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Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown

Hawaii. Aired 9:00-10:00p ET.

Aired June 17, 2015 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[21:00:00]

PAUL THEROUX, NOVELIST, ESSAYIST, TRAVEL WRITER & HAWAII RESIDENT: My great fear as a kid was the fear of failing. And that's Hawaiian because I was born that way, because that's expectation. You're Hawaiian you're going to be less. You're Hawaiian you're going to fail more. And so it's old. It's in you. It's part of your identity.

But when I navigate a voyage, I know when the storm comes and it's going to take you to the bone. And if the storm keeps coming, you've got to stand up. That's just what you've got to do. And it's this zone where you learn to make fear your best friend. You hold it really close to you and you open up the door to believing that you can make it.

ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN HOST: Hawaii is America, as American as anything could possibly be, yet it also never shed what was there before in the layers and layers that have come since. It's a wonderful, tricky, conflicted, mutant hell rod (ph), and what, for lack of a better word, you'd have to call paradise.

THEROUX: No man's paradise. Paradises don't exist. Paradise is kind of in your head.

BOURDAIN: Wait a minute. You look at your window here. You look at those hills, those mountains, all that green, that blue sky, the gen- clear sea, it sure looks like paradise to me.

This guy knows. He's been everywhere. He's Paul Theroux, novelist, essaying and legendary traveler and travel writer. Of the all the places he's been, all the places he's seen, he chose Hawaii to live, and he's lived here for 25 years.

Does it matter that it's America?

THEROUX: It's a big thing that it is America. It has elements of the third world. The nicest elements of the third world which is (inaudible), there's this self-respect, there's pride, there's things that don't work at all. And then it's mainstream USA. Where we are now, I mean, there's PTA meetings here. They get together and watch the Super Bowl and it's the most Main Street USA as much as you will find.

BOURDAIN: Town is a neighborhood spot in Honolulu's Kamokada (ph) district and as Hawaii is the only state in the union that allows day boat fishermen to sell directly to restaurants, the pan-roasted mahi- mahi is pretty damn good.

It's not a particularly welcoming or friendly part of the world. Contrary to the sort of the aloha myth.

THEROUX: No, that's right. That's right. But no island is. Nantucket isn't. The island of Hawaii isn't. The Isle of Wight isn't. Name an island that want foreigners there (ph)? Sicily. They want foreigners there? No way.

BOURDAIN: Right.

THEROUX: Did anyone ever come to an island with a good intention?

BOURDAIN: No, never in this new world. Best case scenario brings syphilis.

THEROUX: Yeah. Yeah.

BOURDAIN: Pretty much. I mean, at the very least.

THEROUX: Yes. Captain Cook put his sailors ashore, just to look northwest of here. He was the first hali (ph). Like Magellan. Hawaii killed its first tourists. The Philippines killed their first tourist. But people who live islands who are born on the islands view anyone who comes ashore with suspicion.

To go back to what defines a Hawaiian, maybe we should go back in our imaginations, it could have been 2,000 years ago. The Tahitians had this voyage way before any other culture in the planet exploring the deep seas. Somehow, yet, someplace in the South Pacific, the single most isolated archipelago in the planet.

Fast forward to Captain Cook and his identification of a native Hawaiian, he got a glimpse that these are very productive people.

[21:05:06] They're industrious, they we're healthy, strong and had time for the arts. That was a large population, more than half of what we have in Hawaii today. Fully sustainable, because there was no other choice. So over time, the native Hawaiian population goes to 22,000. It's the same story. Introduced disease, the inability to deal with it, people die. 1926, the public school system would outlaw language and the practice of culture in public schools. So the road to extinction is being well paved.

BOURDAIN: Between Captain Cook's arrival in 1778 and today, disease wiped out most of the population. Missionaries came. A booming sugar and pineapple plantation industry. An influx of immigrants from Japan, Okinawa, China and the Philippines. There was the overthrow of Queen Liluokalani, and the U.S. takeover of the Hawaiian government. World War II. And finally, statehood.

The geographical realities of being thousands of miles from, well, anywhere else, has given Hawaii, to some degree, protection from the forces that eradicated so many other South Pacific cultures entirely. In fact, they've arguably been holding back the inevitable creed better than just about anyone.

What Hawaii looks like today depends on which island you're standing on and to some extent the reputation of the locals.

The Hawaiian Islands are not a monolith. Islands, that's plural, and we're talking eight very different islands with very different identities.

It's been over a century since the waves of immigrants began and things got all mixed up in the best possible way. There's layers. And a simple question like, who is Hawaiian, gets you all kinds of answers.

The neighborhood of Kalihi is far cry from the Hawaii that most people know. And Ethel's have been a go-to of a very specific kind the last 40 years.

ANDREW LE, CHEF, THE PIG AND THE LADY: It's a blue collar town. You know, they all come here. Breakfast, lunch, every day.

BOURDAIN: I'm joined by two local chefs, Mark Naguchi, of Mission, known by some as the Gooch. His second generation Japanese. And Andrew Le, of the Pig and the Lady. He's first generation Vietnamese American, or would that be Vietnamese-Hawaiian? As you'll see, it gets complicated.

MARK NAGUCHI, CHEF, THE MISSION: I actually cooked on the east coast for three years and people would always be like, are you from Hawaii? You're Hawaiian? I said, no, no, no. I'm a second-generation Japanese. They're like, if you're from Hawaii, that makes you Hawaiian. I was like, no. What I realized like, here in Hawaii, we identify ourselves ethnically versus geographically. There's no way we would call ourselves Hawaiians. We would get our asses kicked by a Hawaiian.

BOURDAIN: How many generations does it take: I mean who qualifies as Hawaiian in your view?

NAGUCHI: To me, a Hawaiian is a native of the land. It's in your blood. You come from a lineage of native Hawaiian people.

BOURDAIN: What's your feeling here?

LE: I do feel like I'm Hawaiian in a sense, you know. It's my place. But culturally, that's a different story.

BOURDAIN: Let me ask you this. You say you're not Hawaiian.

NAGUCHI: No.

What's your feeling about Spam?

NAGUCHI: I love Spam

BOURDAIN: So you're Hawaiian.

NAGUCHI: I'm from Hawaii.

I'm born and raised, going to die 808.

BOURDAIN: The owners of Ethel's are sort of a typical Hawaiian mix, Okinawan, Ryoko Ishii (ph), aka mom; mainland Japanese husband, Yoichi (ph); and daughter, Anoka (ph), who I guess would be Japanese/Okinawan/American/Hawaiian; and son-in-law, Robert, who is, of course, Mexican.

That's pretty. Ooh, wow, look at that.

NAGUCHI: Try it, try it.

BOURDAIN: That looks good.

Now we are talking. That's awesome.

LE: I just call it local food. Local food covers like a wide spread. When I look at this table -- again it's just Hawaii. Got Portuguese, Japanese. Okinawan, World War II. I don't know.

BOURDAIN: Korea?

LE: Korean, Japanese, Hawaiian. Awesomeness.

BOURDAIN: The food is bone-deep Hawaiian food, my friend, which is to say delicious mash-up, of -- well, look, take taco rice. It's a dish created in Okinawa to approximate Tex-Mex for homesick American G.I.'s that appropriated in a post-ironic way by younger generations of Okinawans and Japanese and it's now found its way back to Hawaii. Got that?

[21:10:04] Wow.

LE: Identifying and seeing my best friends who were native Hawaiians, helped me to realize the pride of being from Hawaii, understanding the Hawaiian culture and living it. Possibly being proud of being Japanese.

BOURDAIN: There's still a movement to a sovereign...

(CROSSTALK)

BOURDAIN: There's strong movement. So if fighting broke out at the streets, which side are you on?

(OFF-MIKE)

BOURDAIN: You don't have to think about that.

NAGUCHI: I would joke about it. It's like regional (ph) Hawaii. I am back and Uncle Sam and were like, no, no, Hawaii is for native Hawaiians only now, I'm like, everybody needs to cook. I'm a cook.

I have worth.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOURDAIN: This is Ninoa Thompson. In 1976, along with a number of similarly heroic Hawaiians, he did a very difficult, very important thing. Before 1972, it was generally assumed, even insisted upon, that Hawaii had been settled originally by some random savages who maybe drifted over accidentally from South America. It certainly couldn't have been ancient Polynesians. They couldn't possible have been the kind of sophisticated navigators who could guide a sailboat willfully across the Pacific, across thousands of miles of open water.

