I rented a beautiful, three-bedroom house at the top of St. Louis Heights when I was in my 20s. At the bottom of the hill was a P&P Superfoods market, Kyle’s Drive Inn and a Chico’s Pizza. City Mill occupies the site today.
Chico’s was one of my favorite hangouts because it had these newfangled tabletop things called video games. My favorite was Space Invaders and I spent hours playing it.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Chico’s was part of a mainland chain. With 9,000 square feet, the owners, Frank Nomura and Bob Kiriu, said it was one of the largest pizza parlors in the world. Wigwam Department Store previously had occupied the site, beginning in 1959.
Chico means “small” or “boy” in Spanish. I could not find who started it and why that name was selected. Do any readers know?
One side of Chico’s was reserved for teenagers and could hold 200 of them. The other side, with a glass-wall separation, was for adults and children. It had small, red tables and benches.
The owners said it was a “family-type operation with no honky-tonk music; just good pizza, chicken and frosty tap beer in chilled mugs, for the adults.”
Chico’s benefited by being close to University of Hawaii, Chaminade University and Saint Louis School. The chain began in Portland, Ore., around 1965 as Chico’s Pizza Tavern. When it opened in Kaimuki in 1967, it had grown to 15 locations in Oregon and Washington. Today the only one left is in Lynwood, Calif.
Chico’s served 21 types of pizza, including a seafood pizza with shrimp, oysters, tuna, anchovies, olives and mushrooms. Small pizzas from noon to 4 p.m. were just $1.
Four pieces of chicken were just $2, and they came with coleslaw and a roll. A bucket of 16 pieces was $5.75. A large pitcher of beer was $2.
Dale Machado says he has many fond memories of Chico’s Pizza. “It was one of my first jobs in 1969. I was going to UH and working there part time. I remember watching the moon landing on the bar TV set!
“Chico’s was famous for its thin-crust pizzas but maybe even more for its fried chicken and thick-cut fries. The fries were covered in the same coating as the chicken and cooked in a pressure fryer. It was the best-tasting chicken and fries ever!
“I started as a delivery driver,” Machado recalls. “We had International Harvester trucks that ran on propane. They had ovens in the back to keep the pizzas warm. Most deliveries were in the Kaimuki area but could be from Nuuanu to Aina Haina.”
After doing that for about a year, Machado took a food prep job inside. “I cut the pepperoni, mixed the sausage with spices and grated the cheddar and mozzarella cheese together.
“I also made the sauce. The owners mixed the spices in a barrel in private from a secret recipe! I then blended in gallons of tomato sauce and tomato paste.
“The restaurant was like a giant barn, with high ceilings and glass windows. It was like an echo chamber! When it was full the noise was deafening.
“The owners, Frank Nomura and Bob Kiriu, were local Japanese guys in their late 40s, I’d say. Frank would like to yell, in fake Filipino, ‘blang blang bitoy’ as he walked by us in the back.
“We would yell back, ‘mapu tangay no.’ I have no idea if that really means anything, but it was kind of a fun thing to do.” My Filipino friends tell me it’s meaningless.
Dave Leatherman says he and his wife Karen’s favorite hangout was Chico’s Pizza. “Their broasted chicken was awesome as was the pizza.”
Steve Okamoto says Chico’s had the best fried chicken but also liked Kyle’s Drive Inn, “where you could get one of the best plate lunches on the island for 85 cents.” Kyle’s Drive Inn was there from 1962 to 1971.
P&P Superfoods opened in 1966 and closed in 1983. It had a second location on School Street in Kalihi until 2004. Today, Kokua Kalihi Valley occupies that site.
City Mill moved into the Kaimuki site in 1984 and has been there ever since.
The word “pizza” is Italian and may be 1,000 years old. But baking cheese, oil and herbs on bread can be traced back at least 3,000 years.
Tomatoes were from South America. Aztecs called them “tomatl.” They didn’t reach Italy until the 1500s. Modern pizza can be traced to Naples, about 150-200 years ago.
