KA'ANAPALI, Maui — Garrett Marrerro of Maui Brewing Co. and a quintet of popular chefs showed that Island contemporary cuisine and Maui sweet onions match up as well with beer as they do with wine — even dessert (Pineapple Grill chef Ryan Luckey's chocolate cake and coconut creme caramel, served with a rich, thick beer called Black Pearl Coconut Porter, aged 90 days).

Daniel Onn used a two-fisted, stuff-your-face technique to win a raw-onion-eating contest, eating half a pound in 60 seconds while others struggled to keep their composure (and the contents of their stomachs).

Onion grower Ann Cooper Uyehara revealed her father's secrets for making authentic lomi salmon — with sweet Maui Kula onions, of course.

And chef Russell Siu proved that, sometimes, simplest and most classic is best, winning a recipe competition with a straightforward preparation of pan-seared salmon with pickled Maui onions and a yuzu (Japanese citrus) butter sauce.

It was all onions, all the time, the week before last as the 19th annual Maui Onion Festival took over the Whalers Village shopping area and several hundred visitors and locals gathered in the broiling sun to listen to onion growers talk story, see cooking demonstrations and nibble samples, watch keiki and adults devour onions raw and savor the sinful deep-fried onion rings for which the Maui Onion Growers Association is known.

Famed as it is, the Maui sweet onion is a relatively recent development: Maui County extension agent Robin Shimabuku explained that while Chinese immigrant farmers were growing onions in the area at the turn of the century, it was not until the 1930s and 1940s that farmers and scientists began experimenting with yellow Bermuda onion varieties. They began with the Excel hybrid of the Granex variety and eventually, in the '60s and '70s, settled on Granex 33, a flattish, relatively compact onion that became the "official" Maui onion. Since then, crossing of hybrids has produced globular varieties that look more like conventional yellow onions but lack their bite.

But farmers like Ben Yamamoto, of Benny Farms in Kula, still believe what their elders taught them: "the flatter, the sweeter the onion." And they still believe the onions are best enjoyed raw — in salads and relishes, cold soups, salsas and as garnish.

That's how onion-eating champion Daniel Onn, 24, of Saratoga, Calif., ate the onions that won him a $100 gift certificate and a big round of applause but left him literally foaming at the mouth. "I went to Texas Steakhouse and ate a 74-ounce steak in an hour, so this was easy," Onn said.

The Maui Kula onion crop is small and specialized. It's grown only between the 1,300- and 4,000-foot elevations of Haleakala in a strip about two miles long, on about 200 acres total, and about 2 million pounds a year are produced, said Maui Onion Growers Association president Bobby Ito. Once, farms could produce only two crops a year, in spring and fall, but now, after 20 years of trials, farmers also can plant Texas Grano 1015, a summer variety.

The combination of cool nights and sunny days at these altitudes, and the volcanic soil create the onions' sweetness, Ito said.

The Maui Kula onion is not just delicate of flavor, it also requires careful handling; the onions are fragile and must be planted, tended and harvested by hand, increasing costs. ("Maui Kula" is the name preferred by the Maui Onion Growers Association, and only onions grown in the designated Kula region can bear that name; there are counterfeits out there, Shimabuku warned.)

For his cooking demonstration, chef Ivan Pahk, of Sansei Kapalua, took the farmers at their word, preparing a dish new to Sansei menus: a form of contemporary sashimi called kampachi tsukudani, made with thin-sliced aquaculture-grown kampachi from the waters off Kona. Pahk seared the kampachi with a culinary blowtorch. "This is a good one for people who think they don't like raw fish," said Pahk with characteristic wacky good humor.

This appetizer goes together so quickly that Pahk's cooking demonstration was done literally in minutes: Just thinly slice the fish, spread lightly with masago aioli (fresh-made garlic mayonnaise flavored with masago — smelt roe; just plain mayonnaise is fine, too). Top mayo with half a shiso leaf, add a little shaved Maui onion, then roll the fish up in a tube and torch it (If you don't have a torch, sear the fish in a hot pan first, then apply the mayo, shiso and onion and roll). Garnish with tsukudani (black seaweed paste, available in jars in Asian markets) moistened with a little shoyu and a scattering of tobiko (flying-fish roe, also found in jars or plastic containers in the chill section of Asian markets).

The dish can be made with tuna or salmon or "you could even sear carrot shavings" (or tofu) if you're a vegetarian, Pahk said. If you're watching your sodium intake, he suggested, thin the tsukudani with lemon juice or even water instead of shoyu.

While the dish prepared by Maui Onion Growers Association wives Gael Ito and Ann Cooper Uyehara was a bit less dramatic, it included instructions for something most people don't know how to do: making salt salmon at home. The simple mixture of salt salmon, tomato, raw Maui onion and ice was a delightful play of sweet to salt, as good as any I've tasted.

Uyehara's technique is detailed with the recipe in this section but she offered two keys: Don't cut the salmon into chunks; use a spoon to scrape it into small bits. And don't dice the tomato, either; cut it into quarters and place it in a zip-closure plastic bag and lomi (massage) it until it breaks apart. And don't cut the onion, or add it, until the last minute.

The centerpiece of the festival is a recipe contest which, this year, was not for home cooks but for a cadre of well-known Island chefs: Ivan Pahk (standing in for an absent D.K. Kodama) of Sansei, James McDonald of Pacific'O and i'o, Russell Siu of 3660 on the Rise, Fred DeAngelo of Ola at Turtle Bay, and chef David Paul Johnson.

DeAngelo's innovative grilled baby octopus with warm mojito Maui onion salad came in a very close 1 point behind, but it was Russell Siu's pan-seared lacquered salmon with picked Maui onions and yuzu butter sauce that pleased judges the most; it wasn't groundbreaking, but it was perfectly executed and delicious.