NINOA THOMPSON, HAWAII: Nobody could see the canoe. Too beaten, knocked out of you, no dreams, no hope, you can't see.

BOURDAIN: The Polynesian Voyaging Society, with the help of crew members like Ninoa Thompson, set out to prove that that's what did happened.

THOMPSON: There were those in the community that loved this canoe, trade for it and (inaudible) because it sensed the change. You have this 62-foot, 12-ton voyaging canoe. I mean it was powerful. It changed everything.

[21:15:05] BOURDAIN: The hokulaia, a double-hulled sailing canoe, a replica of the kind of craft believed to have been used in those times, and only using primitive contemporaneous navigational tools, sailed to 5,500 miles to Tahiti and back. The trip that helped sparked a Hawaiian renaissance, a rebirth of pride and interest in traditional Hawaiian culture and identity.

THOMPSON: The success was monumental. It changed world view that our ancestors we're powerful, they we're extraordinarily intelligent, they we're courageous and skilled and so we come from them.

BOURDAIN: Thomas is a legendary waterman. He's continued to sail on hokulaia's missions. Native Hawaiian, his roots in this valley go back 200 years.

THOMPSON: My grandfather was born here. So I grew up. (Inaudible).

BOURDAIN: He spent many years learning traditional Polynesian navigation techniques from a master, now (inaudible) of the small Micronesian island of Sarawak.

THOMPSON: This is a man that was chosen by his grandfather. At one year old, he was put into (inaudible) to be trained and learning the wind and the water and the zone (ph), he was sailing. And he would never say that it's was some sense of abuse, but, yeah, when the way make the canoe move, the canoe make me sick, my grandfather threw me into the ocean so I could inside the wave. And when I go inside the wave, I become the wave. And when I become the wave, now I navigate it at five. So when I approached him. He just said to me he's too old. He wants someone to know everything, send his son to my island. But he said I'll teach you enough to find the island you seek, but I can't teach you the magic.

BOURDAIN: Why do you think it was important to do such a difficult thing?

THOMPSON: I mean it's the same story that you're going to see everywhere in terms of the indigenous people. My father's mother, nearly pure Hawaiian, chooses not to teach her children language or culture or genealogy. Where do you come? Who's your family? What's your name? And that could have been 100 generations.

What the voyage did was a reconnection back to feeling wholesome about who you are, because knowing where you come from and who are your ancestors. So when I got to Tahiti, it was their commitment. I wasn't our commitment. It was theirs.

BOURDAIN: Right, right.

THOMPSON: And so that -- It started to ignite this flame. Again, symbolic. A bumper sticker, a T-shirt emerges, I'm proud to be Hawaiian. 1987, it becomes the first language. It's mandatory in schools. Hawaiian culture has to be taught in private schools. Private schools won't have attendance if you don't teach Hawaiian.

BOURDAIN: Right.

THOMPSON: Now its Hawaiian identity isn't everything. It has to be recognized in everything. (Inaudible). That community is powerful.

BOURDAIN: When I mention to people, locals in Oahu, Maui, other Hawaiian residents that I was going to Molokai, the response was almost always surprise. Molokai did not have a reputation for being welcoming, that it was dangerous to go over there. That those Molokai dudes were mean, inward-looking, unfriendly, tough as iron and quick to get pissed off. As it turned out, that was not my experience.

WALTER NAKI, FISHERMAN: So we like to brag that we don't have. We don't have traffic lights. We don't have a building over three stories. We don't have traffic.

BOURDAIN: Nice.

Walter Naki is a skilled fisherman and, today, we're headed out for some octopus.

NAKI: Molokai, it's the friendly island.

BOURDAIN: Yes but it's famously not the friendly island. It's supposed to be the most unfriendly island. I mean, that's what everybody says, right?

NAKI: It depends on how you look at it. Traditionally, we're here very friendly. Now, unfriendly is where you go try to come and fix it.

BOURDAIN: Right.

NAKI: That's when it becomes unfriendly.

The Molokai have been (inaudible) resource ness (ph). So we had a lot of our natural resources still intact.

BOURDAIN: Still?

NAKI: Yes. But there's always other people that want to come.

BOURDAIN: Unsurprisingly, fishing rights is an issue around here. Don't come over here sport fishing the wrong place if you know what's good for you.

