HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – This Friday, August 9, marks Singapore’s National Day, and to celebrate, Kailua business Cafe Kopi joined HNN’s Sunrise to talk about their international cafe and authentic Singaporean dishes.

Co-owners Jeanne Ng and Ernest Shih, both originally from Singapore, bring a taste of their homeland to Hawaii with a special menu that includes laksa, kopi and kaya toast.

Laksa is a flavorful, spicy noodle soup with shrimp and tofu in a rich, creamy coconut base with a blend of herbs and spices, such as laksa leaf and belachan (fermented shrimp paste). It can be served with rice or wheat noodles.

This dish is a signature offering at Cafe Kopi, available only Fridays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

They also showcased their traditional kopi, a robust coffee brewed with Robusta beans roasted with butter that’s traditionally pulled by hand and served with condensed milk, offering a rich and unique caramelized flavor.

A classic Singaporean breakfast — kaya toast — is made of kaya, a sweet and creamy jam made with coconut, eggs and pandan (a fragrant herb abundant in Southeast Asia), with freshly baked bread and salted butter.

“We use [pandan] in place of vanilla essence for a lot of our cooking,” Ng said.

“Kaya” means rich in Malay, originates from Malacca in Malaysia and is eaten throughout Southeast Asia.

Ng says Cafe Kopi is not just a place for international food but also serves as a community hub, art gallery and event space, blending Parisian and Italian traditions with Singaporean and Asian influences.

Ng says Cafe Kopi is the only bakery on the Windward side serving freshly made croissants that come in a variety of sweet and savory flavors, from Spam musubi to ube. They also have a wide range of pastries and samosas.

Located at 45 Kihapai St. in Kailua, the cafe operates daily from 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. with dine-in and outdoor seating.

For details, visit cafekopihawaii.com, call (808) 262-9050 or email info@cafekopihawaii.com.

They’re also on Facebook Cafe Kopi Hawaii and Instagram @cafekopihawaii.

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

Tourism on the Big Island and Hawaii in general is down as high prices filter out overseas visitors.

According to data from the Hawaii Tourism Authority, 866,173 people visited the island during the first half of 2024, a decrease of 1.6% from both the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2019, the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, visitor spending on the island during the same period was $1.63 billion, leaping up by 13.7% from 2023 and by 41.2% compared to 2019.

The same trends mostly bore out statewide, with the 4.7 million visitors this year to date down by 3.7% from the first six months of 2023, and down by 7.5% from the first half of 2019.

Spending statewide this year is actually down somewhat from 2023, dropping from $10.7 billion to $10.2 billion, but is still significantly higher than 2019, when visitors spent $8.8 million by the end of June.

HTA reported that the statewide total visitation rate for June represents a near total (92%) recovery compared to the prepandemic June 2019, while June 2024 spending has increased by more than 17% from June five years ago.

Meanwhile, Big Island hotel occupancy rates dropped by 2.4 percentage points in June compared to June 2023, and by 11.4 percentage points compared to June 2019. This year to-date, the occupancy rate for Big Island hotels was 67.8%, down 3.3% from the first six months of last year, and down 9.2% from the same months of 2019.

The average daily rate for a Big Island hotel room was $423.77 in June, up 4.3% from June 2023, but up a staggering 70.2% from June 2019. That increase in rates since 2019 was the largest of any island this month.

Vacation rental performance rates on the island show a similar story for June: slight declines in occupancy from 2023 (4%), larger declines compared to 2019 (22%), while the average daily rate has ballooned to $257.57, up 5% from June 2023 and up 59% from June 2019.

“It’s been a strange, unpredictable year,” said Jason Cohn, president of Big Island tour group company Hawaii Forest and Trail. “Some months have been fantastic, while others have been much slower than we expected. … This summer has been a bit lackluster, though.”

Cohn said there have been various factors for why the market has cooled, but added the soaring prices for lodging and plane tickets have caused the biggest impacts.

“Activity providers have found that, after paying for the hotel, visitors don’t have the extra spending power,” Cohn said. “Concierges have said they’re getting a lot of questions about free activities. People are blowing their budget on the flight and the hotel.”

Cohn estimated that his business’ customer rate has been “about flat” compared to previous years — “but the cost of business has gone up,” he added.

Cohn also said he and other tour groups are bracing for a slow autumn. He said the lead-up to a U.S. presidential election is typically a fallow period for travel.

But Cohn went on to say that there are too many unpredictable variables to make any kind of reasonable prediction about when the market will right itself. While he guessed that, after the election, demand for travel might start to creep back up around the holiday season, the industry is too volatile to tell.

Scott Pauli, executive director of the Island of Hawaii Visitors Bureau, said in an email that although the market will be slow for the remainder of the year, it is still trending better than 2023.

“While we do see a trend up in visitor spending, we also see a slight decline in the number of visitors to the island of Hawaii for the rest of this year,” Pauli wrote. “We have been hearing from our visitor industry partners that the same softness will continue for the rest of the year as well. While this year looks like it will continue to be soft, we need to look at the entire picture in terms of recovery. Compared to 2023, Hawaii Island is headed in the right direction.”

Pauli added that the island’s “diversity of landscapes and experiences” will continue to be an evergreen attraction for visitors and that the visitors bureau is working with partners on new campaigns to continue to appeal to overseas guests.

“Looking towards international markets, Japan is important to Hawaii Island,” Pauli wrote. “We are working to bring visitors from Japan back, despite barriers such as the high exchange rates. In Japan, the current campaign is ‘Beautiful Hawaii’ and ‘Yappari Hawaii (It’s Gotta Be Hawaii).’ Both feature a more direct invitation to visitors from Japan to return to and rediscover Hawaii.”

Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Madeiran artists Roberto Moniz and Roberto Moritz are professors and musicians at The Conservatory in Madeira, islands off the northwest coast of Africa and part of Portugal.

They were in Hawaii to take part in several educational and cultural events, including today’s “A Day in Portugal Festa” at the Hawaiian Plantation Village.

The annual celebration of Portuguese culture featured food, activities and performances, including some by Moniz and Moritz, who play traditional Madeiran instruments, the machete, a small stringed instrument, and rajao, a guitar-like instrument with five strings.

Used in folklore dances of Portugal, the machete and rajao inspired the creation of the ukulele. The instrument was brought to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants and became a staple of Hawaiian music under the Hawaiian monarchy.

The two musicians and Shawn Yacavone, co-chair of the state’s Hawaiian Music Archives and caretaker of the world’s most significant collection of Hawaiian Kingdom-era ukulele, joined HNN’s Sunrise to talk about the relationship between Hawaii and Portugal and the origins of the ukulele.

Moniz and Moritz said they’re learning Hawaiian music on their instruments to bring back to Madeira and are planning more collaborations with Hawaii.

For more information, visit portugueseculturehistoricalcenter.org or follow their Facebook Portuguese Culture & Historical Center.

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.