You can take a number, but nobody had taken a number. Instead, the throng of people just crowded around the glass cases admiring the selection, making up their minds and waiting to catch the eye of one of the bakery ladies.
It was noon at Paalaa Kai Bakery, and people were still loading up on pastries though breakfast and coffee break hours had long passed.
"Been busy all day," one of the bakery ladies said, smiling as she handed over a bag of butter rolls. "I haven’t even had time to have my coffee yet."
A uniformed police officer walked into the bakery with no visible concern for the cliche.
All is well in Waialua.
Paalaa Kai Bakery was the first food establishment on Oahu to receive a red placard in the new Department of Health food safety inspection program, but that doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
The Department of Health Sanitation branch closed the bakery Oct. 6. Paalaa Kai’s violations were for improper temperature controls — it wasn’t as though there were reports of people getting sick. It reopened Nov. 4 after new refrigeration equipment was installed. It’s been drawing a crowd ever since.
The little bakery almost defies logic. It has none of the markers of modern marketability. It’s on Kaukonahua Road, a stretch of highway easily bypassed by other North Shore routes. It doesn’t advertise much, and doesn’t get a ton of tourists like the shave ice places in Haleiwa. There are no little cafe tables at which to have conversations over froufrou coffee or charge up your mobile devices like at Starbucks. The parking lot is small and crowded, and if you’re lucky enough to get a space, the chances are good that a huge SUV will glide into the next stall so close that you can’t open your car door to get out. There’s possibly the world’s sketchiest ATM in the parking lot, and the local custom seems to be to leave your engine running — be it the huge SUV or a shiny truck with mud tires or a rust-bucket surfer special — while you zip in for a bag of ensemadas. Random chickens roam the parking lot with impunity.
It just goes to show you: People in Hawaii are loyal. When the red placard came down and the green one went up, it was like a starting gun going off in a race for carbs. News coverage of the bakery’s problems seemed to bring in new customers. People who hadn’t heard of Paalaa Kai and the wonders of snow puffies made it out to Waialua to find out what the fuss was about. People who hadn’t been there in a while saw the news and thought, "Ooh! Snow puffies!" (Side note: The snow puffies are as good as everyone says.)
Local-style loyalty isn’t a blind sort of loyalty, though. It’s earned by a quality product, and perhaps tempered by the fact that many can relate to having substandard old appliances of our own.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
