It was 10:15 Wednesday morning when Tangonan opened his Sassy Kassy's lunchwagon and took his first plate-lunch order of the day from Honda, a Waipi'o resident who works for C & S Wholesalers.

"He got the best lunchwagon over here," said Honda, who favors the teri-beef or mochiko chicken plates. "Every day there's a different special and his food is tasty. I been coming five days a week for 15 to 20 years."

Eight people are in line by the time Honda's order is filled. The line continues to grow. Everything is normally sold before quitting time at 12:30 p.m.

Tangonan, 64, has been doing business in the same location six days a week for 27 years. He's retiring and on his last day today, the Friday special — as usual — will be rib-eye steak with three pieces of stuffed shrimp.

"The line is never-ending but on Friday, it's going to be long," said William Abilla, an 'Ewa Beach neighbor of Tangonan's and regular Sassy Kassy's customer. "Tell you what, you need to have an appetite to eat his bento."

Tangonan's signature dish, the $4 teri-beef plate, lives up to its billing as "Da Best No. 1," according to his customers.

"I going to end up about 4,000 short of 1 million," Tangonan said of the number of teri-beef plates he's sold in 27 years. A former manager at Kenny's Burger House, Tangonan says he's "improvised" the sauce for his teri-beef over the years but the key is "having a grill that's hot to caramelize the sauce."

As Raymond Gomes of Wai'anae approaches the front of the line, one of Tangonan's helpers asks, "The usual?" Gomes has been buying lunch from Tangonan every workday since 1980 and always orders a teri-beef sandwich and cheeseburger.

"Everybody knows about his teriyaki," Gomes said. "On the weekend, I bring my wife so she can have his teri plate."

Reyn Yamashiro, who works for Hawaiian Electric Co., is also a teri-beef plate regular.

"His (teri-beef) is soft and sweet," Yamashiro said. "And I can get it with pickled onions. You know what you getting and you know it's good."

Tangonan sells between 190 and 250 plate lunches a day. In 27 years, he has missed only one week of work, to attend a daughter's wedding on the Mainland. If he sold 200 plate lunches a day, Tangonan served up 1,683,600 plates at Campbell Industrial Park.

Tangonan considers 75 percent of his customers as regulars and calls many of them by name.

"What you having today, 2-by-4?" he calls out to Fred Ellis of Wai'anae, who works at Rocky Mountain Prestress across the street from where the lunchwagon is parked. Ellis ordered spaghetti.

"I don't have a favorite," said Ellis, who has been ordering lunch at Sassy Kassy's every workday since 1983. "I eat whatever I 'ono for."

So why does Tangonan call him "2-by-4?"

"I make lunch runs for the guys," Ellis explained. "One day I never have paper to write down the orders so I wrote it on a 2-by-4. He been calling me that ever since."

Truck driver Daniel Kupihea of Wai'anae isn't sure if Sassy Kassy's can be replaced.

"If I'm working in the area, I come every day but if not, maybe three times a week," Kupihea said. Tangonan will be involved with a yet-to-open family restaurant venture to be called "Hapa Grill" in Kapolei.

Since he won't be working tomorrow, Tangonan says, "I going to sleep all day." On working days, he would average three hours sleep and his workday would begin at 1:30 a.m.

"I won't miss the long hours of work, but I will miss the regular customers," he said. "It's hard work. We did it 52 weeks because if you don't work, you don't get paid."

Tangonan and his wife, Ellen, who does the food prep, sent their five children to college but none wanted to take over the business.

"They used to wake up to go to school and see us working and we were still working when they went to sleep," Richard Tangonan said. "It's hard work."

Tangonan plans to sell the lunchwagon, if he already hasn't done so.