Luau Trivia
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55 free Luau trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
52 free luau trivia questions with answers. Hosting a luau? These 50 luau trivia questions cover everything a themed party guest might reasonably be quizzed on: how the feast began when Kamehameha II broke the eating kapu in 1819, why the word lūʻau really means taro leaves, and how kālua pig, poi, lomi salmon, haupia, laulau and poke are actually made. The second half moves from the table to the party itself: hula and the queen who once banned it, the ukulele's Portuguese roots, lei-giving customs and Lei Day, the fire-knife dance's Samoan origins, and the tiki-bar world of Don the Beachcomber, Trader Vic and the Mai Tai. Elvis's Blue Hawaii, Lilo & Stitch, Spam musubi and the Blue Hawaii cocktail round it out. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few genuinely hard ones for the resident Hawaii buff. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publication, so the dates, names and recipes here are the real thing rather than luau-party folklore.
30 of 55 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Hawaiian king broke the eating kapu in 1819 by dining with women, paving the way for luaus?
Kamehameha II
Kamehameha II, born Liholiho, was pressed into the public meal by his mother Keōpūolani and the queen regent Kaʻahumanu in 1819, ending the ʻai kapu that kept men and women from eating together.
Q 02What is the name of Hawaii's 1819 taboo-breaking that let women eat forbidden foods and dine with men?
ʻAi Noa
ʻAi Noa means 'free eating'; after Liholiho's public meal with the chiefesses in 1819, messengers were sent across the islands to announce that the eating kapu had fallen.
Q 03The word lūʻau itself is the Hawaiian name for what?
Taro leaves
Lūʻau means taro leaves: the feast took its name from a dish of young taro tops simmered in coconut milk that was always on the table.
Q 04Under the Hawaiian kapu system, which food was forbidden to women as the body form of the god Lono?
Pork
Pork was forbidden to women because the pig was a body form of Lono; most bananas (Kanaloa) and coconuts (Kū) were off-limits too, so the first luau was a political statement as much as a meal.
Q 05Before 'lūʻau' became the everyday word, a large Hawaiian feast was called what?
ʻAhaʻaina
ʻAhaʻaina was the old word for a large feast, with pāʻina for smaller dinners; lūʻau as a name for the party is documented in print from 1856, in a report on a royal celebration.
Q 06Kālua pig, the centerpiece of a luau, is slow-cooked in an imu. What is an imu?
An underground oven
An underground oven, the imu is lined with hot stones and pounded banana stalks, then buried under soil so no steam escapes for several hours.
Q 07When a whole pig is cooked in an imu, what is placed inside its body cavity so the meat cooks through?
Hot stones
Hot stones are placed inside the pig's cavity so it cooks from within; cooks pick dense, dry rocks because a wet stone can crack or burst from steam trapped inside it.
Q 08Which plant's foliage, wrapped around the meat, gives kālua pig its characteristic flavor?
Ti
Ti leaves wrapped around the pork give kālua pig its mild, sweet, grassy note; the broad leaves also hold in moisture during the long bake in the imu.
Q 09Poi is graded as 'one-finger', 'two-finger' or 'three-finger'. What does that label describe?
How thick it is
Three-finger poi runs like applesauce, two-finger like pudding, and one-finger is the dense, freshly pounded paste called paʻiʻai.
Q 10Left at room temperature for a few days, freshly made poi does what?
Turns sour
Poi turns sour as Lactobacillus, yeasts and Geotrichum fungi ferment it; a few days on, it smells like plain yogurt, and some people stir in milk or sugar to soften the tang.
Q 11In Hawaiian belief, what had to stop the moment a bowl of poi was uncovered?
All arguments
The spirit of Hāloa, the legendary ancestor of the Hawaiian people, was thought to be present whenever poi was served.
Q 12In lomi-lomi salmon, the luau side dish of salted salmon, tomato and onion, what does 'lomi' mean?
To massage
Lomi means to massage or knead: the salted salmon is worked by hand into the diced tomato and onion. Salmon is not native to Hawaiian waters; the salted fish arrived with 19th-century traders from the Pacific Northwest.
Q 13Haupia, the classic luau dessert, is a pudding made primarily from what?
Coconut milk
Q 21The name Mai Tai is said to come from maitaʻi, a Tahitian word meaning what?
Good
The classic recipe is rum, orange liqueur, orgeat and lime; Trader Vic's kept it unpublished for nearly 30 years, so competitors had to guess.
