The wonton chips has been popular for many years, and for a lot of years, people were just eating them straight out of the bag or adding them to their Chinese chicken salad.

The poke nachos is a banger; covers all the bases that's why.

The chips are thick enough that they're not going to get soggy with the sauce.

He ate it like, "Brah, this is freaking amazing."

Everybody in the comments was like-- they want wontons.

ʻONO!

Hawaiʻi's Food Culture, sponsored by Hawaiʻi Gas, Lōkahi Federal Credit Union, and Hawaii Dental Service.

So our process begins here with weighing the flour and the cornstarch.

So we have Joel here.

He's been working for us for 20 years.

Maebo Noodle Factory, located in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, has been making noodles and their iconic one-ton chips for over 70 years.

Although we're called Maebo Noodle Factory, we're really known for our wonton chips.

They can be used in salads, in nachos, poke nachos, kalua nachos, or eaten right out of the bag just like that.

Our one-ton man is is pretty iconic.

My grandpa came up with him and drew him, you know, when they first started.

Because the wonton chips is a play on the word wonton.

Yeah, like those Chinese-filled dumplings that they fry.

Back in 1950, in order for my great grandparents to provide for their family, they started this noodle company.

They took the cutoffs of the wonton pi that they also used to make, and added a little bit of sugar to the recipe just to sweeten it up a little, and started making these chips out of these cutoffs.

And my great grandma used to give them out to the customers that would come to get the noodles.

Here we are today, 76 years later.

It's been a staple in generations of households here in in Hawaiʻi and even on the mainland.

Right now, she's wrapping the pork cash or the siu mai, and as you can see, it's quite simple.

On the edge of Honolulu's Chinatown stands Royal Kitchen.

The restaurant has been serving Chinese-style comfort food since 1974.

This is a Chinese staple for dim sum.

It's called xiao mai or siu mai.

It's very popular locally.

I mean, from the old days when you had the manapua man here, they would sell that along with the manapua.

Okay, the pork hash.

You see them with the gallon cans.

It's an old tradition here in Hawaiʻi.

Originally from China, wonton often refers to a traditional Chinese dumpling.

Introduced by Chinese immigrants, it is now something you will find on just about every Chinese menu in Hawaiʻi.

The wonton skin or the wonton pi.

There are all kinds.

There's some for wonton, and it's made for wonton.

And it depends on the thickness of it.

You could use it for gau gee, which is the thicker, crispy gau gee, or you could use them like we do.

We use it for the garnish on a chicken salad.

See how it puffs up?

Puffs up really nicely.

Looks like French fries, don't they?

It's nice and crunchy.

You can season it if you want.

We don't, but you can season it if you like.

If you're gonna make your own, it just adds the crunch.

That's all.

After we do the flour, all of the mixture is put through this machine here.

It's rolled out into cylinders, and then it's run through this machine.

From start to finish, Maebo's one-ton chips are made right here in this factory.

So the machine will press it, maybe about four times.

The chips are cut and then put into buckets.

They're held overnight and then we fry the next morning.

The entire process is fairly simple, and much of the work is still done by hand.

So, in the morning, when we empty the buckets of chips, what we do is we fluff them up so they're not sticky.

We put them into weed buckets, and then we run it through our fryer right here.

It's a manual production, so everything is set through the table, manually cooled, and then as you can see here, everyone is weighing the chips in pitchers and cups.

Right now, they're working on our larger bag, so these are the 20 ounces, and then the last part would be putting it through the sealer and through our X-ray machine.

It's just making sure that there's no foreign objects in it, and then after this is done, it's pallet wrapped, and then we put it into our warehouse.

Poke nachos.

You can choose a style of poke that if you want on them.

The house way we make them is with our signature shoyu style.

For Ry's Poke Shack, one-ton chips provide a fresh take on their house specialty.

Poke nachos is a banger.

If you just want the poke, just eat the poke like that.

But if you want to cover all the bases with the whole texture, the umami, the twang, and everything.

Get the poke nachos.

Killer!

So good!

It's just a nice vehicle for it to be held to hold your ingredients in.

You can fry them, you could steam them, shred them up, use them as a as a topping.

The list can go on.

For the Maebo poke nachos, they're gonna cut the bag open.

They're gonna serve like serve it in there.

Then they're gonna make the poke.

They're gonna fresh make the poke.

We have fresh two plus graded sashimi grade ahi.

Then they're gonna toss those with our sauces.

We have shoyu, sesame, white onion, little green onion in that one.

They're gonna put that right in the middle inside the bag.

And after that, we're gonna put the scoop crab salad in there.

We get our homemade pickled cucumbers, and the sauce is go on after.

Poke nachos, and I got the two chopsticks and two forks in there for you guys.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, ladies.

You're looking for like, like Hawaiian Hawaiian poke.

It's like only Hawaiian ingredients.

But nowadays we think of poke and we think of wontons and stuff.

We think local.

I think that's because of the sugarcane plantation days.

So that's like the whole story of Hawaiʻi.

Like that's that's the epitome of what Hawaiʻi is today.

Hammah!

One hammah!

Growing up, we were always here at the factory.

I lived right next door to my grandma, so we would just tag along with her, and she would be here every day.

We were running around in the factory, playing hide-and-go seek in the old factory.

And I say old factory because actually, the original building that was here burned down in 2003.

So the building that we're in now has only been in operation since 2007.

So interestingly, when the the factory burned down and then we rebuilt, my uncle decided to actually have everything more hand packed because before we had a lot of things automated, but he wanted to provide jobs for people.

You know, my uncle was very kind and generous to the community, and he wanted to be involved.

So that's why we still hand pack a lot of things.

Talking about my my grandma and my uncle, my mom, my best memory of them here was actually the last time that they were in this factory, and we were here for for a photo shoot, and my grandma and my uncle came down.

They were already having a hard time, so they had their little walkers.

They sat in a circle, and were just sitting there, in their you know in their walkers, and it looked like they were having a meeting.

I was standing behind them, and I I saw them you know, in a little hui there, and I was like, wow, you know.

But little did I know that that would be the last time that they would visit the factory.

That's my favorite memory of them here.

Not working, but just sitting there.

It was just so cute.

I would just always remember that moment.

Maebo's been around for a long time, like old samin shops and stuff.

You you say the name and people just not only think of the shop, but you think of Hawaiʻi.

That's what Maebo is too, Hawaiʻi with wontons, because they've been so they've been here for decades, you know.

And you think Maebo, think wontons, but you also think Hawaiʻi, think Hawai'i wontons.

Despite the challenges, the Maebo family takes pride in their business, determined to carry on their family legacy.

My sister Chasity and my cousin Jarek and I, fourth generation in, and what drives us to keep on going is thinking about all the hard work that our great great grandparents and then our grandma and grandpa, my uncle Blaine, they put into this company, you know, they put their heart and soul into everything that they did here.

This was like their life.

So, wanting to keep that going, you know, make them proud.

They were already proud of us when they were around, but even more so now that they have passed.

We want to keep it going so that we can continue their legacy.