NAKI: So Tony, this is basically where we will dive, this area. Nice sandy spot. OK, ready? Let's go.

[21:20:00]OK, we are here, man.

When we're getting (ph) to the octopus, we're going to (inaudible) out of his hole, so when you stick the spear in there, you're going to make him feel, he's not safe no more. When he comes right up, you want to stick him with a spear.

BOURDAIN: Final step, stun the struggling creature with a sharp blow from a mallet or, if you want to go old school, bite them right in the brain. In my case, it took repeated crunching to locate the apparently Chicklet-sized organ.

NAKI: It's going to come to you.

BOURDAIN: This one died eventually, likely by exhaustion, as anything else I suspected.

(OFF-MIKE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOURDAIN: While the sailing canoe the Hokulea was a powerful spark for the Hawaiian renaissance, this is what really set things off.

[21:25:04] Beginning in 1941 and continuing into the '70s and beyond, the U.S. Navy had been using the beautiful neighborhood island of Kahoolawe as a bombing range. You could feel the shockwaves as far away as Maui and Molokai.

WALTER RITTE, ACTIVIST: (Inaudible) Hawaii and nobody's going to tell me any different.

BOURDAIN: People had never been happy about it. But emboldened by times and recent events, a group of young activists decided to take a stand. In 1976, there were a number of attempted occupations of the island in protest of the bombing. None more successful than Walter Ritte's. He and fellow activist, Richard Sawyer, sat on the island and refused to leave.

RITTE: One thing, back over there.

BOURDAIN: Managing to evade pursuers for just over a month before finally being arrested in jail.

RITTE: Their first order is burn down this building and put up (inaudible).

BOURDAIN: They emerged, of course, heroes. And these protests went on to inspire many others to join the movement.

RITTE: I hope I'm still alive when that day happens because I want to see our queen back in office.

BOURDAIN: And embodied the independent spirit, the desire for Hawaiian empowerment and sovereignty that today resonates across generations.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

BOURDAIN: Welcome to what is supposedly the most unwelcoming place in Hawaii.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

HANUHANU: Come in Anthony, come in brother. (Inaudible). My name is Hanuhanu.

BOURDAIN: Thank you so much.

HANUHANU: Nice to meet you.

BOURDAIN: Thank you.

HANUHANU: Please come inside.

BOURDAIN: Aloha.

This is Kahobnui (ph) fish pond, a shared community space with a sacred history. Hanuhanu is the caretaker of the fish pond. He's a local community leader here on Molokai. Also here is the famous Walter Ritte.

RITTE: Everyone knows how valuable all of these stuff because we can see what happened to the rest of the island.

BOURDAIN: Essentially an old school fish farm.

HANUHANU: 800 years old.

BOURDAIN: 800 years old.

HANUHANU: Modernizing one old idea and an ancient idea simple as feeding your community. This, the island you're on, this place could feed over a million people back in the day.

BOURDAIN: You hear the word again and again on Molokai. Ina, which means land and translates to, that which feeds you. Springs, mountains, rivers. These lands, these fish ponds were managed by their ancestors as a sacred trust. Here where fresh water from the mountains and fast-moving oceans waters met, early, sustainable clean fish farms. Something in modern times we're still struggling to figure out. RITTE: People think about us. The true story is that we have a place

of abundance and we trying to protect it. Trying to protect all of these things we've been trying to protect for the last 30 years and it's getting harder and harder.

HANUHANU: Every single one of these Hawaiians over here, get enough evidence that the state of Hawaii, the Department of Land and Natural Resources have done a terrible job. We're not even looking for blame. We're looking for an agreement that from today.

BOURDAIN: Right.

HANUHANU: We all are going to be pono. We're all going to be righteous and good. Our planet is in such bad shape that being environmental, being green is trending. And that's how Hawaiians have always been.

BOURDAIN: So, who gets to be Hawaiian? This is the question, who is Hawaiian?

HANUHANU: Hawaiian is a nationality. You can be Hawaiian.

BOURDAIN: Really, come on.

(CROSSTALK)

BOURDAIN: Don't shit me now. I have to be born here.

(CROSSTALK)

BOURDAIN: Come on. This is a different story.

HANUHANU: I can give you the best explanation. Because you cannot be our blood. Our blood is kanapa. You cannot be kanapa. Hawaii is our nationality. You can pledge (ph) to be that.

