Leaving our parkas behind in the snowdrifts of western Massachusetts, eight of us descended onto Honolulu for Spring Break: Hawaii. Okay, so before you conjure up visions of wet t-shirts, body shots, and mortified mothers all over the country watching MTV, think again. Well, almost (sorry Mom!). But really, we surely did more eating than anything else. Lucky for us, our friend Tommy was born and raised in Honolulu, so not only was he so generous to house our raucous bunch at his mountainous bamboo forest abode, we were promised the best eats the island has to offer. Most importantly, he took us to the same spots he rushes to the moment he returns home from school. Our college...
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What's the best meat to use in a Spam musubi? Pomai of Honolulu-based food blog The Tasty Island tested Treet, Tulip, and Spam brand luncheon meats to find out. After comparing and rating their flavors, textures, and levels of deliciousness in musubi form on a scale of one to three, he found that each one had its own individual qualities (good or bad depending on your preference), but deemed Spam the king of luncheon meats. If you've never had Spam musubi before, try making your own! Just make sure you have a Spam musubi press to get that perfect brick-shape....
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Airline food sucks, and it's beginning to suck even harder because many airlines are either making you pay extra for a meal or eliminating them all together. Hawaiian Airlines is choosing to go in the other direction and is introducing onboard tasting menus in First Class, like the ones diners in many upscale restaurants are enjoying. For both lunch and dinner, passengers get their choice of three of five available entrees (out of the twenty in rotation) to create their meal....
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Forget seared ahi steaks, mango salsa, and Pacific Rim Cuisine; Kaui Philpotts grew up in a sugar plantation on Maui and knows what real Hawaiian food is: I ate impromptu picnics of fried shoyu (soy sauce) chicken neatly wrapped in waxed paper and musubi (perfect triangles of seaweed-wrapped white rice, like giant sushi) with my friend Lei on the steps of the VFW Hall in Wailuku after hula class. I ate tripe stew and day-old poi (the steamed and pounded corm of the taro plant), saimin noodles with bright pink fish cake, "plate lunches" of beef stew and chicken cutlets with sticky rice, and the Portuguese fried doughnuts called malasadas. I ate Spam, for heaven's sake, with musubi, eggs,...
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