Blog & Newsletter
Living Foods Market (Originally from the Garden Island News)
Even if you are vacationing on the north shore, you will want to take trip south to Poipu and check out the new Living Foods Market.
Jim Moffat, chef and proprietor of Bar Acuda in Hanalei and other successes in San Francisco, is revolutionizing food on Kauai.
Opening late January, Moffat's newest venture, Living Foods Market & Cafe at Kukuiula Village in Poipu, is a cosmopolitan concept, selling chef-inspired food to cook at home, operating a community market, and opening its doors to Kauai farmers. The two giant doors to Living Foods kitchen remain open daily, for farmers to sell their produce. "Anybody can bring anything out there," Moffat said, adding he doesn't want just one kind of beet, he wants five, six kinds of beets. And with the exception of a few (apples, peaches, raspberries, for example) the possibilities of what can be grown in Kauai's soil are endless.
Besides being a resource to farmers, Moffat offers food products previously only available to chefs. Dishes you could only eat at restaurants before, you can now cook at home at a more palatable price point. "You guys can be the rock stars," Moffat said. Duck leg confit marinated in herbs, lamb chops smothered in fresh mint, certified natural Angus rib eye steak, is all packaged and ready to be cooked at home. Freshly made walnut pesto, saffron aioli, and a spicy tomato arrabbiata sauce, is in containers ready to go. "We don't need another restaurant, we need things that anchor a community," Moffat said of his decision to create Living Foods at Kukuiula Village in Poipu. "It's a restaurant that sells food."
Enter the open, barn-like structure and find an island of local produce, surrounded by walls of more produce, natural home and body products, dry staples, a large beer, wine and spirits selection (over 150 labels, Moffat said) homemade coffee, homemade bread, a selection of over 50 artisan cheeses, select meats, fish, and the Cafe. Serving up salads, pizzas, sweet and savory crepes, and paninis, the menu is simple and fresh. The wrap-around lanai of the establishment is sprinkled with outside tables seating fifty at a time. "We've seen it before: pizzas, paninis ... we're doing it better here," Moffat said simply of the Cafe menu. The only task left now is constancy with the dishes.
"To teach these guys to make it perfect every time, the consistency to produce it properly, that's our goal," Moffat said. By the looks and tastes of things, however, they are already close: multiple crepes cooking on a contraption that looks like a deejay's turntable, and a pizza oven pumping out pies. "I have a great crew up there; they run the show," Moffat said. Black chalkboards cover the walls of Living Foods; one has a schedule scribed that will soon be filled with events for the community. Wine tastings, cooking courses, food education, workshops on local chocolate production is all going to be offered at Living Foods, Moffat said. He will also feature a farmer of the week, and there is a table with books to sit and read about wine. There's a lot going on here, and it's exciting.
