Edible Memoir

The other day, I attempted recreating a childhood favorite, braised short rib, specifically the one from a restaurant in Hawaii, named Roy’s.

From a young age, I travelled extensively between Hawaii, Guam, and Seattle due in short because I am a product of divorce. Disregarding everything else that came along with that, I was also traveling back and forth between my mother’s house and my father’s. One lived in Seattle and one lived in Hawaii and Guam. When I was in Hawaii, there was this little neighborhood restaurant, a.k.a. Roy’s, we would frequent, actually quite frequently, and I fell madly, deeply in love with one particular dish served there, the braised short rib. To this day, one bite of that dish transports me back to my awkward tween years spent trying to avoid wearing a bikini on a beach and sun-kissed evenings chowing down at our little neighborhood restaurant, and its positively nostalgic.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. It hits you in waves, sometimes when you’re least expecting it. The scent of plumeria might send you spiraling back to tropical vacations where your only responsibility was applying sufficient sunscreen. A certain song comes on the radio, and suddenly you’re thirteen again, feeling everything too intensely, convinced no adult could possibly understand your complex emotional landscape.

For me, it’s everything I just mentioned as well as the rich, complex aroma of braised short ribs on a sunset drenched dusk on O’hau, that carries me back to those in-between years, not quite child, not quite teen, navigating the choppy waters of growing up in multiple places.

As I mentioned previously, I attempted this nostalgic recipe on one of my many nostalgia driven days (no seriously, I even have a Spotify playlist called Nostalgia so that I can belt out 2000’s hits while driving). Percolating dinner ideas for the evening, I thought I should bring some Aloha back into my city life. Belting out a punk-rock hit from childhood, I collected the necessary ingredients for said venture.

After said decision, I actually had to make it happen, which is obviously easier said than done as I was trying to attempt a restaurant recipe that is still in rotation at Roy’s. I eventually found a recipe of a lady whose literal brand is to recreate restaurant recipes, her website is called Restaurant Recipe Recreations, and the particular Roy’s recreation is linked here. Her main gig is Youtube videos, but she also writes the recipe out for those that would rather not have to replay a specific section of the video a thousand times. Those people would be me.

Finding this recipe felt like striking culinary gold. I’ve had short ribs in fancy restaurants, but none hit that exact flavor profile that whisks me back to the islands. That uniquely Roy’s flavor is apparently a combination of five spice, soy, and brown sugar that seems to say a-loh-haaaaa with each bite.

Whether it’s your grandmother’s lasagna, the one she made every Christmas Eve, the one you’ve never quite managed to replicate despite having her handwritten recipe card, or that one incredible dish you had on vacation ten years ago in a small restaurant whose name you can no longer remember, we’re all trying to taste something that exists as much in memory as on the plate. We’re chasing ghosts made of flavor. Food memory is powerful stuff, more potent than we usually acknowledge. Scientists tell us that our olfactory sense ranks among the strongest forms of memory we possess, that the connection between smell and memory is uniquely direct. While other sensory information gets filtered and processed through various neural pathways, something about smell, and by extension, taste, bypasses our rational brain entirely. It goes straight for the emotional heartstrings, the limbic system, the ancient parts of ourselves that existed long before language or logic. This explains why a single whiff of something can transport you instantly, one moment you’re a rational adult going about your day, and the next you’re eleven years old again, sitting at a Roy’s table, watching steam rise a hunk of braised short rib. But maybe what we’re really after isn’t the perfect recreation at all, but the act of reaching back through time, of honoring what we’ve loved and lost, of proving to ourselves that some things, the important things, don’t have to disappear completely.

Tangent aside, this recipe serves 4, or 2 really hungry patrons. The customary sides are mustard mashed potatoes and broccolini, as pictured above. The potatoes are usually nixed in every meal I ingest, due to an intolerance to nightshades. I wrote a small blurb about this unfortunate discovery here. The short ribs are comparably delicious atop a mound of macaroni cheese, by the way.

The recipe calls for about 26.5 hours of prepping and cooking. 24 out of the 26.5 hours is time for marinating the short ribs. 2.5 or 3 hours is actual cooking time. Honestly, it’s not a lot of time on your feet, most of its either marinating in the refrigerator or cooking in the oven. I bought one tool for this particular recipe, a fat separator, specifically an Oxo fat separator. Which to be fair hasn’t seen a lot of screen time but has become a useful, very niche kitchen gadget. I have a space in my kitchen dedicated to once-in-a-while kitchen gadgets. I also suggest investing in a quality Dutch Oven to make the whole process easier and better. I personally love Staub products, I have their 4 quart cast iron dutch oven in white truffle (my love of truffles extends beyond the fungus variety). So prepping and quality tools are a must in this recipe. I highly suggest avoiding this recipe if you have neither the time nor the equipment.

