’s knit polo: sure, he seems casual now, but you know he spends most of his time on AVA in blazers. Three Aloha State-based chefs came to challenge Alex in an initial survival round, where the competitors battle for control of the second round’s ingredients (the top-ranked chef’s perk) and to avoid going home (the lowest-ranked chef’s fate). Survivors would then compete in a money round, where ranking higher than Alex — assuming she survived — was worth $10,000 (for first place) and $5,000 (for second). The judging was conducted in blind tastings, an especially crucial detail for an episode celebrating a close-knit community of chefs. Everybody knows everybody when it comes to the Hawaiian culinary scene.

As the chef and owner of Feast, a restaurant serving elevated comfort food in Honolulu, Jon Matsubara marries refined techniques with authentic local ingredients; he also slings the very freshest fruits of the ocean at Hawaiian Style Seafood Co. “He has trained under Hawaii’s best chefs, worked at Michelin-star restaurants and has served as the executive chef for six Hawaiian restaurants,” Eric told Alex. “He was also a two-time winner of Honolulu Magazine’s Best New Restaurant.”

“I won that, too!” Alex shot back with a nervous laugh. “Couple times!”

Lee Anne Wong needed no introduction for Alex; they’ve known each other for decades. A former executive chef at the French Culinary Institute, an Iron Chef winner and a Top Chef alum, she’s the executive chef and owner of Honolulu’s Koko Head Cafe, where brunch is legendary (and recognized as Oahu’s best by Hawai’i Magazine). “We get it every year, babe!” she sang out to her old friend.

A second-generation chef who was born and raised on the big island of Hawaii and now helms Ippy’s Hawaiian BBQ in Waimea, Ippy Aiona was the youngest-ever Food Network Star finalist (at age 23); that same year, Forbes named him one of its Food & Drink “30 Under 30.” His Easy Hawaiian Cookbook debuted with a splash in 2022 and has been a top seller ever since.

Eric flew in two Hawaiian-cuisine heavy hitters to evaluate the competitors’ island-inspired creations. Chef Roy Yamaguchi is a James Beard Award-winning innovator known for integrating Californian, French and Japanese cooking traditions to push the boundaries of island cuisine, and he’s one of a dozen founding members of the Hawaiian regional-cuisine movement. He spearheads the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, and he’s opened more than 30 island-inflected Roy’s Restaurants in the US, Japan and Guam. Chef Sheldon Simeon, in turn, helms both Tiffany’s (a beloved Maui mainstay that’s anchored its culinary scene for two decades) and Tin Roof (a destination for contemporary takes on island-style takeout lunches). He’s a Top Chef finalist and best-selling author, whose Cook Real Hawai’i was named one of the New York Times’ Best Cookbooks of 2021. No pressure, everybody.

As newcomers to her arena, Alex’s challengers enjoyed the advantage of selecting the key components and parameters of the dishes they’d be cooking in the first round. Their first choice was between three classic Hawaiian seafoods: kanpachi, Hawaiian prawns and ono. Unanimous enthusiasm for kanpachi — a member of the yellowtail family that’s prized for its flaky texture and rich flavor — made that call a foregone conclusion. “We’re the only place in the world that produces kanpachi,” Lee Anne mused.

“Kanpachi is something I used to serve in my restaurant; it’s a fish I love and know well,” Alex noted.

A trio of fruits came next: Would the competitors choose dried pineapple, frozen breadfruit (known in Hawaii as ‘ulu) or coconut flakes? “[‘Ulu] is what sustained Hawaiian culture,” Ippy said. “They brought that with them on the canoe.”

“It’s kind of like a potato; it’s very neutral, so you can roast it, you can fry it. ‘Ulu’s good,” Jon concurred, and the decision was unanimous again. Tough one for Alex: “I’ve never cooked breadfruit,” she whispered to Eric.

Finally, the chefs had the option of preparing a Hawaiian plate lunch (which typically consists of meat, white rice and macaroni salad) or a five-star entree. Though choosing the former could have conferred a regional advantage, they opted for the latter — and a maxed-out cook time of 40 minutes. The table was set.

