Aug. 24--After Hours is a column dedicated to late-night eats in Chicago.
The dish: Spam musubi ($3) at Lost Lake (3154 W. Diversey Ave.)
Available: Daily after midnight
I hadn't heard of Spam musubi before stumbling into Lost Lake at the tail end of a bachelorette party, at the time of the night when we didn't really need another drink. But hey -- if we were going to do it, better to do it with food. Thankfully, the Chinese-American takeout spot at the front of the Logan Square tiki bar serves to Mai Tai-sipping patrons until 2 a.m. (3 a.m. on Saturdays), with an after-midnight-only bonus: the musubi, advertised as seared, teriyaki-glazed Spam with sushi rice, nori and furikake (a Japanese seasoning made from dried fish, seaweed, sugar and salt).
From a cartoon sketch on the menu, I deciphered musubi to be, essentially, a piece of Spam nigiri. What landed on my table was better than I imagined: a generous rectangle of Spam, about the size of a jumbo domino, resting on a tidy bed of rice (we're talking hospital corners), with meat and carbs bound by a wide cummerbund of nori. Each bite -- granted, there were only three, but that's all you need -- delivered a welcome jolt of salt tempered, somewhat, by the light topcoat of sweet, sticky teriyaki sauce. There's a reason this is a late-night order; the Richter-scale sodium levels that could be offputting at lunch or dinner are exactly what you want after a night of drinking.
The next day, still stuck on this dish, I turned to a colleague and found out musubi is a staple in Hawaii, sold everywhere from convenience stores to school cafeterias. While I wish I could find this at my corner grocery, I'll happily travel to Logan Square to get it -- it is, after all, a lot closer than Hawaii.
mconrad@tribpub.com
Twitter @marissa_conrad
