I Want To Believe: Hawaii’s Flying Saucer

The Flying Saucer is a sandwich that originated on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i and has, over the past few decades, spread at least to Maui and O’ahu as well. It consists of a saucy loosemeat mixture, like a Sloppy Joe filling, placed with a slice of American cheese between two slices of buttered white bread and cooked in a Toas-Tite sandwich iron until nicely browned and, well, flying saucer shaped.

The definitive history of the sandwich was published in 2016 by the Hawaii Herald, written by Gerald Hirata, a Kaua’i native of Japanese descent who explained that the Flying Saucer is “the most popular food item served at bon dance festivals here on Kaua’i. People who attend bon dances on O‘ahu, Maui or the Big Island concede that it is ‘a Kaua‘i thing.'” Hirata was a native of Kaua’i who’d recently retired and moved back to the island, and became fascinated with the history of the sandwich, a history tied in with the history of the island itself. The sandwich, according to his tale, originates with the women of the Sōtō Zen temple in Hanapēpē Town on Kaua’i, but when asked about its origin, one elderly woman of his acquaintance stated that “the McBryde folks did it,” a statement upon which he offered no further elaboration, possibly because none would be needed for someone more well-versed in Kaua’i history than myself.

An Historical Digression: “The McBryde Folks”

In 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook made what is considered to be the first landing of Europeans on the Hawaiian islands. To quote Douglas Adams, “this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” He was killed during a subsequent expedition when, having outstayed their welcome, he and his men attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the king of the Big Island of Hawai’i, in an attempt to ransom him for the return of a stolen longboat. His men were forced to retreat and leave the island, but not before Europeans had brought what Europeans tended to bring to the cultures they encountered in the Age of Exploration (and subsequent Age of Revolution): disease, war, and the technology of war.

Because Hawai’i, as Captain Cook had noted during his initial expedition, was full of sugarcane. The crop, not native to those islands, had been brought there by the Polynesian people who had settled there a millenium earlier. Sugarcane grew easily in the tropical climate of Hawai’i, but harvesting and refining it in exportable quantities would be labor-intensive. The next few decades after the death of Captain Cook saw Kamehameha I conquer and consolidate the entire archipelago into a single kingdom, with the US as its main trading partner, and in 1835 British firm Ladd & Co. acquired land on the island of Kaua’i and launched Hawai’i’s first sugar plantation. By 1844 Ladd & Co. had overextended itself and liquidated its assets, with the plantation being sold off by the government.

Hawaii was annexed by the US in 1898 and named a territory of America, eventually becoming the last state to join the union, a few months after Alaska. Under the new American rule, Judge Duncan McBryde and his family purchased the plantation in 1899 and incorporated the McBryde Sugar Company that would run it for the next century. McBryde brought in Japanese laborers to work the plantation, building camps for these laborers and their familes to live in, camps around which some of the villages and towns of southern Kaua’i would develop.

Japanese-descended individuals are currently the second largest demographic in the state of Hawai’i and make up almost 20% of the population of Kaua’i as of the 2010 census. Japanese influence is threaded throughout the culture of Hawai’i, from the Spam musubi lining the refrigerated shelves at every Japanese 7-11 to the Buddhist temples that dot the islands. Among those is the Kaua’i Sōtō Zen Temple in Hanapēpē, where according to Hirata’s interviews with elderly locals, the first Flying Saucers were developed by two local school cafeteria managers after they’d tasted a hamburger cooked in a pie iron–another name for the type of handheld sealed sandwich press represented by the aforementioned Toas-Tite–at a local festival. They first served these sandwiches on an unspecified date at yet another festival at the town park, but also, according to Hirata, at the 75th anniversary celebration for nearby Waimea High School in 1957.

Hirata notes though that the origin of the sandwich these ladies tried at that local festival, the one that inspired them to create the Flying Saucer, is still unknown, unknowable, lost to time at this point. “Some people say it came from another island,” he says. However…

Another Digression: The Flying Burger

My friend Chris–yes, the same Chris who earlier this month weighed in on the origin of the Francheezie–recognized in my loose description of the Hawaiian Flying Saucer sandwich an echo of a more local sandwich–at least, one more local to him. Chris lives in Billings, Montana, and the King’s Hat Drive-In in Billings has apparently been selling a “Flying Burger,” cooked in the same Toas-Tite sandwich iron, for decades.

Whoa, I was so focused on the Francheezie that I didn’t notice that Hawaii claims the Flying Saucer. There’s a hamburger stand here that has served them since 1949 (the year that pie iron was released). I wonder if it was even just a recipe that was with the marketing material for the pie iron?

And according to the Toas-Tite website, they have been available since 1949. However, according to a Toas-Tite fan site, 1949 is when the patent was issued, but John E. Strietelmeier of the Bar-B-Buns company applied for that patent in 1945 and the device was sold prior to 1949 with “Patent Pending” noted on the box. The site also notes that Toas-Tites were produced and sold during the 1940s and 1950s but can only now be acquired as antiques. Comments indicate this page was most likely written circa 2009. The copyright on the Toas-Tite site indicates that it was most likely published in 2022. So the current Toas-Tite model is a replica of the original, which has only recently come back into production, as Chris noted in a subsequent comment.

It looks like they recently started making them again, but for years the stand here would stop selling Flying Saucers when theirs broke, sometimes for long periods. Using them to make portable grilled cheese (“Cheese Toasties”) was an old-timey Billings staple.