Let’s talk about the Dutch oven for a moment, the workhorse of nostalgia cooking that sits heavy and purposeful on the stovetop. Mine has seen everything from Sunday night dinners, to ambitious failures of experimental curries, to the quiet triumph of a perfectly braised short rib at midnight. They say well-seasoned cookware carries the ghosts of meals past, and I like to think my Dutch oven has become something of a culinary time capsule. The weight of it in my hands feels like continuity itself, solid, dependable, accumulating history with every use. When I lift the lid after hours of slow cooking, the steam that escapes carries fragments of Hawaii, fragments of childhood, fragments of family dinners from time past. But this phenomenon extends far beyond my kitchen, far beyond my single pot. Many families possess cast iron cookware and Dutch ovens that stretch back through generations, passed down like heirlooms because they are heirlooms. These aren’t delicate keepsakes stored behind glass; they’re working vessels, improved by use, gathering character with age. When we cook in cast iron, we’re not cooking alone. We cook with the seasoning of every generation that came before. We cook with hands that lovingly assembled Sunday night dinners in different decades, different kitchens, different worlds.

The 2000s were fraught with awkward haircuts, years of discomfort in my own body, and 2000s fashion just didn’t flatter my tween years in the least. But amid the low-rise jeans trauma and unfortunate layered tank tops, there were these perfect, incandescent moments of bliss at a dinner table in Hawaii, fork in hand, the day’s swimming and sunburn forgotten as I took another bite of Roy’s short ribs. That’s what I’m really cooking when I make this recipe, not just dinner, but time travel. Each step in the preparation feels like retracing footsteps back to a version of myself that existed before adult responsibilities, before I understood the complexities of family dynamics, before I knew that one day I’d be desperately trying to recreate this exact taste in a kitchen thousands of miles from where I first experienced it.

The marinade especially, that complex blend of wine, soy, vinegars, and five spice, fills my kitchen with a scent that makes my heart ache in the sweetest way. It’s remarkable how the olfactory sense can collapse decades in an instant. One whiff and suddenly I’m sitting at that table again, ocean breeze coming through open windows, a fresh sunburn, and the knowledge that the only thing I had to do that summer evening was fall upon my pillow.

When the short ribs finally emerge from their three-hour sauna in the Dutch oven, the meat clinging to the bone by the merest suggestion, I take a moment before serving. That first taste is sacred, a communion with my past self. When the flavors hit exactly right, there’s this perfect moment of synchronicity between then and now. For a flickering instant, I’m simultaneously an awkward tween and a semi-functional adult, experiencing the same joy across the years.

Does it ever taste exactly like Roy’s? Almost, but not quite. There’s always something elusive, perhaps it’s the Hawaiian air that seasoned the original, or maybe just the impossibility of perfectly recreating a memory. But in some ways, this imperfect recreation has become its own tradition, its own memory-in-the-making. Now when I taste these short ribs, I’m not just tasting Hawaii, I’m tasting all the times I’ve tried to bring Hawaii to me.

Edible Elements

• 4 lbs of Beef Short Ribs-feel free to hand-select them at the butcher to get great ones
• 1 bottle red table wine
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup rice vinegar
• 1/3 cup black vinegar
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar
• 2 TBL fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 TBL Chinese Five Spice
• 1/2 TBL lemon zest
• 1 large white onion, halved
• Canola oil for searing the beef

Essential Equipment

• A Dutch oven worthy of your nostalgic aspirations (mine’s Staub, but any heavy-duty one will do)
• A fat separator (life-changing for getting that glossy, restaurant-quality sauce)
• Patience (not available in stores, sadly)
• A willingness to get messy (those short ribs don’t sear themselves, so wear long sleeves)
• At least one childhood memory worth chasing (the more bittersweet, the better the flavor)

The marinade process is straightforward but crucial, combine all those liquid ingredients, sugar, and aromatics. The five spice is non-negotiable here; it’s the aromatic backbone that distinguishes Roy’s version from any other braised short rib. Let those beautiful bones bathe in their flavorful spa overnight, turning occasionally if you’re the helicopter parent type of cook.

When it’s time to cook, don’t rush the searing process. Take your time. Good nostalgia, like good cooking, can’t be rushed.

Then it’s into the Dutch oven with the marinade and a long, slow simmer that fills your home with the scent of impending emotional time travel. Three hours later, you’re not just serving dinner; you’re serving a memory made edible, tangible, shareable.

And maybe that’s the real magic of food nostalgia, it transforms something as ephemeral as a childhood memory into something you can literally bring to the table, something you can share with people who weren’t there for the original moment. When I serve these short ribs to friends and family who’ve never been to Hawaii with me, never mind Roy’s, I’m giving them a taste of my history, inviting them into a story that started decades ago on an island in the Pacific.

In the end, isn’t that what all cooking is about? Not just sustenance, but storytelling. Not just ingredients, but inheritance. Not just recipes, but remembrance.

Now excuse me while I go put my Nostalgia playlist on repeat and reduce some sauce. I’ve got some time traveling to do.

(I am not affiliated with any links, companies, and products listed in this article.)