60 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 60 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
Born Liholiho, he was pressured into the meal by his mother Keōpūolani and the powerful queen Kaʻahumanu after two days of drifting in his canoe.
Q 02What is the name of Hawaii's 1819 taboo-breaking that let women eat forbidden foods and dine with men?
ʻAi Noa
The name literally means 'free eating'; messengers were sent across the islands to announce that the kapu had fallen.
Q 03The word lūʻau itself is the Hawaiian name for what?
Taro leaves
The feast took its name from a stew of young taro tops cooked with coconut milk and octopus or chicken; the older words for the party were pāʻina and ʻahaʻaina.
Q 04Under the Hawaiian kapu system, which food was forbidden to women as the body form of the god Lono?
Pork
Most bananas (Kanaloa) and coconuts were off-limits too, so the first luau was as much a political statement as a meal.
Q 05Before 'lūʻau' became the everyday word, a large Hawaiian feast was called what?
ʻAhaʻaina
Smaller dinners were pāʻina; the name lūʻau is documented in print from at least 1856, in a report on a royal wedding celebration.
Q 06Kālua pig, the centerpiece of a luau, is slow-cooked in an imu. What is an imu?
An underground oven
The pit 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
Cooks choose rocks with very little moisture, because a wet stone can explode from the steam trapped inside it.
Q 08Which plant's foliage, wrapped around the meat, gives kālua pig its characteristic flavor?
Ti
Hardwood smoke matters, but the wrapping is what separates true kālua pig from any other slow-roasted whole hog.
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
Lactobacillus, yeasts and Geotrichum fungi do the work, giving old poi a smell close to plain yogurt; some people stir in milk or sugar to soften it.
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
The fish is rubbed with salt by hand, then worked into the diced vegetables; a shrimp version, lomi ʻōpae, was popularized by singer Henry Kapono.
Q 13Haupia, the classic luau dessert, is a pudding made primarily from what?
Coconut milk
Early European explorers compared it to blancmange; the traditional version is vegan, with no gelatin, eggs or dairy.
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
By 1959 it was being called the 'top tourist tantalizer', and Hawaiian bars soon added pineapple juice and a dark-rum float.
Q 23Which liqueur gives the Blue Hawaii cocktail its signature color?
Curaçao
Harry Yee mixed the first one at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in 1957 after a Bols sales rep asked him to showcase the Dutch distiller's blue liqueur.
Q 14What does 'laulau', the Hawaiian pork bundle named for its ti wrapping, literally mean?
Leaf leaf
Unlike its Samoan cousin palusami, Hawaiian laulau contains 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 started as trimmings from the day's catch eaten raw with sea salt and seaweed; the soy-and-sesame version came with Japanese plantation workers.
Q 16ʻInamona, the roasted-nut-and-salt relish that seasons traditional poke, is made from which nut?
Kukui
The same nuts, strung on a palm midrib and lit one by one, once served ancient Hawaiians as a rough clock, each burning about fifteen minutes.
Q 17Roughly how many cans of Spam does Hawaii, the top per-capita US consumer, buy each year?
7 million
There is even a Waikiki Spam Jam street festival every spring, and a 2017 wave of Spam thefts was blamed on organized crime.
Q 18Spam musubi is a slice of grilled Spam on a block of rice, wrapped in a band of what?
Nori
It follows the Japanese onigiri tradition, and in 1999 L&L Hawaiian Barbecue put it on a mainland menu for the first time.
Q 19Because it is so popular in the islands, canned Spam is sometimes given what tongue-in-cheek nickname?
Hawaiian Steak
Locals also call it 'Portagee Steak'; both Burger King and McDonald's serve it in their Hawaii restaurants.
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 dated from the opening of Don's Beachcomber in Hollywood at the end of Prohibition. What year?
1933
The Zombie was the house's most notorious drink; a copy was poured at the 1939 New York World's Fair by Monte Proser.
Q 25Donn Beach, the 'founding father' of tiki bars, was born with what name?
Ernest Gantt
He legally adopted the stage name after his Hollywood restaurant became Don the Beachcomber; a 1946 Life magazine spread showed one of his luaus.
Q 26What was the Oakland bar Victor Bergeron opened in 1934 called before it became Trader Vic's?
Hinky Dink's
A 1937 trip to Cuba and a visit to Don the Beachcomber inspired the tropical makeover and the new nickname.
Q 27The fire-knife dance performed at luau shows comes from which Pacific islands?
Samoa
It descends from ailao, a warrior's display of twirling a serrated war club; the towel-wrapped, flaming machete is a modern touch.
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
Honolulu marked the 81st celebration in 2008 by stringing a lei more than a mile long at Kapiʻolani Park.
Q 30Lei Day was dreamed up in 1927 by which poet, then working at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin?
Don Blanding
Columnist Grace Tower Warren supplied the slogan 'May Day is Lei Day', and a song of that title was written the same year.