I have acquired one of the current Toas-Tite model which, per some advice I saw online, I spent some time seasoning with thin coats of oil exposed to heat in an attempt to polymerize it and create a non-stick coating, much like a cast-iron pan or a carbon steel wok. My results have been mixed, but the surface is getting there. However, the hinge wobbles and I may have warped the handles a bit while seasoning the cooking surface. It feels less sturdy than my other sandwich irons. But it does have a pleasing flying-saucer shape.

Now according to all reports, King’s Hat calls their menu item the “Flying Burger” rather than the Flying Saucer. Additionally, I learned that the Lioness Club of Moses Lake, Washington sells something called a “Space Burger” during the Grant County Fair each year. Their Space Burgers do not use the Toas-Tite sandwich press–rather they use a more industrial looking machine acquired after the Seattle World Fair in 1962. Based on this video, King’s Hat uses the same machine rather than the hand-held Toas-Tite iron. In any case, all of these sandwiches end up similarly shaped–a disc, thin at the edges and fatter in the center, like the accretion disc model used for illustrations of a black hole. Or, like a flying saucer.

Based on this timeline, the Flying Burger was not, most likely, the mysterious proto-Flying Saucer that the ladies of Zen had experienced on Kaua’i way back in the early to mid 1950s. But, curious about these burgers, I reached out to both the Lioness Club and King’s Hat on their Facebook pages anyway. As yet the Lioness Club has not responded–understandable, they are volunteers and it’s the holidays currently–but King’s Hat did reply and I was able to ask a few questions about their Flying Burger. I think I may have overwhelmed the person manning their Facebook messages with my questions, but they were patient with me and did their best to answer.

Hi, I’m writing about a Hawaiian sandwich called a “Flying Saucer” and my friend pointed out to me that you make something similar there. I wondered if I could ask a couple questions about it?

Yes we do have a flying burger. What did you want to know?

Hi thanks for getting back to me! How long have you been making the flying burger? Do you know who came up with the idea? I understand you make them with the Toas-Tite sandwich irons, is that right? Can you tell me is it a patty inside or a loosemeat mixture of some kind? Do you add any condiments inside before cooking it? Sorry for throwing a bunch of questions at you all at once!

The flying burger is two pieces of sandwich bread, a burger patty, and topping. This is placed into the flying burger machine which toasts the outside and cuts the edges of the bread off.

Thank you for the answer! Do you know anything about the history of the flying burger? What kinds of toppings go into it?

I don’t know the history. Normally comes with mustard, ketchup, pickles and onions.

Cool. What about cheese, is that an option or no?

Yes you can add cheese.

Hey thank you for answering all my questions. My friend said that the King’s Hat has been serving these since 1949, which is amazing. Do you know if anybody there would know any more about that history?

No one that I know of.

OK well I really appreciate you! You’ve been a very big help!

Thank you.

So despite the fact that these burgers were unrelated to my current subject, I set out to make my own version of the Flying Burger. Or Space Burger. The flying saucer space burger. Whatever.

These are really quite satisfying, crisp-edged but soft in the middle, superheated in their few minutes over the fire to the point where the raw onions cook and lose their pungent edge somewhat. It cannot be overstated how hot the insides of one of these things can get–a jaffle, a pudgy pie, a toastie, a sealed toasted sandwich, whatever you want to call it. It’s best to let them cool off for a moment before digging in.

However, they are only a side note in the story of the Flying Saucer.

Making a Flying Saucer

In his article, Gerald Hirata presented this Flying Saucer recipe:

However, he notes that this is not the original recipe but rather a recipe that was submitted for a local cookbook by someone called “Auntie Katie.” Elsewhere in the article, he states that “combined with the other ingredients, the shoyu, ketchup, and sugar give the recipe its subtle teriyaki taste.” Ketchup and sugar? Yes, according to one of his sources. “Make the filling a little sweet and people will want another one. If you make it salty, they will eat only one.” And people do want more than one. Hirata relates that they had to cap the number of Flying Saucers sold to 5 per person just to keep up with demand, and that people will often buy their limit, take some home and freeze them to reheat them later.

Some of the recipes I’ve seen online call for tomato paste and cream of mushroom soup. Some of them add sweet corn and other filler. Some articles I’ve read hint that those additions might be variants that cropped up as the sandwich made its way from island to island. I could make a half dozen of these recipes and each would be as authentic, or inauthentic, as the next.

But to replicate the original Kaua’i version of the Flying Saucer, we’re looking for a sweetish Sloppy Joe style sauce made with ketchup, sugar, and shoyu, the Japanese word for standard soy sauce. Based on Auntie Katie’s recipe and the additional notes scattered through the article, I came up with the following recipe. I am not making any claim of authenticity for this Flying Saucer recipe. This is simply my attempt to replicate the original based on what I’ve read about it.

Again, I cannot claim any authenticity for this recipe.

I’ve never even been to Kaua’i.

This recipe might be way off.

But that addictive quality that Gerald Hirata described in his article, that slight sweetness and the resulting compulsion to eat a second flying saucer, maybe even a third…

That I nailed.

Some alchemy happens as the sauce simmers, the ketchup and soy sauce mingling with the beef juices and the cooked onions. The color and flavor both deepen, and when this sweetly savory sauce is combined with crisply toasted buttered bread and oozing melted American cheese?

It’s magical. Worth flying to Kaua’i for? Probably not. I imagine there are other delights to be found there that would make a trip worthwhile though, for those privileged enough to visit. For those who live there, who are aficionados of the flying saucer, take a look and let me know–how did I do?

And that’s a wrap for 2023, sandwich fans! Thanks for reading, and come back next year for more sandwiches!