During the war, there was this constant fear of shipments of food suddenly not making it to Hawaii anymore, so a lot of people during that time had a tendency to hoard things like Spam and toilet paper. My grandmother hoarded up to five cases of Spam at a time. This paved the way for the modern-day Hawaiian cultural practice of hoarding things.
Ask your nearest Hawaiian friend to see what I am talking about. Yes, it is a canned meat product that can last forever and it has a bad reputation everywhere else in the world, but to the people of Hawaii, Spam meant precious nourishment in a time of uncertainty and chaos.
Thus, they prepared it with an immense amount of love. No one is going to claim that Spam scooped right out of the can and eaten as-is is delicious—it's fucking disgusting.
There are chefs who are making their own Spam from scratch, which is definitely awesome. This is the only way that Hawaiian cuisine will evolve, but I don't choose to do that in any of my restaurants.
I once made Spam noodles using transglutaminase powder and I thought I was the shit. However, I eventually realized that there are certain things that make Spam Spam. My generation doesn't think of Spam as coming from someplace else. We think of it as something that belongs to Hawaii. My dad feels the same about Vienna sausages. Spam came to him slightly later in life. For him growing up it was always canned foods, like Vienna sausages. Those are our two staples in life. Toilet Paper and Spam needs to be the title of someone's memoir.
I would love to write one, so hopefully that can be mine. Part of me just doesn't understand what the fuss is about. I don't understand why people think it's gross, because it's an essential.
Why even make this part of the conversation? Do you make toilet paper part of the conversation? These are things that you need for basic life. So, yeah, I guess it's part of the culture of dialogue in that this is the dialogue that I'm having away from Hawaii.
I feel like you have to celebrate your culture more loudly when you're not participating in it, when you're not currently in the place where it exists. I think it's a little bit strange to my family where they're like, "Oh, Kiki has to become the Spam spokesperson," because I've actually done work specifically for Spam. I wrote a recipe for Munchies. Vice did this whole thing with Spam during pandemic.
I wrote a recipe for a Spam Musubi birthday cake that went viral in Hawaii in a screenshot—in a good way. People were like, "Oh, my God. I don't know why I didn't think of this. I make a version of this. The problem with the screenshot is that you don't see what the cake is actually made of. You just see a whole bunch of rice and some Spam on it.
The Spam Musubirthday cake was made of a condiment called andasu. It's Okinawan, where it's typically miso mixed with sugar, rice wine, and pork fat. I made a version that recalled more of my Chinese heritage using chicken fat.
I made a condiment that was chicken fat, rice wine, sugar, and white miso. If you've ever been to Hawaii, though, or eaten at a Hawaiian restaurant or food truck, you couldn't have failed to notice that Spam plays a starring role in that state's cuisine. What's up with that? Doesn't Hawaii have all kinds of delicious foods of its own such as pineapples and kalua pork?
Then again, they do eat poi, which, by comparison, makes Spam taste just like that aforementioned filet mignon. Poi, which is mashed taro root , might be seen as Hawaii's answer to Australia's Vegemite — something that is only favored in its place of origin and universally loathed elsewhere. In the UK, Spam fritters are served battered and deep-fried.
In Hong Kong, Spam is often eaten with instant noodles. And as a result of the Korean War, Koreans enjoy Spam kimbap , a rice and vegetable filled seaweed roll. Has Spam found its way into your diet? Here's a few places where you can try Spam Musubi stateside:. Kim is also a freelance writer and marketing consultant , whose recent dining adventures revolve around ramen, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken.
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