You see this where we're standing on, our ina, it matters so much that if you love this place and you don't want to develop it, destroy it, abuse it, we're on the same team. If your eying this place and its resources as a money-making vehicle for yourself, we enemies. Right? And it doesn't matter what race, religion, what sex you.

If you love this place and you can (inaudible) our ina the way we love it and our ancestors loved it, oh, we can be more than friends but we can be family. I'm going to aloha you.

BOURDAIN: Beautifully put. Wow.

HANUHANU: That's it.

BOURDAIN: Right on, bro.

BOURDAIN: It's a pretty impressive spread of food for such a supposedly surly group. Slow roasted pig, grilled kala fish, mullet cooked lavala (ph) style. [21:30:06] And of course, octopus, known as squid luau. Fresh poi. You've got to have it fresh. Believe me. Makes all the difference in the world. Fresh water snails called, I believe, hivine (ph) harvested from streams way up in the mountains.

HANUHANU: It's a bounty (ph).

BOURDAIN: It's a bounty (ph)

HANUHANU: It's a bounty of our ocean and our mountain. Squid.

BOURDAIN: That's octopus? Oh.

(CROSSTALK)

BOURDAIN: I recognize you.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

HANUHANU: Anthony, when somebody steals this, it's easy for us to say, you're stealing our stuff. Right? But all of this stuff is dependent on what healthy environment and ecosystem.

BOURDAIN: All right, then let me ask you just because I'm a bit of a dick, I have to ask.

(CROSSTALK)

I have to ask. All right. So we have like 12 more beers. And I pull out some nice masubi (ph).

HANUHANU: I would eat it, right? Look, I would eat them.

That doesn't mean I'm going to feed my children.

Our culture made everything we did the best of the best. Hawaiians are the only ones that turned taro root into poi. We did everything to the best of the best. You introduce Span to us, we're doing our best. You introduced Christianity to us, we're going to do the best.

BOURDAIN: Our Christianity is better than yours. I love it.

So disappointed, no way lived up to your reputation as mean, unwelcoming, inward-looking, hostile. Admit it. It's a calculated strategy.

HANUHANU: It is.

BOURDAIN: And leave with a message, if you're watching this show, I hope your heart is swelling with admiration. The bottom line, don't come here.

HANUHANU: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:35:00]

BOURDAIN: The ocean is all around for thousands of miles. A humbling feeling knowing, at all times, the ground upon which you live and walk and breathe has put a tiny speck in the middle of all this. So in Hawaii, the water man, is an important distinct. It expresses the shared consensus you're able to handle the assault of the ocean no matter what it throws at you. It implies you're capable of almost mythical things. The ability to live in the water, handle its many moods above or below the surface.

Meet Uncle Ross, waterman, a canoe-surfing legend and generally accepted ambassador of the Aloha Spirit. He's offered to share with me the truly ancient Hawaiian space found only on the face of a crashing wave.

Surfing, a life connected to the ocean, and spending time with family and friends on the beach are some of the cornerstones of Hawaiian life.

UNCLE ROSS, WATERMAN, CANOE SURFER: This is our chef. This is Jason

BOURDAIN: Hi.

UNCLE ROSS: And Tony, that's Kiola.

BOURDAIN: How are you?

KIOLA: All right.

BOURDAIN: You're good?

KIOLA: Yes, yeah.

UNCLE ROSS: Loni.

BOURDAIN: How do you do. How are you?

UNCLE ROSS: Kiave.

BOURDAIN: Hi.

UNCLE ROSS: Megan (ph).

BOURDAIN: Hello.

UNCLE ROSS: Those are my two daughters. This is my wife, Felicia.

BOURDAIN: Hello, how are you?

UNCLE ROSS: Brendan, come say hi.

BOURDAIN: Hey, Brendan, how are you.

UNCLE ROSS: Milton. This is Milton. BOURDAIN: Milton, good to meet you.

So how does everybody know each other here?

UNCLE ROSS: We live on an island. Everybody knows everybody.

BOURDAIN: OK. Why do I even ask?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I met Uncle Ross through the water. I mean just surfing (inaudible) and then we became like family. He's like my dad. My ohana.