Pizza became popular in New York in the 1930s, and one chef from there, P. Fred Rocco, moved to Hawaii around 1946 and began selling it here.
Rocco owned several restaurants: Filoni’s (736 S. Beretania St., now a C.S. Wo store), Rocco’s Farm House (McCully Street and Kalakaua Avenue), Rocco’s Drive Inn (Ena Road) and Little Joe’s (1067 Alakea St., now 8-1/2 restaurant).
Rocco also was a Southern fried chicken specialist. He took over the Ranch House in Aina Haina in 1951.
Hawaii has been blessed with some other notable pizza parlors and chicken joints, including:
>> Magoo’s Pizza. Gilbert Sakaguchi opened the first Magoo’s Pizza in 1967. At his girlfriend’s suggestion, he named it after a Hollywood, Calif., pizzeria. Surprisingly, Magoo’s licensed 20 franchises in the Philippines, China, Guam, Las Vegas and Dubai.
>> J.J. Dolan’s is named for two people — “J.J.” is John J. Niebuhr, and Dolan is Danny Dolan. They opened their New York-style pizzeria downtown in 2008.
>> Da Big Kahuna’s Pizza ’n Stuffs on Paiea Street near the airport is Hawaii’s only Zagat-honored pizza. It was founded in 1994 and makes the dough for its pizzas, subs and garlic cheese balls (OMG!) fresh every day.
>> Shakey’s Pizza — founded in Sacramento, Calif., in 1954, by Sherwood “Shakey” Johnson and Ed Plummer. Johnson’s nickname resulted from nerve damage following a bout of malaria suffered during World War II.
>> Hawaii had Shakey’s on Keeaumoku Street and in Kaneohe, Waipahu, Waimalu, Pearlridge and a few other places.
>> Pizza Hut. Wichita State University students, brothers Dan and Frank Carney, founded Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kan., in 1958. It has over 15,000 stores and more than a dozen in Hawaii.
>> Domino’s began as DomiNick’s in Michigan in the early 1960s.
>> Little Caesars Pizza was founded near Detroit in 1959 and called Little Caesar’s Pizza Treat.
>> Popeye’s Chicken began in 1972 in New Orleans as Chicken on the Run. It added spicy chicken to the menu and renamed itself Popeye’s Famous Fried Chicken in 1975. The founder, Alvin C. Copeland, said he named the chain after the fictional detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in the movie “The French Connection.”
>> Church’s Chicken started in San Antonio 1952. It was founded by George W. Church and served original and spicy versions of its fried chicken. Reader Joe Harding thinks it was the “gold standard for chicken joints.”
>> KFC was established by “Colonel” Harland Sanders (1890-1980) as one restaurant-motel in Corbin, Ky., in 1930, where he perfected his fried chicken recipe (a blend of 11 herbs and spices). The military title was honorary. Their motto was “finger lickin’ good.” With his first $105 Social Security check, Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1952. Today KFC has about 20,000 restaurants in 118 countries with sales of $23 billion annually.
>> JoAnne Yamamoto asked about one of her favorites, Pioneer Chicken. It began as Pioneer Take Out in Los Angeles in 1961. Pioneer opened in Hawaii first in Salt Lake Shopping Center in 1973. It soon expanded to Kahala Mall, Waianae, Waimalu, Temple Valley, Aikahi, Wahiawa, Kaneohe, 1240 S. King St., Waipahu, Lahaina and Hilo. They all closed after the parent company went into bankruptcy in 1988 and again in 1991. They had about 250 locations nationwide.
>> Huli-Huli Chicken — Ernest Morgado and Mike Asagi launched Pacific Poultry in 1954. In 1955 Morgado marinated chicken in a teriyaki sauce his grandmother created and barbecued it between two grills. The cook would shout, “Huli,” Hawaiian for “turn,” when one side was cooked. That led Morgado to call it Huli-Huli Chicken. Local nonprofit groups raised millions of dollars selling Huli-Huli Chicken.
Whew! That a lot of pizza and chicken. I think it’s time for lunch! Where shall we go?
Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book contains stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.
