When Mitsuko Tsukenjo opened her tiny restaurant for lunchtime diners in Kaka'ako, she worked so hard she barely had time to dream of success. Half a century later, her plates of roast pork and hamburger steak are such mouth-watering favorites that they have become a huge part of her legacy.

Tsukenjo died Feb. 24. She was 87.

Tsukenjo and her husband, Tetsu, in 1959 founded the Tsukenjo Lunch House and Lunch Wagon, still on the corner of Cooke and Queen streets where it began. Their brightly colored lunchwagons were stationed all over Kaka'ako and on Ward Avenue, said their daughters, who worked side by side with their parents.

The only thing that has changed in the past half century is the food containers, said Frances Kanayama, one of Tsukenjo's daughters. For years -until switching to the ubiquitous Styrofoam clam-shells — Tsukenjo's served its lunches on paper plates topped with a sheet of waxed paper, wrapped in newsprint and bound by a rubber band.

"That's how you could tell it was our plate lunch," Kanayama said.

"I don't know how my mom learned to cook so well," she said. "The recipes were just there and along the way she lost some of the paper recipes and the rest were in her. What came out is what we make."

When Tsukenjo retired 17 years ago, the only change her daughters made was to eliminate the MSG, said Doris Nabarro, one of Tsukenjo's seven children who now runs the plate-lunch stand.

For much of Tsukenjo's life, she was behind the scenes, quietly working at the stove. She was shy, Nabarro said.

"My mother had a hard life," Nabarro said. "She worked hard all her life. She raised seven kids and sometimes there was no more money."

Tsukenjo is survived by sons, Paul and Walter; daughters, Geraldine Matsumoto, Frances Kanayama, Florence Chinen, Doris Nabarro and Eunice Hirata; brothers, Seiko and Thomas Nakadomari; sisters, Mitsue Ikei, Asano Shimabukuro and Mildred Williams; 15 grandchildren; 20 great-grandchildren; and four great-great-grandchildren.

Just two years ago, the family sold off the lunchwagon part of the business after it became more difficult to find qualified workers, Nabarro said. Now they operate just the plate-lunch stand on Cooke Street.

Visitation is 9 to 10 a.m. Saturday at Hosoi Garden Mortuary; service 10 a.m.; inurnment 3 p.m. at Valley of the Temples Memorial Park. No flowers. Casual attire.