BOURDAIN: Each and every weekend, Uncle Ross can be found here, with his ohana, a Hawaiian word that describes an extended circle of family and close friends.

Nice. We got lucky today. It's a beautiful day.

UNCLE ROSS: Beautiful day.

Even when it's storming, it's nice on the beach.

BOURDAIN: Yeah.

UNCLE ROSS: And we'll stay here until that thing goes down, hits the horizon.

When the sun hits the horizon, it's time to go home.

BOURDAIN: Maui is an island as beautiful as it gets and, sure, it's got share of portion-controlled cruise line entertainments doled out and digestible bites and complementary Mai Tais, but you'll also find a sort of beloved institution like Tasty Crust, as local a place as you're likely to find.

Daniel Akitahito will explain.

DANIEL AKITAHITO, JOURNALIST & FOUNDER, CONTRAST MAGAZINE: This is a menu situation or I can order for you if you trust me. I think we'll hook you up with the local flavor.

BOURDAIN: OK, I trust you.

Raised on the big island, he's a journalist, the first native Hawaiian editor of a major surf publication and founder of the local "Contrast" magazine.

AKITAHITO: Local culture is very much so trying to point a finger at anybody coming going, hey, you're a (inaudible) you don't belong. And therein kind of lies a little conflict we have being a modern-day Hawaiian. And I still think that's something that we forget about these days, it's how educated and how accepting our ancestors were.

[21:40:00] It was always built on inclusivity, aloha. Aloha is giving without expecting anything in return. You got this Hawaiian culture that was a product of the Polynesians that populated the islands and then you got this local that's a product of the plantation lifestyle, so the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Portuguese.

BOURDAIN: Indeed, all history can be explained what's on your plate. This is a prime example. Behold, bitches, the plate lunch. The most identifiable and essential feature of the plate lunch is this, a big scoop or two of white rice and potato-mac salad. There is nothing more Hawaiian. Served along side a protein, like chicken katsu, or this hamburger steak, burger-like patty drowned in dark sinister sticky, shiny gravy. Or fodokakiahi (ph), seared ahi with nori and sesame seed.

AKITAHITO: Oh my gosh that looks beautiful.

BOURDAIN: Oh yeah, that's going to work. All right. I sit this right on top of the rice.

AKITAHITO: Yep. You want to get some of that salad on there too.

BOURDAIN: Get that sinister (ph) gravy on. Look what we're eating. It may not be Hawaiian, but they are now. They're fundamentally local. I mean, this food, the most delicious, let's be honest, delicious. This is not healthy eating.

AKITAHITO: And we're kind of paying the price for it right now in the health of the state, which is terrible. As I take a bite of a hamburger.

BOURDAIN: Like I said, just so good.

AKITAHITO: If you really want to do Hawaii right, you've got to get that. That's a power that Hawaii and the ina still has is, if you show aloha and you give without asking, the ina is going to recognize it and it's going to shower its blessings upon you.

BOURDAIN: So, you think traditional Hawaiian culture and lifestyle has a chance against the modern world?

AKITAHITO: I think so. The beautiful part about my ancestors is they realized there is a limited number of resources where they lived, so they observed nature to the best possible they could to figure out what were the cycles and how do we preserve this resource? Hawaiian culture can teach the whole world something that it needs to know, is we all live on an island. And we are all part of the same community. Let's all show aloha to the ina and show aloha to everybody else as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:45:00]

BOURDAIN: An extraordinary man lives in this house, Shep Gordon, longtime resident on Maui, legendary talent manager. Maybe you know some of the people whose careers he's looked after: Alice Cooper, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Blondie, Pink Floyd. He was years, years ahead of the chef explosion, shepherding Emeril through his career. He's produced films, worked alongside great French chefs like Roger Verge became close to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Basically, done everything with everybody in every place.

SHEP GORDON, TALENT MANAGER & HAWAII RESIDENT: I first got here 40 years ago. I put one foot on the island and I knew I was living here the rest of my life.

BOURDAIN: Do you ever look out there and it's wallpaper?

GORDON: Never, ever (ph). I say it out loud, first words in the morning,

My first words in the morning, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, every day.

BOURDAIN: Shep is famously one of the most generous and enthusiastic of hosts, a more stand-up loyal guy you could barely imagine, and it's no wonder they call the documentary based on his life "Super Mitch." That's how he's known around the world.

