Friday’s school lunch at Laupahoehoe Public Charter School was the first of its kind in the state.

The dish, which consisted of beef brisket, bok choy, rainbow carrots, steamed garlic ulu and poi, was the only school lunch in Hawaii made entirely from local ingredients with nothing brought in from out of state.

“It’s important to me that Keiki gets as many local and organic ingredients as possible,” said cafeteria manager Juliet Higgins, who planned the meal as part of Farm to School Month.

Requirements from the State Department of Education and the National School Lunch Program make it particularly difficult for Hawaii schools to be flexible about feeding students, Higgins said.

“The entire state is just one school district,” said Kenta Nemoto of the Hawaiian National Cooperative, which provided the breadfruit for Friday’s meal. “So we have people on Oahu making decisions about school lunches on the Big Island.”

Nemoto explained that because of DOE’s food standards, school meals must be supplied in a scalable way for the entire state: “The whole system has to order at the same time.”

Mainland school districts, which typically don’t cover the entire state, may be more flexible in how they secure food because local farms are more likely to produce enough food for the area, Nemoto said.

“Being a charter school, we also have a little more flexibility,” Higgins said.

The lunch seemed popular with about 200 students on Friday, but there were some exceptions: Poi served in squeezable tubes proved controversial, with some students returning empty trays with barely intact tubes.

Higgins agreed that poi is an acquired taste, but said that’s why keiki should be introduced to the Hawaiian staple when young. He said Poi’s creators, the Waimea group Moku Wai Piko Poi, told him that poi was becoming less and less popular among young people.

“They told me if he didn’t try keiki, it wouldn’t be poi,” Higgins said. “If you don’t get a taste of it when you’re young, you won’t try it when you’re an adult.”

Nemoto said the lunch was a landmark event and no school in the state had had 100 percent local lunches in decades.

And it may take a while for that to happen again. Higgins said the ingredients on the menu may be sustainable for the school, but the work required to prepare the meal from scratch is not. “Maybe if there were more people in the kitchen,” Higgins said, noting that preparing breadfruit requires much more effort than opening a can.

But breadfruit and poi are also a big part of what makes the dish happen. Nemoto said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently adopted a rule change allowing facilities that serve more than a certain percentage of Native Americans in Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico to substitute grains for other vegetables in school lunches.

For this reason, Higgins said, ulu and poi serve as de facto grains on the menu.

The school has been teaching students sustainable farming and gardening practices since about 2012, said Jenny Bach, the school’s farm-to-school coordinator. The school usually prepares food grown in the school garden, although not for Friday’s lunch.

Although full meals aren’t an everyday occurrence, Bach said the school still serves local meat, fruits and vegetables several times a week.

Higgins said similar lunches could be possible for other schools as long as they’re willing to try something different. Laupahoehoe thanked the school administration for fully supporting him when he proposed his idea.

“I thought it was a great idea,” said Tracy Jardine, school office manager. “We were excited to try it and everyone seems to love it.”

Friday lunch’s full menu and providers:

>> Parker Ranch Grass-fed smoked beef brisket (smoked at Waimea butcher shop)

>> Waimea Poi (by Moku Wai Piko Poi)

>> Steamed garlic ulu (by Hawaii Ulu Cooperative)

>> Roasted rainbow carrots and herbs (from Waimea)

>> Flat-top grilled Big Island bok choy

>> Fresh Big Island papaya

>> Carton milk (from Hilo Meadow Gold)