Plastered onto a wall inside, signage at a Downtown San Jose restaurant read, “go find your musubae.” And I think I just have.
Just a couple minutes walk from campus, Hapa Musubi on South First Street specializes entirely in musubi.
Musubi, for the uninitiated, is typically a mound of rice with a protein on top, wrapped with seaweed.
The Hawaiian dish is usually only served with Spam, but Hapa Musubi’s menu features 14 different options.
Half of those options are Spam based and include jalapeño and Spam, egg, bacon and Spam and double Spam.
Next to the menu on the wall is an art piece, if you can call it that, which features 210 cans of Spam stacked in rows of six up the wall. If you didn’t know what you were getting into before walking in, you would definitely know after you saw that.
What’s the significance of the 210 cans? It’s every can the restaurant owners used while practicing recipes and making catering orders leading up to when the brick-and-mortar location opened on Oct. 2.
I’ve had plenty of Spam musubi from various restaurants around San Jose, and they’re all basically the same, so I decided to venture into uncharted territory and order two musubi options that I haven’t tried before.
Per the cashier’s recommendation, I ordered the chicken katsu musubi and the shrimp tempura musubi, both $4.50 each.
My friend and fellow staff writer Chris Core went with me and also ordered the chicken katsu musubi as well as the chicken tempura musubi, the latter of
which is $4.
Each musubi order comes individually wrapped in plastic with a convenient pull tab that makes getting to your food as easy as possible.
The restaurant is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and our Tuesday afternoon trip was less than an hour before closing time.
The musubi options are displayed at the counter, enabling guests to choose what kind they want. However, because the restaurant was closing when we went, the choices were limited.
There were two chicken katsu musubis left, which we quickly snagged, and despite not being out front, the kitchen was able to make anything on the menu.
Since it had just been sitting there, the chicken katsu musubis were room temperature while the shrimp and chicken tempura musubis were warm and kitchen fresh.
Chicken katsu is one of my favorite dishes outside of musubi form, and the restaurant managed to do it justice, even though it was room temperature.
The serving size is significantly larger than what you would expect from an average musubi order from other restaurants.
The chicken katsu musubi also had a sweet teriyaki sauce as well as red cabbage within it to give it a bit of a crunch.
Between my two orders, the shrimp tempura musubi was more enjoyable because it was served warm.
The grab-and-go nature of the restaurant is convenient, but for people eating in, the option to have your order made fresh would be a nice touch.
Was the food mind-bending and life-changing? Not quite, but it spices up a classic snack and gives it a fun and unexpected twist.
Hapa Musubi is a great local spot where students can go to get a quick and inexpensive bite.
