The Tropics of
Spokane How Hawaiian cuisine made it to the Inland Northwest and where to find it By Annemarie C. Frohnhoefer
N
oel Macapagal, former owner of Raw in downtown Spokane, stands behind the counter of Wave rolling sushi. Despite the ice-caked sidewalks and frozen-fog-coated trees, Macapagal wears shorts and flip-flops. He’s lived permanently in Spokane since 2002, but can’t seem to shed the uniform of his native Hawaii any more than he can shed his cravings for fresh ahi. As he pats rice onto nori he describes his first years in Spokane. “[In] my freshman class at Gonzaga, there were 14 [Hawaiians] and that was a record at the time. I mean Spokane in 1990, we would go to the Mustard Seed downtown that was the overarching Asian, Hawaiian anything,” says Macapagal. Hawaiians living in Spokane often relied on Japanese or other Asian restaurants to satiate their cravings for teriyaki or rice-and-vegetable dishes, but the local Japanese cuisine could provide only one profile found in the multi-flavored cuisine of the Hawaiian Islands. Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Filipino ingredients and cooking styles were introduced to Hawaii in the 1800s when laborers from
42 INLANDER JANUARY 24, 2013