Hawaii: The Spam Archipelago

Pity poor Spam.

Few foods suffer through relationships as tormented as the one Spam has with its American home. The name itself is more commonly associated with Monty Python and unwanted email than the actual product. Chefs from one star to five scoff at the possibilities of the pink meat. And the blue tin can? For the average shopper, it might as well be bright stop-sign red.

Celebrating its 70th birthday this year, Spam could easily pass into the night like a bitter old man, descending into irrelevancy, self-loathing and late night Metamucil binges.

But like the stomachs of some who eat it, Spam is a fighter. And in a little state called Hawaii, it's found an adoring costumer base.

As the undisputed Spam capital of the world, the 50th state consumes more Spam per capita than the rest of the country. In a state with a population of 1.3 million, roughly seven million cans are sold every year. That's almost 6 cans for every tanned man, woman and child.

Spam's so popular, in fact, that each spring Hormel Foods throws a "Spam Jam" — exactly like the movie Space Jam, except in being a six-hour festival in Waikiki that features dozens of Hawaii's top chefs, the crowning of a Mr. or Ms. Spam and an estimated 20,000 people in attendance.

To picture Spam's role in Hawaii's culinary culture, first picture bacon. Then ham. Then hot dogs. Now replace them all with Spam.

In McDonald's breakfast meals, Spam has replaced bacon as the primary meat. At pizza parlors, Spam toppings are more popular than Ham (ironically, "Hawaiian pizzas" on the mainland typically consist of Ham and pineapple). And in place of hot dogs, something called a Spam Musubi is the main on-the-go snack at convenience stores.

To the untrained eye, the Spam Musubi looks like a perversion of culinary science. But in Hawaii, it's at the top of the snack food caste system. To create a Spam Musubi, take a big, fat, juicy slab of rectangular Spam meat. Fry it in teriyaki sauce. Plop it onto a rectangular bed of rice (the musubi). Finally, wrap it in a sheet of dried seaweed (nori) and eat it like a sandwich.

The more than 50 7-Eleven Hawaii stores sell hundreds of Spam musubis every day. According to one employee, each store regularly prepares at least 20 Spam musubis every day in two varieties: regular and deluxe, which adds an extra bed of fried egg sandwiched between the Spam and rice.

It seems like everything in Hawaii is replaceable with Spam — a point made by the 2004 Adam Sandler Hawaii movie 50 First Dates. In it, a local chef prepares "Spam and eggs" (an actual dish) and "Spam and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups" (not an actual dish).

So why do the people of Hawaii eat more Spam than Dennis Miller uses this joke construction?

The origin story of Hawaii and Spam goes a little something like this: after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to start World War II, supplies such as meat grew scarce in Hawaii. Minnesota-based Hormel Foods saw a market and introduced Spam to Hawaii as a meat that didn't spoil. It stuck. (Thanks, Imperial Navy!) "Because of limited land space and no shipping, their love of Spam grew and is still one of their most popular foods," said one Hormel spokesman to a Milwaukee paper.

But tradition alone can't explain Spam's popularity, can it? After all, a half century later Hawaii has refrigeration in its grass shacks and shipping lanes via speedy canoes. And though children are force-fed vegetables, they don't grab broccoli from 7-Eleven when they're adults.

Here's a strange thought: maybe Spam just tastes good.

Taste might be part of it. In Hawaii, Spam is usually prepared differently than the mainland. With a Spam Musubi, for example, the Spam is often pan fried and doused with soy sauce. It's then sprinkled with furikake, a Japanese condiment consisting of a mixture of dried fish, sesame seeds and seaweed.

And unlike the other 49 states, Hawaii has found creative ways to integrate Spam into a variety of local and international dishes. Hawaii author Ann Kondo Corum has published two Spam cookbooks with hundreds of recipes (Spam and Mushroom Rolls, Spam Chowder) that have sold over 30,000 copies.

Spam on the mainland, meanwhile, is often eaten like an Eskimo with an overactive bladder: cold and straight from the can. Consider Cecil Adams, editor of the "The Straight Dope," on his first experience eating Spam: "I bought a tin and popped it open, fully expecting to be bowled over by who knows what awful aroma. Didn't happen. The smell was . . . surprisingly mild. Moreover, the stuff was edible, if salty."

The saltiness of Spam also makes it a perfect complement to the Pacific Rim cuisine for which Hawaii is best known. While there are Americanized Spam dishes like Burger King's Spam Croissanwich and Spam pizza, many of Hawaii's uses for Spam have an Asian bent: musubis, ramen, fried rice and sushi, among others. In fact, all along the Pacific Rim — the Philippines, Okinawa, Guam, Saipan and Korea — Spam is popular. And as in Hawaii, Spam is eaten fried or well cooked.

But whatever the reason, Hawaii could care less about Spam's bad reputation. Honolulu, after all, is the most isolated metropolitan area in the world — a point of pride reflected in the culture of the islands, from clothing to language and, yes, food.

It's the Spam Mobile, not the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile, that kids run after in Hawaii. As one Hormel representative told a Minnesota TV station after visiting Hawaii, "You tell someone you're the Spam guy and they say 'you've got the coolest job in the world.' "