Spamming it up Can-do spirit drives Filipino-flavoured, preserved-meat-powered venture By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:15 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 10, 2025 Last Modified: 3:59 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 10, 2025 Updates

Spam warning!

Matt Masangkay and Megan Esguerra are the founders of Subi, a three-month-old food venture specializing in Spam musubi, a Hawaiian favourite that combines sushi rice and dried nori seaweed with, as its name implies, the oft-maligned, canned luncheon meat.

The couple, who sell their offerings for pick-up via pre-order, was stocking up on supplies at Costco last month when they began to notice their fellow shoppers doing a double-take, as they were passing them in the aisle.

“That week, the price of Spam had dropped by $1 per can and everybody was kind of staring at our cart, which was almost completely filled with six trays of Spam — 72 cans altogether,” Masangkay says, seated next to Esguerra in a Wall Street coffee shop 10 minutes from their downtown apartment.

“We definitely got some looks,” Esguerra pipes in, cradling a matcha latté in both hands.

“Even the cashier made a comment along the line of wow, that’s a lot of Spam. We just laughed and answered ‘Yep, it sure is.’”

Masangkay and Esguerra, both in their late 20s, share a common background. Each one’s parents immigrated to Canada from the Philippines and each of them grew up in a household where Spam was a regular part of mealtime.

The way Masangkay understands the story, Spam, made primarily of pre-cooked pork shoulder and ham, achieved popularity in the Philippines during the Second World War.

The shelf-stable product, which was introduced by Minnesota-based Hormel Foods in 1937, was a staple for American soldiers stationed overseas — for a while it was nicknamed SPecial Army Meat — and Filipinos quickly latched onto it as well.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever had a Filipino breakfast before, but basically it’s rice mixed with garlic served with eggs and some sort of protein, either tocino, longganisa or slices of fried Spam,” he says.

It was much the same situation at her place, says Esguerra.

“Lots of people go ‘eww’ when they hear the word Spam but I can almost guarantee that if you go into the pantry of any Filipino family in Winnipeg, you’re going to see at least one can of it on the shelf.”

“If you go into the pantry of any Filipino family in Winnipeg, you’re going to see at least one can of it on the shelf.”

In September 2024, Masangkay, a hair stylist at MBS Barbershop in St. James, and Esguerra, a food-safety and quality-management specialist for Richardson International, spent two weeks in Hawaii.

In addition to sight-seeing, they made a point of sampling the local cuisine, especially loco moco, a comfort food that marries white rice with a hamburger patty and a fried egg, and Spam musubi, which was reportedly invented in the 1980s by a Hawaiian restaurateur.

(Like the Philippines, Hawaii has been a Spam hotbed for decades. Over seven million cans are sold there annually and since 2021, National Spam Musubi Day has been observed every Aug. 8.)

What surprised the pair most in regard to Spam musubi was just how readily available it was during their trip. Besides dine-in spots such as Musubi Café Iyasume, which has multiple locations in Honolulu, it was also front and centre at every ABC convenience store, the state’s equivalent of 7-Eleven.

“There were a bunch of different flavours and it was fun trying them all,” Esguerra says, recalling the price, around US$4 each, was equal to grabbing a taco or a sandwich.

“Usually we had it as a quick snack at the beach or after a hike. I don’t think a day went by that we didn’t eat it at least once.”

A few months after returning from their trip they had a sudden craving for Spam musubi. They looked up different recipes on the internet — mostly for a glaze for the Spam — and finally settled on one that sounded particularly palatable.

Deeming their effort a success, they repeated the process a couple of weeks later, this time for members of Esguerra’s family.

“My sister was like, ‘this is really good, you have to make it for our cousins, too,’” says Esguerra, the second-eldest of four siblings.

Following a party at their place in June where Spam musubi was again part of the festivities, they began to seriously consider going into business for themselves. The decision was buoyed by comments from acquaintances of theirs who didn’t grow up with Spam like they had, but who were bowled over by what they were sampling nonetheless.

“One of my best friends is East Indian and she told us she never would have pictured herself eating Spam and liking it, but there she was,” says Esguerra with a chuckle.

“One of my best friends is East Indian and she told us she never would have pictured herself eating Spam and liking it, but there she was.”

They accepted their initial orders in early July but not before spending a good chunk of their free time perfecting their technique. Using a guillotine-style slicer, Masangkay is the one responsible for cutting the Spam into uniform portions, about nine slices per can. It’s also his job to brush the individual pieces with a homemade teriyaki sauce, ahead of frying both sides until they are golden-brown in colour.

“I don’t touch anything after that, Megan is the assembly expert,” he says, winking at his partner of three years.

It took her a while to perfect the spam-to-rice ratio, Esguerra admits, but once she figured that out, plus how to expertly wrap the end-result in seaweed, they turned their attention to conjuring different varieties.

Besides a “classic” musubi done with rice, nori and Spam, they devised one dubbed tamago Spam musubi, tamago being a Japanese-style rolled omelette. They settled on another featuring shrimp tempura and Spam and a fourth — their “deluxe” version — that incorporates avocado, eel and again, a rolled omelette.

“We’ve developed our own dipping sauce as well, which we include in a box of four (musubi) for $22,” Masamgkay says, mentioning pre-order dates are listed on their Instagram page.

To date, the vast majority of their customers have been Winnipeggers who, like them, have vacationed in Hawaii and were looking for a taste of the islands once they were back on their home soil. Additionally, in August they catered a Tiki-themed birthday party for a friend’s child and have similar events in the pipeline, Esguerra states.

Pop-up markets are also on their to-do list, they say in unison. Well, that and one day returning to the Aloha State to take in Waikiki’s annual Spam Jam Festival, when victuals such as Spam pizza, Spam burgers, Spam nachos and Spam eggs Benedict are on the menu at area restaurants.

“It’s supposed to be a real gourmet experience, which I guess sounds funny when you’re talking about Spam,” Masangkay chuckles.

And although they have only been up and running for a few months, the fledgling enterprise has already been personally rewarding, Esguerra reports.

“It’s supposed to be a real gourmet experience, which I guess sounds funny when you’re talking about Spam.”

“In our culture, food is definitely a love language, except at home, I was never the one in the kitchen… I was lucky enough to always come home to my mom’s freshly cooked meals,” she continues.

“After Matt and I moved in together, I had to experiment with meals I’d never attempted before and that’s when I realized not only do I love cooking, I love the emotions — be it nostalgia or whatever — food brings out in people.

“This business definitely plays into that because now, when somebody is nice enough to let us know that they enjoyed something we made for them, it’s a really special feeling.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca