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Honolulu Lite
I'M trying to hook up with a guy named Orlando Montagu in London so that I can become the Hawaii operator of his new business franchise. Cook up an
isle sandwichHis new business is making sandwiches, which doesn't sound like a tremendous idea except that he's a direct descendant of the gentleman who first stuck a piece of meat between two hunks of bread, the fourth Earl of Sandwich.
It says something about English cooking that the country's best known culinary invention is the sandwich, and not something very good. In a way, though, we're lucky that English cooking is so terrible, otherwise the Earl would have left his chess or card game (historians quibble over which one) to have a proper dinner at the table instead of inventing something he could eat while playing. The world would have been deprived of the noble sandwich and today McDonald's would be selling millions of bunless beef patties a day. Imagine eating a BLT without the white bread, a corned beef-on-rye without the rye or submarine sandwich without the submarine. We'd be a nation of greasy-fingered slobs. Thank goodness the Earl had no taste.
Someone in the Sandwich line finally wised up to the fact that they were sitting on a gold mine. Orlando Montagu, whose father is the 11th Earl of Sandwich, just opened up his first sandwich shop and plans to go worldwide. And I want him to know that I'm his boy here in Hawaii.
Hawaii's a natural place for the Earl of Sandwich's relative to open a shop since Hawaii's first western name was the Sandwich Islands. Captain James Cook named Hawaii the Sandwich Islands because he was trying to kiss up to the Earl and because nobody told him that the place already was named Hawaii. It was a bit of bachi that came back to haunt the captain when he was killed on the Big Island and, according to some historical accounts, partially consumed by local inhabitants. History does not say if Cook was consumed in the form of a sandwich, which is just as well. I love irony as much as the next guy but when a man named "Cook" gets eaten on some islands named "sandwich," well, that's too much irony to swallow.
BUT these were called the Sandwich Islands for a long time, which gives us a direct connection to an 18th century British layabout, I mean, royal, and so this is the perfect place for Orlando Montagu to open his second Earl of Sandwich sandwich shop. And I'm the man to be in charge because I've had an enduring love affair with sandwiches of every type, except those with mayonnaise. (Historians also quibble over who invented mayonnaise but the official view of the Worldwide I Hate Mayonnaise Club, of which I am the founder and president, believes that the French, cooking egomaniacs that they are, invented mayo in order to sabotage England's only contribution to world cuisine, the sandwich.)
If Orlando can't open a Hawaii outlet for his sandwich business right away, Hawaii should at least come up with a sandwich representing the state that he can sell in London. I would imagine it would be something like kalua pork and Maui onions on a sweetbread roll, but it could also be something as simple as dumping a Loco Moco on toast. Email me your ideas for a sandwich that would best represent our state and why. I'll publish the recipes in an upcoming column and send the best ones on to London. Just remember: no Capt. Cook Clubs and, for godsakes, hold the mayo.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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