About us

The original recipe came from my brother-in-law and his father on Kauai, where they hunt and smoke wild pigs using the invasive strawberry guava wood, also known as wai'awi. Cold smoking is a local way to enhance the wild taste of the feral pigs and tenderize the lean meat.

I was looking to start a business after teaching high school for ten years and asked if I could use his recipe. He gave me the green light, so I quit teaching and Guava Smoked was born. We started by doing the local Farmers' Markets and large outdoor events for the first two and a half years, renting time at an incubator kitchen for restaurant start-ups, and selling our plate lunches and bowls for people to try. The response was good, so we got our first brick and mortar on November 2013, in the heart of industrial Kalihi.

Experimenting with different meats and fish, we now have a menu that covers a wide range of palates and dietary needs, from pork to falafels, and shortribs to utterfish collars, if it's fatty...we'll smoke it!! We opened our second location in Kapahulu a month before the pandemic hit, and are still here today because of the local support when we needed it the most...Mahalo Nui to our lahui \m/.