How Spam musubi edged its way into Alaska’s food scene

Kenji Kusano never measures. For a lifelong Japanese chef, the ratio of water to rice comes ingrained like the lines on a palm.

On this particular day, in the kitchen of the Geneva Woods split-level he shares with his wife, Sandy, he rinsed milky starch out of a few cups of Calrose rice. Soon he'd make a favorite fishing snack: Spam musubi. It's rice sandwiched around fried Spam, wrapped in seaweed and then Saran. Perfect for a jacket pocket.

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Now 72, Kusano has rolled more sushi that just about anybody in Anchorage. He helped open what may have been Anchorage's first sushi bar, at Tempura Kitchen, in the early '80s. Then came Yamato Ya, a sushi institution he owned for 25 years. At first, his clientele comprised a handful of Japanese airline workers. By the time he retired, the California roll was everywhere.

"The grocery store. The mall," he said.

Like sushi, pad Thai and pho before it, musubi, a Japanese-influenced Hawaiian snack, has edged deeply into Alaska's mainstream food culture, he said. Sandy, who grew up in Hawaii, has been following the trend.

'They sell it at the gas station now," she said.

Chances are, if you're in Anchorage, you're not far from a piece of musubi. Find it at a half-dozen restaurants, at church picnics and football practices. It's available by the piece at Sagaya stores and at Chevron stations with the Pall Malls and 5-Hour Energy shooters. It never costs more than $3.

[Alaskana recipe: Spam musubi and the musubi McMuffin]

Sometimes food can be a carrier molecule for the story of a place. A meal of wild salmon might carry the story of how a family fishes every year. A paper plate of sliced, salted muktuk, eaten at a kitchen table in Anchorage, might carry the story of a faraway village, a family and a culture.

Musubi has something to say about history and culture too. Start with Spam, a familiar flavor for lots of Alaskans, once a famous part of the comedy shtick at Spenard's old Fly By Night Club.

Recipes in Alaska's community cookbooks begin to show the influence of brands, like Best Foods mayonnaise, after World War II. That's when Spam became popular. The use of shelf-stable foods, protein in particular, was practical in small-town and rural Alaska, where refrigeration was spotty and food shipments from Outside irregular. It's still a staple in village stores across the state.

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Spam's rise in popularity also followed the military, which served it to soldiers beginning in World War II, according to Spam's official website. Alaska has always been a popular destination for veterans, and their familiarity with Spam likely influenced everybody's palate. (We still have more vets per capita — 12 percent of the population — than any other state.)

Musubi gets into Alaska's deep relationship with Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Hawaii is a popular vacation spot, a direct flight away. Alaska also has more Pacific Islanders per capita than any other state besides Hawaii, according to U.S. census data, but the numbers are small, maybe 2 percent of the population. That seeds a base market, but the demand for musubi goes far beyond Islanders, said Corinna Kanaina, general manager of the Hula Hands Hawaiian restaurants.

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Hula Hands has been selling musubi for 18 years, she said. Recently, sales have shot up. So far this year, the restaurant's two Anchorage locations have sold nearly 9,000 pieces, four times what they sold in 2014, she said. They have orders for hundreds of musubi at once now, for business conferences and football jamborees.

Spam's taste fits well with the flavors of Polynesian cuisine, she said. (Hawaii, according to Spam corporate, has the highest Spam consumption in America.)

"I think it's just the taste, the salty, pork, bacon-type of taste," said Kanaina.

Sandy Kusano remembers that she first started eating it at home in the 1960s. It was a natural addition to a variety of onigiri, or Japanese rice balls, sometimes filled with meat or seafood and wrapped in rice that they ate already.

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Musubi is ripe for variations. Some places add egg or teriyaki chicken. Kenji likes to experiment with ingredients that riff on popular sandwiches, appealing to American tastebuds. On the day he was cooking, he took slices of ham and American cheese, dunked them in tempura batter, rolled them in panko and deep-fried them, adding lettuce to make a musubi ham and cheese sandwich.

The savory taste of Spam musubi also appeals to the wide variety of Asian palates in Anchorage, Kanaina said. Koreans, for example, eat a sushi roll made with pickled vegetables and ham or Spam called kimbop. Filipinos, who represent the largest share of the city's Asian population, make a number of dishes that rely on salty pork and rice.

"I think a lot of the Alaska Natives have picked up on not just the taste, but we are close in culture when it comes to the sea, the seaweed," she said.

Hula Hands' recipe is traditional, she said, with two slices of deep-fried Spam splashed with their special teriyaki sauce, between plain short-grain Japanese rice, wrapped in nori. The Chevron version is a different style that uses a smaller strip of nori and combines the rice with Furikake, a Japanese rice seasoning.

Brandon Mahi, manager at Kansha, a Japanese and Hawaiian restaurant in South Anchorage, said he's also seen an uptick in interest in musubi and catering orders. Its popularity with the military crowd surprised him at first, he said, but it makes sense. Military people are well-traveled and many have spent time in Hawaii. The flavor is comforting and nostalgic for a lot of different kinds of people in Alaska, he said.

"Everybody just kinda likes Spam sometimes."

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