Hawai`i plate-lunch macaroni salad is a specific thing. It is not the macaroni salad your grandmother made in Iowa. It is not the version at the Whole Foods deli counter. It is not 'creamy pasta salad.' It is its own dish, with its own three rules. If you violate any of them, you have made something else. The something else may be delicious, but it is not mac salad.

Rule 1: Mayonnaise. Real. Lots.

Best Foods or Kraft. No substitutions. No yogurt blends, no avocado mayo, no 'lite.' The dressing-to-noodle ratio should be visibly generous; you should see a faint slick when you press the back of a fork into the pile. If the mac salad looks 'dry,' it is wrong. If it looks 'wet,' you've found the real thing.

Rule 2: The Noodle Is Soft

This is where mainland palates revolt. Hawai`i mac salad cooks the elbow macaroni 50% past al dente, then chills it overnight in dressing. The noodle takes on the mayo. The texture is silky, not toothy. If your noodle has bite, you have made Italian pasta salad. Italian pasta salad is also a fine food. It is not mac salad.

Rule 3: Shredded Carrot. Period.

The only acceptable additions are finely shredded carrot (for color and a faint sweetness) and a small amount of finely minced onion (optional, controversial). That's it.

The Heresies

The Quiet Truth

Mac salad is a deeply Filipino-Japanese-Hawaiian dish that the mainland never quite understood and the mainland will never get right. That's okay. It doesn't have to. We have it here, and the joints that make it correctly know they're doing it for us, not for the tourist reviewers who write 'a little bland.' It's supposed to be quiet. It's the neutral ground between three proteins, two scoops of rice, and whatever else is on the plate. Loud mac salad is bad mac salad.

If you want to taste the gold standard, the gold standard lives on these plates:

Cross-reference these against the version at any hotel buffet on the strip. Tell us if you can taste the difference. (You will.)