Q 22The Mai Tai reached Hawaii in 1953 when Bergeron wrote a cocktail menu for the Moana and which other hotel?
The Royal Hawaiian
Matson Navigation hired Bergeron in 1953 to write cocktail menus for its Waikiki hotels, the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana; island bars soon added pineapple juice and a dark-rum float to the drink.
Q 23Which liqueur gives the Blue Hawaii cocktail its signature color?
Curaçao
Blue curaçao gives the drink its color; Harry Yee mixed the first Blue Hawaii at the Hawaiian Village in Waikiki in 1957 after a Bols sales rep asked him to showcase the Dutch distiller's blue liqueur.
Haupia is made from coconut milk, sweetened, set firm and cut into squares; the classic version has no gelatin, eggs or dairy, so it is naturally vegan.
Q 14What does 'laulau', the Hawaiian pork bundle named for its ti wrapping, literally mean?
Leaf leaf
Laulau doubles lau, 'leaf': the pork is bundled in taro leaves, then ti leaves, and steamed. Unlike its Samoan cousin palusami it has no coconut milk, onions or spices, and is eaten with poi or rice.
Q 15The word poke, as in the raw-fish dish, literally means what in Hawaiian?
To slice
Poke means to slice or cut crosswise into pieces: fishermen cut trimmings from the day's catch and ate them raw with sea salt and limu seaweed; the shoyu-and-sesame style came later with Japanese plantation workers.
Q 16ʻInamona, the roasted-nut-and-salt relish that seasons traditional poke, is made from which nut?
Kukui
ʻInamona is roasted, mashed kukui (candlenut) with sea salt; the same oily nuts, strung on a palm-leaf midrib and lit one by one, served ancient Hawaiians as candles that burned about fifteen minutes each.
Q 17Which salted fish is traditionally bundled with the pork inside a laulau?
Butterfish
Salted butterfish (black cod) is the classic companion to pork in laulau; its fat and salt season the bundle as it steams for hours inside taro and ti leaves.
Q 18Spam musubi is a slice of grilled Spam on a block of rice, wrapped in a band of what?
Nori
A strip of nori, the dried seaweed used for Japanese onigiri, holds the rice and Spam together; Barbara Funamura of Kauai is widely credited with popularizing the snack in the 1980s.
Q 19Because it is so popular in the islands, canned Spam is sometimes given what tongue-in-cheek nickname?
Hawaiian Steak
Spam earned the nickname 'Hawaiian Steak' for its place at island tables; McDonald's Hawaii restaurants put Spam on the breakfast menu, and Burger King followed in its Hawaii stores in 2007.
Q 20Victor 'Trader Vic' Bergeron claimed to have invented the Mai Tai at his Oakland restaurant in what year?
1944
His rival Donn Beach insisted it was a knock-off of his own Q.B. Cooler, and the two feuded over credit for decades.
Q 24Tiki culture is usually dated from the opening of Don's Beachcomber in Hollywood in what year?
1933
Don's Beachcomber opened in Hollywood in 1933, just as Prohibition ended; its Zombie became the house's most notorious drink, and Monte Proser poured a copy at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Q 25Donn Beach, the 'founding father' of tiki bars, was born with what name?
Ernest Gantt
Donn Beach was born Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt in Texas in 1907; he legally took the new name after his Hollywood restaurant became Don the Beachcomber.
Q 26What was the Oakland bar Victor Bergeron opened in 1934 called before it became Trader Vic's?
Hinky Dink's
Bergeron's saloon opened in 1934 as Hinky Dink's; a 1937 trip to Cuba and a visit to Don the Beachcomber inspired the tropical makeover and the Trader Vic name.
Q 27The fire-knife dance performed at luau shows comes from which Pacific islands?
Samoa
The fire-knife dance is Samoan, descended from ailao, a warrior's display of twirling a serrated war club; Samoan dancer Freddie Letuli added fire to the blade in 1946.
Q 28What is the fire-knife dance called in its homeland?
Siva afi
The Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu hosts the annual World Fire Knife Dance Competition.
Q 29Hawaii celebrates Lei Day on which date every year?
May 1
Lei Day falls on May 1 and was first celebrated in 1928; Honolulu's main festivities are held at Kapiʻolani Park, where a Lei Queen is crowned each year.
Q 30Lei Day was dreamed up in 1927 by which poet, then working at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin?
Don Blanding
Don Blanding, a poet writing for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, proposed the holiday in 1927; colleague Grace Tower Warren coined 'May Day is Lei Day', and the first Lei Day was held in 1928.