Merriman's Market Café (Waimea) — Hawaii Regional / Farm-to-Table, Big Island (Hawaii)
Merriman's in Waimea is the original Hawaii Regional Cuisine restaurant — Peter Merriman was one of the founders of the movement that defined what Hawaiian cooking could be when it stopped importing from the mainland and started sourcing from the extraordinary farms and ranches of the Big Island. The restaurant opened in 1988 and has influenced every serious Hawaii kitchen since.
The Big Island sourcing is specific and non-negotiable: Hamakua Coast mushrooms, Waimea tomatoes, Big Island goat cheese, Kahua Ranch lamb, and the fish from the Pacific waters that surround the island. The menu documents these relationships with the pride of someone who built them over thirty years.
The Parker Ranch beef — from the 130,000-acre ranch that makes the Big Island one of America's great cattle-ranching landscapes — appears on the menu in preparations that honor the specific flavor of animals raised on Waimea's highland pastures.
James Beard's nominations reflect the national food community's recognition that Merriman's represents American regional cooking at its most authentic and most specific.
Best Occasion: Perfect for Proposals
The restaurant that invented Hawaii Regional Cuisine, Big Island sourcing since 1988, and the Waimea highland setting. The proposal dinner where Hawaii's agricultural abundance meets its most important kitchen.
Best Occasion: Best for Impressing Clients
The James Beard–nominated kitchen that founded Hawaii Regional Cuisine. For clients who understand that culinary history and agricultural sourcing are the same story.