A really good cup of coffee.

Okay, so I'll give up the name of the coffee I bought at the Farmer's Market at Blaisdell, earlier this week. It's from the Aikane Plantation in Ka'u, on the Big Island. (Don't get put off by their poorly-made website, or the lack of matching colors between their wares and their website -- I guess Pantone is not in their lexicon.) This coffee is as smooth if not smoother than Kona, which is to say that I haven't ever had Kona coffee this smooth, but there are a lot of Kona coffee producers with very expensive beans that I haven't tried.

Ka'u is not the same place I remember it to be when I visited, decades ago. Sugar used to dominate the state, and the Big Island in particular -- my mother's family grew up working in a sugar plantation and had in fact tried to grow coffee, but failed during the Depression, in Kona -- you can read about the changes from sugar to coffee, here and here. On Google Earth you can see massive agricultural plots, most of which seems dedicated to coffee growing.

A lot of credit to the Aikane Plantation for getting their stuff out there, and don't be surprised if Ka'u coffee is the next big thing in coffee. This stuff is really good.