Here, he's known that guy who throws great parties.

Prep starts early. With chef's friend, Julio, a Maui-born-and-bred rancher, with help from local chef, Sheldon Sini (ph).

Middle of the night, in a traditional emudone (ph) filled with lava rocks. The fire allowed to burn down to coals before the pig, wrapped in combination of banana leaves and tea leaves, is dropped in.

JULIO: OK, you guys ready for the unveiling? Here we go, hold on.

BOURDAIN: And 12 hours later, you dig em up and, well, it's party time.

What you've been saying is you've been drinking steadily since 5: 00 this morning?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't say. It didn't come out of my mouth.

BOURDAIN: Behold the magnificence.

It's a very important part of your childhood. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Wow. Look at that.

He just lift those bones up by hand.

JULIO: Yep.

Ready?

BOURDAIN: Dump them in into a bucket. Awesome.

Wow.

Wow. That's pretty much the way I want to end up.

Pour me right into a pot.

There's lots to do and everyone pitches in to help. It's an extended, all-day affair of prepping, chopping, dicing, slicing, mixing. And of course, there's sampling along the way. Like this wild pig sausage that someone was nice enough to stop by with.

Sheldon works up a potato-mac salad.

SINI (ph): One more time. Hit it one more time.

BOURDAIN: Julio carves up unicorn fish, which he caught himself earlier in the day. Chef Mark Tarbell (ph) stuffs a couple of fresh red snappers before throwing them in the oven. This poi pounded fresh out back. And somewhere pig's foot soup is happily bubbling away.

[21:50:00]

(OFF-MIKE)

BOURDAIN: Why do I want to do this?

There is chili pepper water used for dipping or taken as an auxiliary shot for regularity or for boner medicine or whatever.

Oh, yeah. There is also Spam noodles. There is no party without Spam.

By dinner time, the beer, wine and festive beverages have been flowing for hours. Also, moods have been adjusted, in a completely natural way indigenous to the islands, of course.

How about Julio and the Pig?

(OFF-MIKE)

BOURDAIN: I cooked a lot of things. I never seen one poured into a pot neatly.

JULIO: It's what I love. This is what we do on the island. This is what it's about.

BOURDAIN: Yes, and always bring the ohana, bring the family, bring the kids. You rarely ever see a party where there aren't kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ohana means...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Family.

BOURDAIN: Extended family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like you are now ohana to everybody here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ohana means if you're going to be our family, we can borrow money from you.

BOURDAIN: As happens, I have come to find out things end up in the most natural just-kind-of-happens way, song and some dancing.

This is Willie K. And that's his daughter, Lisette. And it's pretty damn captivating.

BOURDAIN: It's getting near the end for me. And I look over at Shep and see a happy man surrounded by friends, by family really -- his ohana.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:55:00]

THEROUX: To be Hawaiian to me, there needs to be some kind sense of connection to the place. And some sense of responsibility for it. It should mean about being honest to a place and being honest to what you love and to be honest to what you value is a road that's constantly trying to be more and more informed. I don't know sometimes how to be fully honest. I don't know enough. What I love about the oceans, that's my path way, that I go on the oceans to seek that sense of truth.

BOURDAIN: They said I can see whales, like close up. And I had reasons for optimism. All week I had been staring out to sea watching hump-back whales leaping out of the ocean, spouting and frolicking.

So, are things compared to other parts of the word, are conservation of efforts as far as marine mammal in general but whales in particular going well?

DR. JOE MOBLEY, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII: That's the one thing on the planet that is. They are talking about taking humpbacks off the endangered species list. But it's good to hear they have recovered but then it may make it easy to add to the whaling list again.

BOURDAIN: It's mating season in Hawaii for the nearly 10,000 humpback whales that migrate down from southeast Alaska each year. Dr. Joe Mobley, of the University of Hawaii, has dedicated his career to studying these whales.

MOBLEY: Yeah, I guess the song is supposed to be the most complex display in the animal kingdom. When you are close to a singer you can actually -- you can feel it through your whole body. Like 180 D.B., really loud. Wow.

BOURDAIN: They don't mind us at all, do they?

Oh, we got it.

MOBLEY: That was amazing.

BOURDAIN: That was incredible.

MOBLEY: Unbelievable.

[22:00:00]