Longhi's Lahaina

Some restaurants are just that – a place to go and eat. The food can be great, the service amazing, you may even go back again.

But some are so much more. They become a touch point, a mile marker for memories in your life.

Longhi’s Lahaina is a place like that for my family.

My Parents went to Maui on their Honeymoon, fell in love with it and they brought our whole family back throughout our lives.  

One constant from those trips was Longhi’s. We would always go, my siblings and I would fight over the pizza bread – usually having so much of it we wouldn’t be able to eat our dinner.

Later in my life I was lucky to live on Maui for a while, and my friends and I would sometimes head over to the Wailea location for pizza bread, cocktails, and fun - but something about Longhi’s Lahaina that seemed sacred. I would go whenever my family was there. 

Princess N with a family friend on her 3rd birthday

We all ended up back in Maui in August 2015 and celebrated my Niece’s 3rd birthday in this magical restaurant.

Sadly I learned last week that Longhi’s Lahaina would be closing.

I felt profoundly sad, in a way that I wasn’t prepared for.

So, after confirming that there isn’t any way for my whole family to drop everything and fly back to Maui for a nostalgia based dinner, I decided to do the next best thing.

I made Shrimp Longhi.

This iconic dish was on the menu from the very first day of the restaurant, it’s basically Shrimp Scampi served on garlic toast – but it’s so delicious and satisfying, it’s also been my go to order there since I was 10.

I picked up some wild caught shrimp at the market, they were a little smaller than I wanted but that’s all that was available. Then grabbed some tomatoes, garlic, basil, and some ciabatta buns.  

I heated up some butter with garlic and parsley, sliced the buns and popped them into the over to toast up.

Meanwhile I dried the shrimp, tossed them in a little season flour, and seared them in a hot pan with some olive oil. Once they were cooked I pulled them out of the pan, deglazed with some white wine.

I slowly added some cold cubes of butter to make a beurre blanc. Once the sauce coated the back of the spoon I added the shrimp back in, with some diced tomato, and some basil.

Then plated it up with some of the garlic toast, served with some Sauvignon Blanc, and let myself wallow in the memories of family dinners for decades. I could almost smell the salt air blowing in through the open windows.

I will always love Longhi’s, and I am so grateful to have the memories of this place. Maui won’t be the same on the next visit.