Bobby Pahia is the farm manager at Hoaloha Farms. The farm supplies its parent restaurant company Na Hoaloha Ekolu (Star Noodle, Old Lahaina Lūʻau and Aloha Mixed Plate in Lahaina, as well as Leoda’s Kitchen & Pie Shop in Olowalu) with several varieties of kalo and other crops. Raised in rural O‘ahu, the green-thumbed Hawaiian moved to Maui in the 1980s to work for the University of Hawai‘i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Today Bobby grows two-dozen heirloom kalo varieties on his Waikapū farm, including mana ‘ulu, the popular Maui lehua, and the rare ele‘ele naioea
