Posted on: Sunday, April 3, 2005

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

You can buy just about anything without even leaving your house anymore.

Except pickled mango. The real kind. Thick sliced, red food coloring, sweet vinegar juice.

Everything else is available online, by mail or by phone. Blockbuster and Tower Record stores are becoming obsolete. Safeway lets folks do their grocery shopping online (a service not yet available in Hawai'i, but just you wait). You can even order pizza with your digital cable television.

And while you can order all manner of crack seed and preserved fruit from the comfort of your sofa, for pickled mango, you have to leave the house. Sometimes, you have to go far.

Some will actually drive all the way from town into Hale'iwa to buy pickled mango.

OK, maybe that's just me, but I can't be the only one who has discovered the little house across from Hale'iwa Beach Park. It's worth the long drive on a Sunday afternoon.

There are a few hand-lettered signs leading you to the house: pickled mango, $6.00

For that, you get a small Zip-lock bag with about a pound of chilled fruit and sour juice inside. Not exactly a bargain basement price, but again, worth the drive, worth the money.

The mango is picked green and sliced thick. The pieces are crisp and firm, just tart enough to make you close your eyes on the first bite, just sweet enough to be refreshing. The secret is in the mango. North Shore mangos are somehow perfectly suited for pickling. Maybe it's the salt air. Maybe it's the water. Maybe it's the mana of the place.

But the best part about the Hale'iwa pickled mango isn't even the mango. It's the aura of the people who sell it.

There's no high-energy "come and get it!" sales routine of a high-school car wash or the bustling production line of Huli-Huli chicken. The pickled mango folks relax under their tarp-covered lanai, play cards, eat and talk story. If you stop by to buy something, great. If not, they're not waiting in vain. It's a party. The mango is just an aside.

When someone pulls up to buy a bag or two, one person stands from the card game to get the goods. They take turns. The other players glance over and say hi, but a customer does not disrupt the game.

Usually, the gang has something else cooking on the side. One week, it was fish pulehu on the grill. Another time, it smelled like teriyaki sticks. (Confessions of a repeat customer.) But those other dishes aren't for sale. Just the mango. The rest is for the card game.

That peaceful scene — the gathering of longtime friends; the weekly ritual of laughing away the long afternoons — makes you wish you could just park the car, take a spot underneath that tarp, and join in on the easy conversation.

That Hale'iwa pickled mango is a small taste of that lovely scene. You can't get that online.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.