Chris Hu, 16, belongs to a club that gets to the meat of fundraising for a good cause.

Not only that, the Meat Club fired up the entire club scene at Punahou.

It started a decade ago when four juniors crammed into the office of Jack Belli, then advanced-placement statistics teacher, pitching a club that — after the requisite community service — worshipped at the altar of meat.

"We immediately became the butt of every joke at school," Belli recalled.

Student senators threatened to run 'em out; the seniors' annual Variety Show even made fun of them from the stage.

The club — whose T-shirt proclaims "You wanna piece of me?" — took up the challenge like bloodthirsty carnivores.

Instead of stewing, they went to work and went on to be chosen 2000 service club of the year, Belli said.

"The vegetarians have only tried to undermine our efforts once, and it didn't work out at all," explains Hu, a sophomore. "This happened a couple years ago, and we haven't heard from them since."

Like any red-blooded Meat Clubber, Hu admits he joined for the grub.

"Actually, I think everyone joins for the food. I think people realize it's much more fun to help people while eating a nice, juicy burger," he wrote in an e-mail. "The club is much more than just the wrestlers, albeit they are the largest group of members. I've had people from all different cliques ask me if they can join meat club. I don't know if we are the hottest club at Punahou, but we are probably the largest. They had to take two pictures for the yearbook to fit us all in."

Meat Club sells bentos and plate lunches, grills food for movie nights, even markets a World's Largest Hotdog sale, with the Double Dog Dare Ya Dog. A few years ago, the Culinary Club challenged the Meat Club to an "Iron Chef"-style competition, later broadcast on "Punavision."

"We won, hands down," Belli recalls. Their September United Way fundraiser brings in $1,000 to $2,000, and the club has even inspired Kamehameha into starting its own Meat Club.

"When we started the club, the clubs at Punahou were bottoming out," Belli said.

The predominant thinking was, "These were a bunch of yahoos, and if they can do it, we can do it, too," he said. "Everybody said, 'We could do a club better than them.' It's been an upward trend since."