Editor’s Page: Pressing Restart

We’re happy to welcome a new food and dining editor.

January 1, 2016

Robbie Dingeman,

Photo: Adam Jung

Here at the HONOLULU offices, we’ve been preparing for the new year by cleaning up, getting rid of clutter and setting our 2016 goals. Combined with the bustle of the holidays, the cavalcade of treats we bake, buy or receive and our often-compressed work schedule—we’re busy.

A brand-new calendar year offers the optimism of a fresh start. It’s like an Etch-A-Sketch; shaking that familiar red frame, we can start over again, and again, and again.

Our whole team is feeling the positive energy, and it’s bolstered by the excitement of welcoming our new food and dining editor: Catherine Toth Fox. She might be new as a full-time staffer here, but she’s also a longtime contributor and friend who’s been writing for the magazine for a decade.

We’re especially happy to have Catherine on board as she brings new ideas rooted in diverse experience, her solid journalism background as a writer, a reporter, an instructor and a social media pro. (We worked together at The Honolulu Advertiser, too.) Add to that her love of everything food—from delving into the origins of who produces our food, from farmer to chef, through her own cooking and, of course, eating. Over the past two years, she has written for HONOLULU on topics that ranged from ethnic pageants and ghost stories to new restaurants and the many sweet treats to be found at the top of Kaimukī.

New Food and Dining editor, Catherine Toth Fox.

Photo: David Croxford

I wanted to officially welcome Catherine this month, as it’s one of our biggest dining issues of the year, the Hale ‘Aina Awards, in which we celebrate the best restaurants statewide for their excellent meals and service. Because of the timing of her arrival, she wasn’t able to lead the coverage, but she did jump into an interview with iconic chef Peter Merriman, one of the Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine founders, to talk about his new book, his new restaurants and his take on life.

Senior editor Don Wallace and associate editor Katrina Valcourt handled our cover story. We persuaded the low-key duo behind two popular Chinatown restaurants—Lucky Belly and Livestock Tavern—to talk with us about their interesting career journey after Livestock won the Best New Restaurant award. When Dusty Grable and Jesse Cruz tried to sidestep our request to shoot a photo of them, I suggested they include some of the team. They did, and how! Photographer Aaron Yoshino captured the moment, a striking visual reminder of the importance of a good team.

How important is food in a relationship? That’s a question explored by writer Jennifer Meleana Hee in “Vegan Dates Hunter” as she grapples with how a mostly vegan woman navigates a relationship with a meat-eating, animal-killing man named Hunter.

Rounding out our plate this month is the annual Sour Poi Awards where we pay homage to those out-of-the-ordinary and just plain wacky news stories that occur each year. I confess, this feature has been one of my favorites for years and I’m happy to be part of the team putting it together with executive editor Michael Keany.

We’re also proud to include highlights from our second annual HONOLULU Fashion Week. The event is dedicated to pushing Hawai‘i fashion forward while celebrating the talent here and abroad.

Here’s to a great start of a new year for all.