‘Saloon pilot’
company closingThe Hilo Macaroni Factory, which
makes the cracker, shuts today
HILO >> A nearly century-old tradition will crumble today, leaving nothing but crumbs on the floor.
Hilo Macaroni Factory is closing, bringing an end to production of a large, round cracker known as a "saloon pilot."
"Business isn't as good as we want it to be," said David Ikeda, temporary manager of the family-owned business, "but the prime reason is that there is no one to carry on."
Ikeda, 59, is a community college agriculture teacher who fills in managing the company during the summer. His uncle Hideo Ikeda, the regular manager, is ill.
His brother Earl, who worked as a baker at the company for 20 years, became a Buddhist priest three years ago.
There was little advanced word about the closing, but those who heard it were almost in pain.
"Oh, no!" exclaimed legal assistant David Umeda. "It's an institution. I grew up on that stuff. Nowhere else in this country have I ever found that."
Eaten local style, usually with some fatty substance such as butter and always with sugar, a saloon pilot snack or meal was definitely not a health food experience.
"It is considered Hawaiian 'comfort food,'" said Hilo food writer Leilehua Yuen in a commentary on the crackers.
"In my, and many other local families, breakfast frequently consisted of two or three pilot crackers smashed into a bowl," she wrote. "Sugar was then scooped onto the crackers and hot coffee poured in. Then a little milk was added. This was allowed to soften a bit and then eaten for breakfast. Delicious!"
KTA Super Stores Vice President Derek Kurisu eats his saloon pilots with butter and sugar on them. As a variation, he eats them with avocado and sugar.
"The product is excellent, excellent," he said. Sales have been OK, he said. "It's held its own."
"It's been part of Hilo. It's really part of us that's going to leave," he said. Another company on Oahu makes saloon pilots, but to Kurisu's taste they're not the same.
Other people have tried to duplicate the crackers without success, he said. "There's a magic."
That magic will be closely guarded. The factory on Kinoole Street is closing, and the property will be put up for sale, said David Ikeda. But the family corporation will remain intact and possibly offered for sale, along with the secret recipe.
The cracker is a descendant of a food not much loved by 19th-century sailors called hardtack.
But before the crackers came the noodles, said Earl Ikeda.
Noodles were produced as early as 1908 by the Hilo Seimen Gaisha in the now-gone Shinmachi area of Hilo. About 1914 the name was changed to Hilo Macaroni Factory, with "macaroni" thought to be catchier than "noodles."
Sometime during World War I, a German ship was detained in Hilo Harbor, and the ship's baker spent his time teaching the "macaroni" producers how to bake hardtack, Earl Ikeda said.
The factory continued with the two products until the 1950s. "I still remember hanging noodles in the back court to dry," Earl Ikeda said.
But cutting noodles involved knives and machines with sharp blades. In the 1950s the company dropped noodles in favor of crackers, better for worker safety, although, combined with butter and sugar, not necessarily safer for the waistline.
