Surfing, beaches and brightly coloured shirts usually spring to mind when one thinks of Hawaii. But when it comes to food, one of the state's most iconic dishes, loco moco, is far from tropical. This generous dish of rice, topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg and gravy, is available on almost every menu in Hawaii, and even when it's not, restaurants will often make it for you. The dish is said to have been created as recently as the late 1940s. Some say it was at a restaurant called Lincoln's Grill, now closed, that was situated on the island of Hilo. The story concerns a group of teenage boys, who were part of a team that played a sport called barefoot football, and often hung around the restaurant. Some say they were just there to play on the pinball machines; others say they trained nearby and would go in for a bite after spending hours on the pitch. Either way, they were growing boys and often very hungry. As they didn't have a lot of money, they would order the cheapest items on the menu, such as saimin noodles (another Hawaiian speciality of soup noodles) or hamburgers, but these dishes were never big enough to fill them up. One day, a member of the team, nicknamed "Crazy", asked the owners, Richard and Nancy Inouye, to create a dish to suit their appetite and budget. They came up with loco moco, as "loco" means crazy in Spanish and in local slang, and "moco" was added for rhyming purposes. Another story goes that Nancy Inouye reprimanded them for using the facilities but never eating there. When the boys replied that they couldn't afford to, Richard, who was the chef, made them loco moco, as he thought the boys played and ate like "crazy".