Ray Kroc sounds like the name of a professional wrestler in a snakeskin singlet, but he’s actually the guy who bought the McDonald’s franchise for three bucks and a pack a gum, quickly transforming it into the megapower it is today. Kroc was an amazing personality — a capitalist and an opportunist in every way, but also an artist who truly loved everything he exploited.
Still, every hamburger hero has his tragic flaw, and in Ray Kroc’s case, it was the “Hulaburger.”
See, Catholics weren’t supposed to eat meat on Fridays, but Ray didn’t want that to mean that Catholics wouldn’t eat at McDonald’s on Fridays. If the Catholics couldn’t have hamburgers, what could they have? The simple answer is “fish,” but Ray was anything but simple. He didn’t want to serve fish. He wanted to serve pineapples.
Yes, the Hulaburger replaced meat with slices of pineapple, and as you might imagine, the sandwich flopped. Arriving and exiting in the ’50s, the Hulaburger has lived on in every article penned by someone who wanted to make Ray Kroc look like a dummy.
But was he really a dummy? Pineapple burgers, especially when you think of burgers in McDonald’s terms, really don’t sound that bad. Maybe Ray wasn’t insane. Maybe he just overlooked the fact that people who couldn’t eat meat generally went to places other than restaurant chains that sold nothing but meat.
I was determined to know if the Hulaburger was actively bad, or maybe just misplaced. There was only one way to find out.
I had to make a Hulaburger.
The official recipe for the Hulaburger has never been disclosed, but even without any photographic evidence to serve as my guide, I think I can handle “replace meat with pineapple” without too many errors.
Through various articles online, I’ve gathered that the pineapple was grilled in butter to help make it an easier sell as a meat-replacement. So, I sliced some fresh pineapple, greased a pan and sung “Mele Kalikimaka” to my cats as it cooked.
While the pineapples browned, I had the ungodly task of trying to separate the meat in a McDonald’s cheeseburger from the cheese. The cats, who were such a wonderful audience during my impromptu concert moments earlier, each received scraps of torn hamburger and I prepped for the next step of Hulaburger creation.
After slipping the pineapple into the bun, I realized that I likely sliced it a little too thick. Would’ve restarted the process with a thinner pineapple patty, but I was rapidly losing interest.
Upon the first bite, I can’t say that it was either horrible or very good. Thing about it is, even when you take out the meat, McDonald’s cheeseburgers still taste exactly like McDonald’s cheeseburgers. So it was basically like eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger and pineapples at the same time. Slightly wrong, but somehow, slightly right.
The Hulaburger made much more sense in the ’50s than it does today, thanks to the nationwide Polynesian fad that saw Americans regurgitate a foreign culture in the form of raffia table skirts and coconut bras. Pineapple burgers fit right into that mentality. Today, it’s a little harder to look at the photo below and call it “chic.”
I can barely make popcorn without doing something wrong, so my presentation of the Hulaburger really shouldn’t be the barometer. I can kind of see what Ray Kroc was going for, but maybe that’s just because I get giddy thinking about my drunk ancestors stumbling into McDonald’s to order “one a dem Hulaburgers.”
Shit, is today Saturday? I made these last night. That means I spent Friday night dissecting McDonald’s cheeseburgers and refitting them with pineapple slices. HELLO ladies!
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
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Eww. Although I bet you could make a badass hamburger with pineapple on it, you’d still want meat, I think.
That crazy Kroc.