Leaning into Hawaiian cuisine’s incorporation and celebration of other countries’ culinary techniques, Jon developed a dish that would fuse the highlights of his own international skill set — with a decidedly French accent. He created 'ulu “scales” for the kanpachi, a classic and striking potato preparation for fish first developed by the legendary Paul Bocuse. He also used the 'ulu and kanpachi to create an island-inspired brandade, a Mediterranean emulsion that’s traditionally made with salt cod, olive oil and potatoes. “I’ve been trained by some of the best chefs in the world, and so I’m taking all these different techniques and I’m implementing [them] in more traditional Hawaiian cuisine,” he explained to Eric. “If I want to win this competition, I [have] to serve my best.”

Forty minutes was plenty of time for Lee Anne to whip up a vivid pineapple curry with vadouvan powder, lemongrass, onions, red peppers, garlic, ginger and coconut milk. She then created islands in that sea by transforming the 'ulu into pillowy Parisian gnocchi, a lighter-than-air potato-less version that’s based on a pâte à choux. “Gnocchi are really quick, and once they were set, I heated up a pan with coconut oil and I seared them on both sides so [they’re] crispy on the outside like a cloud and fluffy on the inside,” she explained.

The dish was a fitting callback to her early days knowing Alex. “We met in New York when I was the executive chef at the French Culinary Institute, but I have never had to cook against Alex,” she recalled. “This is Alex’s kitchen! But she’s got three Hawaiian chefs today, and we all know the food and cuisine of Hawaii, so we’ve got a leg up on her.”

Ippy created parchment-paper packages of soy, ginger, cilantro and sake to steam the delicate kanpachi; "I’m going to leave the skin on so that it helps it from sticking," he said. Once that flavor had infused the fish, he unwrapped and transferred it to a wire rack, then flash-fried the steamed pieces with piping-hot spoonfuls of sesame oil. With time to spare, he then created a teriyaki glaze and grilled up ali’I (king oyster) mushrooms. Sides would include a lomi salad — that is, a traditional Hawaiian side dish with tomatoes and sweet onions — and an 'ulu mash punched up with curry and coconut milk. “'Ulu’s very subtle, the flavor is very mild, so you have to add something to give it some flavor,” he told Eric.

Alex’s opponents gave her the gift of choosing a seafood she knew well and could sear capably; her luck turned when it came to the breadfruit. “There aren’t many ingredients that I haven’t worked with, but breadfruit has just slipped from my grasp,” she said. When in doubt, she had to act on what she knew of its properties. “Breadfruit’s starchy, it’s like a sweet potato, so I’m going to make breadfruit puree.” Alex added cream cheese to her mix to add a bit of tanginess, then layered the dish with roasted carrots she coated with homemade furikake. Her five-star entree, then, would be seared kanpachi topped with scallions, chives and breadfruit chips, then served over breadfruit puree with her seasoned carrots. “I think my dish could pass in, like, a Hawaiian-adjacent restaurant in the suburbs of New York, where no one knows better,” she deadpanned.

Layered with painterly precision, Jon’s dish began with local bok choy and striking yellow haricots verts; on the other half of his plate, the kanpachi with golden-crisped ‘ulu scales perched atop his Hawaiian brandade. The citrus-soy emulsion he created to unite them was a variation on lemon and brown butter. Alex knew she was in trouble as soon as she saw Jon’s plate: “A map of Hawaii! I should have done that! It’s so French!”

The judges were taken with his work as well. “I’m very impressed with the scales, because that’s a lot of detail work,” Roy said. “I like the cook on the fish; you can see that they finished it all on the breadfruit side and then gently kissed it on the backside, so it has that texture that kanpachi is known for, that fattiness,” Sheldon added. Though the edible flowers finishing the dish might have been a bit too much, Jon’s efforts earned him the first-round win.

Lee Anne served her vibrant curry over a banana leaf, then created a line of crispy gnocchi that she topped with her kanpachi, cucumber and ‘ulu chips. “This might not look like a five-star fine-dining entree,” she said, “but it definitely looks like a local Hawaiian entree.”

