On Another Tack — Vol. 3: Hawaii’s Hot Pocket: The Manapua I Remembered for 46 Years

Every Cuisine Has a Hot Pocket, Part One of However Many It Takes

About ten years ago, I created and ran a mobile culinary education program called Lavender's Culinary, where I taught kids and adults how to cook.

One day, I was standing in front of a group of children trying to explain an empanada. I could see that I was losing them completely. Then, without thinking, I said:

"It's like a Hot Pocket."

The whole room went, "Ahhh."

Suddenly, we had a great culinary equalizer. Everyone understood.

That moment never left me. The more I explored food during my years as an executive chef and culinary educator, the more "Hot Pockets" I found.

Empanadas. Ravioli. Samosas. Pierogi. Gyoza. Piroshki. Knishes.

The list is genuinely endless.

Across cultures, cuisines and continents, people arrived at the same beautiful idea: take something delicious, wrap it in dough, make it portable and feed your people.

So, I am making you a promise.

Everywhere I travel, I am going to find that cuisine's Hot Pocket, eat it and tell you about it. We will explore the food, its history, the people who made it and how it became part of the place it represents.

This series has no scheduled end date. It ends when I run out of world, which I do not plan to do anytime soon.

Part One begins where my own story began: Hawaii.

The Manapua Man

I lived in Hawaii until I was nine years old. Like every kid in the neighborhood, I knew the sound of the manapua man's horn the way mainland children knew the music of the ice cream truck.

The manapua truck was Hawaii's ice cream truck long before food trucks became trendy.

When the horn sounded, the whole neighborhood came running. You grabbed whatever change you could find and headed outside. There was shave ice, which I remember costing about 25 cents. There were fried noodles served in waxed paper bags.

And there was manapua.

Warm, slightly sweet, impossibly soft steamed buns filled with bright red barbecue pork. I know now that the pork is called char siu. At seven years old, I only knew it was one of the best things I had ever eaten, and it cost about a quarter.

I left Hawaii when I was nine.

I did not return for 46 years.

Returning to Chinatown

Before we landed in Honolulu, I did my research. I searched online, asked locals and questioned anyone willing to entertain my very specific pursuit.

I did not want the place created for tourists. I wanted a bakery that had made manapua for decades, still did it the old way and was loved by the people who lived there.

Good travel friends help with these things. Thank you to Justyn and Lawrence for pointing me in the right direction.

Our search took us to Sing Cheong Yuan Bakery in Honolulu's Chinatown.

The bakery sits at 1027 Maunakea Street, surrounded by Chinese characters on street signs and storefronts, retail shops packed from floor to ceiling and incredible aromas that reach you almost as soon as you step out of the car.

We walked along the broken concrete sidewalk and found the bakery.

There were about five people in line during our first visit. When we returned on the way to the airport, there were more than twenty.

I wish I could tell you that visiting was a leisurely culinary experience.

It was not.

This is not a place for dawdling. There were bins of spices and Chinese ingredients that the chef in me wanted to stop, smell and examine for an hour. There was no time for that. The line moves, you move with it, and no one appears particularly apologetic about the arrangement.

I ate my first manapua in the car.

Then I bought another package for the flight home and ate manapua at 30,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific.

Honestly, it was one of the better meals I have had on an airplane.

Why Manapua Is Hawaii's Hot Pocket

Manapua is more than a snack. It carries a story about immigration, adaptation and what happens when cultures meet on a small group of islands in the middle of the Pacific.

Chinese immigrants began arriving in Hawaii in significant numbers during the mid-1800s, many coming from Guangdong to work on the sugar plantations. They brought bao with them, including char siu bao: portable buns filled with barbecue pork.

The food was practical, filling and familiar. It offered people performing hard physical labor something easy to carry and a taste of home.

After their plantation contracts ended, some Chinese immigrants became merchants and food vendors. Fresh buns were carried through plantation camps and neighborhoods, first by foot and eventually in vehicles that became known locally as manapua trucks.

The Chinese called the pork-filled bun char siu bao. In Hawaii, it acquired a new name commonly linked to the Hawaiian words mea ʻono, meaning a pastry, cake or "delicious thing," and puaʻa, meaning pork.

Manapua.

"Delicious pork thing" may be one of the most honest food names ever created.

The bun evolved in Hawaii, too. It became larger than the traditional Cantonese version, substantial enough to serve as a meal on its own. Today, manapua may be steamed or baked and filled with much more than char siu, including kalua pork, chicken curry, sweet potato, black bean paste and even hot dogs.

The "Hot Pocket" changed as Hawaii changed.

The Woman Who Made Manapua Bigger

The history of the large-format Hawaiian manapua includes a woman named Bat Moi Kam Mau.

She opened Char Hung Sut in Honolulu in 1946 and is credited with popularizing the larger version of the char siu bun that generations of Hawaii residents came to know as manapua.

She created something bigger than a bakery item. She helped shape the form in which an immigrant food became a distinctly local tradition.

We love a woman who builds something from scratch and feeds an entire culture while she is at it.

A Taste That Waited 46 Years

The neighborhood manapua trucks are much harder to find today. The horn that once sent children running into the street is no longer a common sound in most communities.

But the bakeries are still there if you know where to look.

So are the people who grew up eating manapua and never forgot what it meant.

Neither did I.

Returning to Hawaii after 46 years was always going to be emotional. I expected the familiar landscapes, the ocean and the memories of being a child there to affect me.

I did not necessarily expect one soft bun filled with sweet pork to collapse four and a half decades quite so quickly.

But food does that.

It holds our histories until we are ready to taste them again.

Find Your Own Manapua in Honolulu

If you are visiting Honolulu and want to try something with a genuine connection to Hawaii's immigrant history and local food culture, make time for Chinatown.

Sing Cheong Yuan Bakery is located at 1027 Maunakea Street. Go knowing what you want, be ready when it is your turn and do not expect to stand at the counter contemplating your choices indefinitely.

Order more than one.

You may need another for the flight home.

And if your family, culture or corner of the world has its own version of a Hot Pocket, tell me about it. I am building a list, and I intend to eat every single one.

Eat curious. Travel intentionally.

Ready to eat your way around the world? I design journeys for food lovers, cultural explorers and travelers who want to experience more than a generic vacation.

Let's find the story inside your next journey.

Warmly,

Marina Owner and Travel Advisor 2 Tacks Travel, LLC Dream it. Book it. Go!