Kanemitsu Bakery and Restaurant

Description:

• Morning, noon, and night, this local legend fills the Kaunakakai air with the sweet smells of baking. Taro lavosh is the hot seller, joining Molokai bread -- developed in 1935 in a cast-iron, kiawe-fired oven -- as a Kanemitsu signature. Flavors range from apricot-pineapple to coconut or strawberry, but the white, wheat, cheese, sweet, and onion-cheese breads are classics. The bread mixes offer a way to take Molokai home. In the adjoining coffee shop/deli, the hamburgers and egg-salad sandwiches are popular and cheap.

  Kanemitsu's has a life after dark, too. Whenever anyone on Molokai mentions "hot bread," he's talking about the hot-bread run at Kanemitsu's, the surreal late-night ritual for die-hard bread lovers. Those in the know line up at the bakery's back door beginning at 10pm, when the bread is whisked hot out of the oven and into waiting hands. You can order your fresh bread with butter, jelly, cinnamon, or cream cheese, and the bakers will cut the hot loaves down the middle and slather on the works so it melts in the bread. The cream-cheese-and-jelly bread makes a fine substitute for dessert.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010