Jon’s high-concept dish was a tough act for Lee Anne to follow with her more casual presentation. “Visually it’s beautiful with the colors, but [it’s] a lot more rustic than what we’d seen in the first plate,” Sheldon noted. “There’s a lot of delicious flavors going on, just not five-star.”

Roy liked the kanpachi’s crispiness, “and it was nice and moist when I took that first bite,” he said. He seconded Sheldon in wanting a bit more refinement from the dish — perhaps it could have been tighter, with a little less sauce? Lee Anne didn’t come out on top, but her flavors carried her through the survival round.

Ippy began with a central plating of his curry mash, then served his flash-fried kanpachi skin-down atop it with the lomi salad and teriyaki mushrooms. “This is obviously Alex’s house, but we’re going to show her what the islands have to offer,” he said.

Alex thought Ippy’s dish was beautiful, but she had concerns. “[He] left the skin on the kanpachi, which I think is a tough choice ‘cause that skin’s not great once cooked,” she explained. “But he did steam the fish, which is very authentic to the cooking.”

The judges agreed that Ippy’s kanpachi was cooked perfectly. “I like having it clothed in ginger, because it heightens the flavor of the fish,” Sheldon said. That said, neither he nor Roy enjoyed the skin as presented; perhaps it could have been crisped after steaming? They also felt the time he devoted to the mushrooms and the lomi salad might have been better spent attending to the fish and offering another presentation of the ‘ulu.

Alex was matter-of-fact about her prospects against the Hawaiian chefs: “I mean, I definitely think this is one of my weaker plates of food, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I go home first,” she said.

“I like the presentation of this,” Roy commented. “It falls a little more on the rustic side; it could have been a lot more detailed.”

“And the carrots seem to be just thrown on the plate there,” Sheldon added. “But the coconut kanpachi is great; I love when you have that sear on top of it.” Unsurprisingly, the breadfruit mash was the dish’s real weakness. “The cream cheese is overpowering this. We’re looking for five-star, and I’m looking for refinement, and it just didn’t come together,” Sheldon said. Ippy’s misstep with the kanpachi skin proved to be Alex’s stroke of luck, however, and she survived the round despite the judges’ criticisms.

“That’s the closest I think I’ve ever come to just straight-up going home in the first round,” Alex confessed.

Jon’s top-ranked dish in the survival round earned him the privilege of setting the stage for the remainder of the competition, and Eric presented him with three quintessentially Hawaiian iterations of pork: He could choose to have 30 minutes to prepare a dish with pork shoulder, 35 minutes with Portuguese sausage or 40 minutes with canned ham (also known on the islands as Hawaiian steak). “My first impulse is the Hawaiian steak,” Jon said. “It represents where we’re from, Hawaii, [and] there’s a lot of people that create all these different things with it, so it’s not just one dish.”

Next up: Would the chefs incorporate taro chips, taro root powder or poi? The poi failed Jon’s taste test, and the flour-like taro root powder was equally unappealing; he chose the chips.

Finally, would the dish be served at sunrise or sunset — that is, for breakfast or dinner? “I usually eat Hawaiian steak in the morning. Very rarely do I eat it at night, so I say sunrise,” Jon said. Once again, the timer began counting down 40 minutes, and the chefs were off and running.

“Hawaiian steak and eggs, that’s the way to go!” Jon exclaimed.

“He says that, but it’s not just gonna be steak and eggs, ‘cause Jon’s a gangster,” Lee Anne said.

Jon’s straightforward Hawaiian steak prep demonstrated his affection for the product: He opted to present it like a much-fussier cut of meat, then cook up more of it in a pan of butter to create a showstopping Hawaiian hash. “I’m going to put the hash in [a] mold to set with taro chips because I want the middle of the hash to be nice and soft and have that top nice and crunchy so you have texture,” he explained. “Everybody loves crispy hash! You can never discount the Iron Chef — you know she always has tricks up her sleeve — but I’m here today to prove that chefs from the 808 State can put it on the plate.” His eggs, in turn, would be soft-scrambled with butter and cream, then served in the shell with a dollop of caviar.

