Food & Culture

Spam Meets Sushi? This Bremerton Treat is Worth the Ferry Ride

This Hawaiian cafe makes phenomenal musubi.

By Chelsea Lin July 11, 2017

ACPhotography_CakfeKai_5_11_2017-7

This article originally appeared in the July 2017 issue of Seattle Magazine.

Before you dismiss the culinary appeal of Spam, try it Jamie Cancel’s way. The owner of Bremerton’s sweet, laid-back Hawaiian Cafe Kai is using her musubi—blocks of rice generally topped with Spam (and/or other ingredients)—to popularize the polarizing pork product. She says musubi, which she grew up making for birthdays and beach parties in her native Hawaii, is the best kind of portable snack. I don’t disagree.

My favorite is a brunch lover’s dream, the rice brushed with house-made teriyaki (created by Cancel’s husband, Brandon Sumailo), topped with salty Spam, strips of bacon and egg scrambled with soy sauce, all held together with a little seaweed belt ($3.50). This may not be the comfort food I grew up with, but it’s one I’ve adopted. Bremerton, 2518 Wheaton Way; 360.627.8755

 

Join The Must List

Sign up and get Seattle's best events delivered to your inbox every week.

Follow Us

Five Things You Need to Eat in September

Five Things You Need to Eat in September

A grilled cheese smash burger? Katsu spam masubi? Creative mash-ups born from the delicious idea of two-in-one

A lot of good things come from saying, “Why not do both?” When both options are coveted, marrying the two hardly feels like a compromise at all. The food scene is working hard to make our tough choices easier, particularly as we head into autumnal months when cravings turn to comfort foods, but stomach space…

Big Mario's Reopens Northlake After Seven-Month Closure

Big Mario’s Reopens Northlake After Seven-Month Closure

Big Mario’s reopens venerable pizza spot in time for Husky opener

The Northlake Tavern & Pizza House lives on. Big Mario’s has reopened the popular destination near the University of Washington campus as Big Mario’s Northlake Tavern. The 65-year-old pizza joint closed in January after the previous owner retired. Big Mario’s said at the time that the closure would last only two months, but the full-blown…

Five Things You Need to Eat in August

Five Things You Need to Eat in August

Ube pancakes, egg cream, and blistered tomato memories

Food has the wonderful effect of capturing a time and place. Many dishes in this city bring memories into the present, celebrate history, and preserve the abundance of our current season. What is old can be made anew. And in this bustling city where creativity, change, and traditions intersect, we can return to many familiar…

A Pandan Treat

A Pandan Treat

How a Vietnamese coffee shop became one of the city's best under-the-radar waffle spots

Whether it’s a hot puff of steam pushing through a tightly packed mound of grounds, or beans whirring in a grinder perfuming the air with their bitter oils, in almost every coffee shop on the planet there’s only one scent that dominates: coffee. So, it can be a little surprising to walk inside Phin Vietnamese…