One of my daughter’s favorite breakfast foods is the Spam musubi. I know it’s not politically correct to feed my kid canned meat saturated with chemicals, but when it comes to sharing my local food favorites–which is pretty much a Hawaii culinary treasure–with my daughter, the tastebuds win out every time. In fact, my girl has developed such a taste for Spam musubi that she won’t accept anything other than the kind made at Port Town Chevron.
Most of the time, a Spam musubi is a square of pressed rice, topped with a cooked slice of Spam and encircled with about an inch of nori. Spam musubi are made different everywhere: Foodland tops theirs with a bit of sauce and has a chicken version; Minit Stop does theirs with either sweet chili sauce or red hot dog-style.
So what sets Port Town’s version apart? They sandwich a teriyaki-glazed piece of Spam, sprinkled with furikake, between two slabs of pressed rice, then roll the whole thing up with seaweed from top to bottom. My daughter says it’s the best because, “It’s not messy and it’s slightly sweet.”
Last year, Lahaina Petroleum bought the Chevron station. The new owners decided they wanted to up the ante with their commercial kitchen and started making simple sandwiches in addition to the musubi and distributing them around their network of Shell, 76 and Chevron stations. The sandwiches come in encased in a container so they won’t smash on the go. They have ham and cheese, turkey and egg salad.
“Now our Spam musubi are at Paia Shell, Paia Chevron, Pukalani Chevron, Kihei Chevron, Kihei 76, Lahainaluna Shell and Lahaina Chevron,” says Brian Hubin, the Island Manager at Port Town Chevron. “When they took over the store, they wanted to expand business. [They’re] making musubi for the other stores, and sandwiches, but not our bentos that we have here at Port Town. That would require the heating display unit like we have here.”
Hubin says his kitchen at Port Town sets up early and makes the musubi that will go to the other stores while making some for their store, too. They do this until the afternoon. Port Town sells about 200 musubi a day, averaging around 300 daily for all the stores.
The Port Town location is also the only one that carries a variety of musubis–tuna, fried rice and spam, lunchmeat and egg, teri-beef and spicy chicken. Musubis run $2.45 with specialty ones at $2.65. Oh, and they also now sell a “double decker” musubi.
“The double decker is two pieces of spam and rice at one reasonable price,” says Hubin. “I’m glad we have some fans out there.”
109 W. Ka’ahumanu Ave., Kahului
808-877-0455
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