Could you make a fine-dining, Hawai'i Regional Cuisine dinner without shoyu, rice, spices, flour or anything else not made in, raised in or caught in Hawai'i?

Don't feel bad. The challenge is daunting even chef Alan Wong, whose self-named restaurant on King Street will present "Locavore," May 20, a special seven-course menu based on local foods only.

"Hahd, you know," said Wong, who likes to slip into the pidgin of his plantation-era Wahiawa boyhood.

But in a sense, Wong has been at this "Locavore" thing for a long time, more than 20 years, before the terms "sustainable" and "organic" or "locavore" (meaning eating only food grown or produced nearby) were in use outside the natural-foods movement. He's been working closely with farmers, food producers and fishermen for years, urging them to grow things he wants to buy, promising to buy their whole crop, if he has to. He employs a consultant, Dan Nakasone, whose job is to scour the Islands for interesting and viable products. But he's always been able to make up the difference with imported foods.

Not for this event.

The first question he had to tackle was just how rigorous he was going to be: Would he rule out products made here with some imported ingredients in them? For example, he said, they buy tofu from Honda Tofu in Wahiawa, but the soybean milk they use to make the tofu is made from soybeans not raised here. He's using locally grown meats, eggs and aquaculture fish, but the fertilizer used and the feed the animals eat is generally from elsewhere.

He thought about using tofu with a footnote on the menu, explaining about the soybeans and suggesting that there's a need for someone to start growing them here. But he decided against that kind of preachiness. Instead, he ruled the tofu out and the meats and eggs in. His dividing line is that key ingredients in the food come from here, but peripherals (feed and such), "I don't count."

Otherwise, he'd be hard-pressed to come up with a protein besides Hawai'i-caught fish. "If I came that strict, I couldn't use cheese because the rennet isn't from here, I couldn't use Maui Cattle Co. beef because the animals are grass fed, but then finished on grain; I couldn't use Hamakua Springs Country Farms tomatoes because the fertilizer doesn't come from Hawai'i," he said.

"If you go that far, you go nuts," he said, with a laugh.

For flavoring, he will use only Kaua'i salt, perhaps some local bay leaf, raw sugar, peppercorns the chefs dried themselves and pineapple wine vinegar that they've been making over the past few weeks. The only oil will be macadamia nut oil.

And the dinner will be the debut restaurant appearance of a new dairy, the Naked Cow Dairy in Wai'anae, where former Meadow Gold dairywoman Monique Van der Stroom and her sister Sabrina St. Martin make butter, cheese and cream cheese. Van der Stroom, who has a degree in dairy science and ran Meadow Gold's largest dairy for 12 years, decided to go out on her own when that operation closed.

"I've been doing it for the last 20 years. I don't know anything else," said Van der Stroom. Her sister came out from New Orleans a year ago to help. They're milking 20 cows, getting about 300 gallons of milk a day, and have been experimenting with techniques and recipes. Their butter is a European-style cultured butter, no salt, no coloring or other additives, to be delivered fresh the day after it's made. They will sell whole and possibly one grade of lowfat milk; the lowfat, she said, doesn't taste like Mainland skim: "It's richer." The milk will be sold in reusable glass containers. And they have been trying out a variety of cheeses: a cheddar-style, a Swiss-style, artisanal flavored cheeses.

Wong will use Naked Cow butter, two Swiss-style cheeses and a young cheddar.

Naked Cow plans to acquire 50 more cows, is completing new barns, buying processing equipment and plans a grand opening in June, when it'll begin to sell products from the farm, at 86-344 Kuwale Road in Wai'anae.

But if he can't make bread, what will the butter be served on? Wong has turned back to a James Beard/Joy of Cooking-era recipe: butter on MA'O Organic Farms radishes with Hanapepe salt, the meal's starter.

The cheeses will be prelude to dessert, along with what should be a side-by-side tasting of Island milk versus Mainland milk.

For proteins beyond cheese, Wong is serving farm-raised butterfish and tilapia (see accompanying story on tilapia) and Daleico Farm Hawaiian Red Veal. He hastened to say that this veal is raised humanely, in contrast to horror stories about veal elsewhere. And the pinkish color, clean flavor and tender texture are its attractions, he said. The veal will be served with a sauce made from macadamia nut oil and the juices from sauteed veal, deglazed with a Maui onion broth made with water, "almost like a meat gravy," he said.

And what about that dessert — no cake, no pastry? "You should have seen Michelle go nuts when I said no can use flour." Michelle is pastry chef Michelle Karr, who came up with the idea of a tropical fruit Pavlova — a sort of meringue made with eggs from Peterson Upland Farms and Island fruit.

Nineteen years ago, the Hawai'i Regional Cuisine group formed in part to encourage use of local products. And there has been a great deal of improvement. This dinner might have been impossible then, when most food in restaurants came from elsewhere. On the other hand, from 2002 to 2007, the Islands lost 180,000 acres of farm land to other uses.

"We're going backwards," said Wong. "We need more awareness. The really good sign is when you go to the farmers markets and people are willing to go out of their way to buy the local stuff, the things that for a long time were only in the restaurants. This will help keep farms in business, but we've still got a long way to go to self-sufficiency."

'LOCAVORE' FARMERS SERIES DINNER

May 20, Alan Wong's Restaurant, 1857 S. King St.
$75 per person
Reservations: 949-2526
Featured farmers and products: