Go Hawaiian With Free Spam Musubi at L&L on 808 Day

Think Hawaiian drinks, and people see tiki bars with umbrella drinks. Think Hawaiian food, and people imagine poke, kalua pig, mac salad, and... Spam musubi.

Fans of Spam musubi can start salivating: On Friday, August 8, L&L Hawaiian BBQ — the Honolulu-based chain that operates six fast-casual spots in Colorado, including one at East Sixth Avenue and Lincoln — is giving away a free Spam musubi to every customer between noon and 2 p.m. for National Spam Musubi Day. It's not exactly a nationally-recognized holiday, but this will be the fifth year of the giveaway for the celebration of this totally fusion food, which was started by L&L and was officially recognized by then-Hawai'i governor David Ige. It's marked on 8/08 every year because Hawai'i's area code is — you got it — 808.

If you're grossed out by the thought of Spam or simply never had Spam musubi, this is your chance to try it risk-free.

Spam musubi was the relatively recent invention of entrepreneur Barbara Funamura. In Kauai in the early 1980s, she put a slice of Spam on top of a brick of rice (pro tip for home cooks: use the Spam can as a mold), and wrapped it with a strip of nori seaweed. The canned meat had been a familiar ingredient in the islands since WWII, when the U.S. military served it throughout its bases because it was cheap and had a long shelf life. Hawai'i residents to this day consume more Spam per capita than any other state, over 7 million cans.
As a result, Spam musubi has become a menu offering in many Hawaiian restaurants and Asian-fusion shops and delis everywhere...especially L&L outposts.

The restaurant now boasts more than 230 locations worldwide, but it started with a small dairy on Oahu founded in the 1950s by a Korean couple named Lee (hence, L&L). In 1976, the dairy, which by then was selling food beyond dairy, was purchased by Johnson Kam and Eddie Flores, Jr. and rebranded as L&L Drive-In, offering burgers and saimin (Hawai'i's version of ramen). When the growing chain expanded to the mainland in 1999, the name was changed to L&L Hawaiian BBQ. The Flores' daughter, Elisia, was named the Honolulu-based CEO of L&L Hawaiian BBQ in 2019.

"We've grown and expanded, never to the expectation that we would be the size that we are now or in places like Colorado," she admits. "But the brand has just done very well."

What's important, she notes, is that the brand is associated with traditional (and modern, like Spam musubi) Pacific Islander fare. Her shops might have Hawai'i travel posters and a surfboard on the wall, but the focus is on the food, not on any accoutrements of Hawaiian culture — unlike so many places that adopt the tiki bar mentality.
Hawaiian cuisine, she explains, is already a mashup of various heritages — so in a way, the artificiality of tiki culture is understandable. "One thing special about Hawai'i is that we are a mix of culture," she notes. And nothing proves that more than Spam musubi.

Get a free lesson on 808 day!

L&L's locations in Colorado include Denver (575 Lincoln Street), Boulder (2323 30th Street) and Aurora (14221 East Cedar Avenue); get more details at hawaiianbarbecue.com/locations.