Lee Anne didn’t mince words: “I am the brunch queen of Hawaii,” she stated. Her sunrise breakfast dish would be Hawaiian steak Benedict, a dish similar to the one she serves hundreds of times a day. She planned to blend the canned ham into her hollandaise, deploy a canned-ham steak breaded with crushed taro chips in lieu of Canadian bacon and create an ultra-savory drop-bread cheddar biscuit with, yes, even more canned ham. “I’m thinking a little warm grilled tomato adds a little bit of unctuousness and umami to the dish,” she mused. “I’m literally making breakfast for my customers right now!”

Still a bit thrown after her near-death experience in the first round, Alex reconstructed her vibe with a bold step in the direction of … schnitzel? “I’m definitely headed in the pork schnitzel area,” she explained. “I’m going to hope it’ll read more ‘breakfast,’ like ham-and-eggs type of schnitzel, because I want the flavors to pair with the Hawaiian steak.” She matched Lee Anne’s canned ham innovation with one of her own by grating and oven-drying the ingredient to create a crispy topping. “I could get eliminated just for not putting enough Hawaiian steak in my dish, so this is a risk,” she confessed — but it was one that steered her dish into flavor profiles she knew well and could execute.

“I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen this technique before, especially in a competition!” Eric said. “But chef Alex right now is almost creating little bacon bits. It’s going to be delicious; I would eat that on almost everything that you can sprinkle it on, it’s pretty smart.”

Jon delighted in his deluxe dish’s many components. His oh-so-French soft-scrambled egg and caviar perched beside that multi-textural hash, which gave way to two bold-as-you-please slabs of Hawaiian steak. “We’re the canned ham capital of the world,” he noted. “I used to eat it all the time, and you know, I really like Hawaiian steak as is.” He placed a toasted Hawaiian sweet roll beside the steak, then finished with a frisee and herb salad.

“Jon went from five-star in the first round to seven-star in the second round!” Alex exclaimed. “That egg and the caviar — you know, giving the nobility to the Hawaiian steak — that’s a good play.”

The judges concurred. “It’s a super-fun dish,” Sheldon said. “It all intermingles; you know, you could easily put the egg on top of the hash, and I’m loving that crunch from the taro chips.”

“Even the salad!” Roy added. “I like that you have the freshness that goes along and cuts a lot of the richness from all of these different components.”

“Just to counterpoint all that richness that’s going on, you need a little green, so I basically just make a frisee and herb salad with just a little champagne vinegar, some shallot, some honey, some olive oil — really, really simple,” Lee Anne said, faux casually. “I feel confident, but Alex is a badass; she’s used to cooking on her platform, so this is the culinary competition to participate in. Because everybody wants to beat Alex Guarnaschelli!”

Lee Anne’s brunch chops served her well. “This is such a creative take on something that you usually don’t see,” Sheldon said. “Biscuit’s flavorful, there’s a good crust on top of the Hawaiian steak, it added a lot of texture to the dish. And then the poached egg that brings it all together is delicious.”

“But,” Roy countered, “I’m not really keen on the tomato here; it’s kind of mushy for me. My mood is getting very elevated, you know, and then it all of a sudden kind of went down when I hit the tomato.”

Alex lightened and balanced the taro chip-encrusted schnitzel and its Hawaiian steak-spangled fried egg by creating a mustard-dressed purple cabbage slaw with green apple and cilantro. “It’s not totally breakfast, but I think with the egg [and] the baked bits of Hawaiian steak it could be breakfast enough,” she said. “I’m hoping!”

Roy recognized Alex’s killer instincts: “The thought process of this dish is great,” he said.

“I like all the components of the dish,” Sheldon agreed. “The pork is delicious, and it still hit all the factors of the challenge. The slaw on the bottom is delicious; it’s adding a nice acidity to the dish, to the saltiness of the canned ham.”

Roy wasn’t as sure about those pesky challenge factors. “The canned ham wasn’t too pronounced, except for on the egg itself,” he noted.