At Honlulu's lauded town bistro, handsome head chef and owner Ed Kenney’s fine, unaffected cooking style reflects his passion for local ingredients and the round-the-world adventure that more than a decade ago, set him on a path to pro cooking.

“I realized everywhere I went, from an alleyway in Indonesia to a street corner in Paris, food is what brought people together,” he says.

The 39-year-old Hawaiian native returned home with Italy’s culinary sensibility in mind: value the ingredient and let the quality guide the dish—and, whenever possible, buy local. Kenney opened town (3435 Waialae Ave., Kaimuki; 808-735-5900; townkaimuki.com) in 2005.

Last year, he unveiled a second restaurant named Downtown (Hawaii State Art Museum; 250 South Hotel St.; 808-536-5900; hawaii.gov/sfca), that follows the same principles, but puts the focus on panini, antipasti and other daytime fare. The menu at town, designed to look as though it was written on an old manual typewriter, changes daily; that is, popular dishes appear routinely, but ingredients will change according to “whatever’s in season,” says Kenney.

1. MA’O organic lettuces, pancetta, manchego, pine nuts

 “This is a classic representation of our food philosophy,” explains Kenney. The lettuces are grown on a local, organic-certified farm—one of the seven certified organic farms on Oahu—that doubles as a community outreach enterprise to develop a sustainable food system while providing work for rural communities. “It’s the three Ps: People, Planet, Profit,” says Kenney.

The dressing is a white balsamic vinaigrette with a fine dice of shallots; the Italian pancetta is cut into lardoons, the mainland pine nuts are left whole, the Spanish cheese is shaved—Hawaii makes only goat’s cheese. “It’s the compromise we have to make to get the flavour profiles: not everything can be local.”

2. Ahi tartare, risotto cake, balsamic vinegar

“We like to think of our place as a rustic bistro and this is the most frou-frou dish on the menu—and the most popular, ironically,” says Kenney.

The fish is supplied by sport fishermen: “Guys who go out in the morning and return in the evening, which means the fish has been on ice two to three hours before we get it.” The tartare is classic French, garnished with fine herbs of chervil, chives and tarragon—all sourced locally, as are the eggs for the aioli garnish. The rice is Italian Arborio, “since there is no rice grown in the state,” says Kenney, and is made into three perfect little canapé-sized cakes. “Some people come in and order three of these as a main.”

3. Half chicken, torn bread, tatsoi, pancetta

“Our most popular menu item was thrown a curve ball due to the closure of Hawaii’s last poultry farm, Medeiros,” says Kenney. “We’d planned to take the entrée off our menu, but customer feedback was so relentless that we’ve had to substitute all natural California-grown Petaluma poultry until a new, local facility is operational [this fall].”

The chicken is pan-roasted with the bread salad, which is another reference to the chef’s beloved Italy (the traditional panzanella is a tomato, basil and bread salad). The addition of tatsoi—a local stand-in for spinach—is added near the end to introduce a smack of bitter green to the hardy main course.

4. Gnocchi, hamanalo baby corn, kahuku grape tomato, sage or basil butter

This is a traditional potato gnocchi that “took a while to get right,” says Kenney. He learned that the key is to make the pasta fresh each morning, because “it’s a staple that lends itself to being paired with whatever’s in season, whatever’s coming in.”

In the summer, that can mean hamanalo baby corn, which is named for the small, local farm where “they thin out the crops, like grapes in a vineyard, to send more sugar into the corn.” The kahuku tomato is yellow—meaning more sweetness—and comes from Oahu’s HO Farms, known for its eco-friendliness and specialty tomatoes.

5. Milk and honey—buttermilk panacotta, nalo meli honey and seasonal fruits

Kenney adds buttermilk to cut the richness of this milk pudding. “It adds a tanginess.” The milk is from a local dairy farm, Meta Gold, and nalo meli honey, which “has a banana flavour,” hails from the Hawaiian Honey Bee Co-op’s bee farm on a banana plantation. One of Kenney’s favourite fruit additions is passion fruit, or lili koi in Hawaiian.

To finish, a cup of Kona coffee from Keopu Coffee, an organic, four-acre plantation run by farmer Isaac Gillette and his family on the Big Island. Sourcing local coffee has been a challenge for Kenney. He finds a lot of the local coffee inferior to the Italian brand, Illy, but since discovering Keopu at the Kopulai Community College farmers’ market (where the chef shops each Saturday), town serves Keopu for the French-press brew and Illy for espresso.