Were you — are you — so “Pac-Man”-obsessed that you’d play and play and forget to eat?
What this world needs is a place where you can play forever and get a decent meal at the same time. Or maybe a place where you can get a meal and they give you game tokens!
Enter Bread & Butter, over on Kapiolani Boulevard in front of Ala Moana Center. Through May the restaurant, in partnership with Japan’s Bandai Namco Entertainment, is hosting a pop-up Pac-Store Hawaii gaming cafe.
Indulge in a meal off the “Pac-Man” menu. For each item you get a token for the game machine, which also is loaded with “Galaga,” “Rolling Thunder” and more.
Players with the highest weekly scores will receive prizes from the Pac-Store.
On the Pac-menu: pancakes, pizza, macaroni and cheese, curry, garlic shrimp, burgers, a loco-moco, desserts and drinks that carry out the theme.
Bread & Butter is at 1585 Kapiolani Blvd. Hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Call 949-3430.
FLYING SAUCERS A BAZAAR HIGHLIGHT
The Taste of Hongwanji bazaar is taking a take a step back to the future Sunday, with an edible flying saucer that recalls a favorite snack from an earlier time.
A thousand sloppy Joe sandwiches — molded into little pies resembling comic book flying saucers — will be up for grabs from 8:30 to 1 p.m. at the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, 1727 Pali Highway.
The sandwich is a throwback to a snack made in a metal pancake or sandwich grill that was popular in the 1940s, making the rounds of neighbor island food festivals.
The flying saucers probably won’t last long, judging by how fast they’ve flown out at past fundraisers, says Wendy Harman, a bazaar coordinator.
Harman and several other hongwanji members have already made and frozen hundreds, to be reheated at the bazaar — the only way to keep up with the demand.
She said they were lent several cast-iron molds that turn two pieces of white bread, with hamburger mix and a slice of cheese between them, into a hand pie that is “convenient, easy and cute!”
They’re grilled for four minutes on each side until the bread forms a crunchy seal to keep all the goodness in.
The metal “thing-a-ma-jig,” as she calls it, is sold under brand names such as Toas-Tite Pie Iron and BC Classics’ Flying Sandwich Press, selling for $11 to $30 online. Generically it’s sometimes called a pie iron.
The hongwanji has also experimented with a peanut butter and Nutella filling, Harman added. Once you’ve got the iron, “the guts of it is your choice.”
— Pat Gee, Star-Advertiser
