Spooner Spotlight: Chef Ippy - Eating Our Roots

Posted on July 29, 2024

Spooner Spotlight: Chef Ippy - Eating Our Roots
Meet Chef Ippy Aiona, talented chef, lifelong Spooner fan, and creator of the new eight-part docuseries Eating Our Roots.

Born into the world of restaurants, Chef Ippy Aiona spent much of his childhood hanging around his parents' restaurants in Waimea, on the island of Hawaiʻi. After receiving a formal culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco, Chef Ippy returned to Hawaiʻi and opened his first restaurant, Ippy’s Hawaiian BBQ, in his early 20s.

Over the last ten years, Ippy has had a phenomenal career competing in numerous television cooking contests, joining the esteemed ranks of Forbes 30 under 30, and writing the seminal cookbook, Easy Hawaiian Cookbook, which routinely makes the list of Amazon’s top 100 cookbooks.

His most recent endeavor is an eight-part series, Eating Our Roots, which Chef Ippy calls an anthropological study of Hawaiian cuisine. We’re excited to announce our partnership with Chef Ippy to support this amazing new project. 

With Eating Our Roots, Chef Ippy sets out to celebrate the iconic ingredients that make up Hawaiʻiʻs  food culture, from taro to cattle, and highlights the local farmers, growers, and fishermen that steward them.

With Eating Our Roots, we really want to showcase and shine a light on the farmers, ranchers, and cowboys who sacrifice so much to feed us all.  It’s important to share their story, and we are grateful to be able to do that.

Ippy’s connection to Reyn Spooner started in his youth when he and his brother received our Hawaiian Christmas Aloha shirts from his mom. Spooners have been his Aloha shirt of choice ever since. We’re proud to support Ippy’s adventure and his new series – where you’ll see him sporting plenty of Spooner Aloha.

I have been a Reyn Spooner fan since I was a child, and my mom would buy my brother and me matching special Christmas edition Reynʻs shirts every year!  She eventually made us quilts with them for my daughters. They have been a part of my life forever.

Eating Our Roots airs every Monday at 7 pm HST on K5 after Hawaii News Now and streaming  https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/page/eating-our-roots/ and their app.
 
Next time you’re in Waimea, make sure you visit Ippy’s BBQ for a legendary plate lunch or his newest restaurant, Dizzy Pita, next door.