Saturday, June 4, 2011

Iyasume Musubi - Waikiki

We took quite a few of those tourist pamphlets as we arrived in Honolulu airport and one of the first things we realised was... we missed SPAM JAM!!!

What spam jam is is a street festival which celebrates people's love of spam - a much loved local specialty of Hawaii... and being a Spam lover myself, I was a bit bumbed that I missed it. Nonetheless, we discovered that there's another local "special" - the "spam musubi". The only problem with this "special" is that it's really really hard to find. In fact, we didn't manage to be bothered to specially locate it until our last days there.

The day before we had to leave, I was determined to hunt down the spam musubi and after relentless google surfing, the famous spam musubi shop was closed by the time we realised we wanted to go there (only opens for breakfast and lunch). Hence, our first spam musubi experience was bought from a local ABC store (convenient store in Waikiki).

spam musubi

What blew me away initially was the size of the rice ball!!! Seriously right, I don't really like rice. But I like Spam. But the rice and spam ratio was all out of wack! The rice is a bit sweeter than normal which complements the spam nicely... but there's just too much rice!

Waking up super early the next morning to hunt the specialty spam musubi shop, we were greeted by this super cute musubi character. And stepping inside... there was soooooo many musubi varieties!!! The list was endless!

Iyasume Musubi

My partner decided to go for a combo. 1 musubi of his choice (he chose the bacon and egg spam musubi) with sausages, fried chicken, and salad. He also ordered a curry rice as a small side dish. Again, the spam musubi's rice was MASSIVE. It's like eating a small bowl of rice with a thin slice of pan fried spam~ Tasty though I must admit. The sausages and the chicken were both deep-fried... which, for breakfast, isn't the healthiest. What my hubby was super impressed with was the curry rice. Potato, carrot and onion are melted into the curry sauce - making it super flavoursome and palatable. And yes, more fried chicken on top :) I think that the salad is there to try and make this breakfast "healthy".

spam and egg and bacon musubi, sausages, fried chicken
curry chicken rice
salad

I opted for a spam and egg musubi and a salmon salad musubi. It's like eating those "triangle rice" things you get from convenient stores in Japan, except that the rice is warm and the whole thing is super super fresh (instead of being in the fridge for a while). Again, I felt like I was eating 2 bowls of rice. Maybe with a quarter of the rice, same toppings, it would be 100% awesome! Hence, that's what I'm gonna make at home... one day :)

spam and egg musubi, tuna salad musubi

Miso soup at the store was very normal. The broth is clearer and cleaner tasting. But nothing super special.
Miso Soup

This store opens at 6am. I think we got there at close to 7am so they were kind of just setting everything up. Having said that though, it was raining that morning and there was already a small line hungrily awaiting breakfast.

Ratings:
Food - 8/10
Service - 6/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 28/40

Iyasume Musubi
2410 Koa Ave
Honolulu, HI 96815
Tel: (808) 921 0168

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