From Wednesday, December 9 to Sunday, December 13, Dustin Valette is at Kona Village on the Kona coast of Hawaiʻi Island, cooking with the resort's culinary team for five days. He was there last winter for the ʻĀina Reserves Weekend and this is a longer return. Korae Nottveit, the resort's executive sous chef, runs the kitchen at Moana, the restaurant above Kahuwai Bay, and the two of them write the menus together.

The week is organised around what the island grows, and vanilla is the thread through it. Vanilla is the cured seed pod of an orchid, and very little of it is grown in this country. On the Hāmākua Coast, the green windward side of the island, the Reddekopp family has grown and cured it since 1998 at The Hawaiian Vanilla Co., which says it was the first to do so commercially in the United States. A small group drives out to the farm on Thursday for a tour and a lunch built on the crop. It returns on Friday at Moana, in a three-course dinner Dustin and Korae Nottveit write around it. Saturday moves outdoors to Island Roots, where the cooking is done over fire beneath the kiawe, the mesquite that grows along this coast, and everyone eats family style at one long table.

The week opens Wednesday at five with cocktails and pūpū on Moana Lawn and Valette Wines poured above the bay, and closes Sunday at seven in the morning with a canoe paddle along the Kaʻūpūlehu coastline alongside Dustin and the resort's Kilo Kai team. Those two carry no charge. The farm visit and the two dinners each cost extra, and the resort has not published those prices yet. The Friday dinner at Moana is open to the local community as well as to resort guests, and everything else is for guests, who are not required to book all five nights to take part. Reservations and pricing through Kona Village.