By Jason Genegabus

Jason Genegabus photos

If I wasn’t already familiar with Henry “Hank” Adaniya’s passion for creating hot dogs using exotic ingredients, I would’ve dismissed yesterday’s special addition to the menu as an April Fool’s Day prank.

But the SPAM dogs served yesterday at Hank’s Haute Dogs were no joke. And after sharing some with my co-workers in the newsroom, the consensus was that they actually tasted pretty good!

See? Right there on the sign? The SPAM Dog at Hank’s comes topped with kim chee and “secret” sauce.

The elder Adaniya wasn’t there when I stopped by around closing yesterday, but his son Mike was there to keep things under control:

The finished product. I know, the lighting is kind of bad in the conference room at work. But I wanted to give you a look at the cool boxes that each hot dog from Hank’s gets packaged in:

One of the SPAM Dogs got cut up into thirds so I could share, but the other did not pass go or collect $200. It went STRAIGHT TO MY BELLY!!!

I almost forgot to take this next shot.

As you can see, the SPAM Dog looks like any other hot dog. It’s just the ingredients that go into Hank’s natural casings that are a little different:

There was a little hint of that SPAM smell that’s so familiar to local folks, but the taste wasn’t nearly as overpowering as I thought it would be. The fresh ground pork helped balance out the flavor, although kim chee and the “secret” sauce was a bit much.

If I were to order one again, I’d probably ask them to skip the toppings. Or maybe replace them with traditional condiments (ketchup, mustard, relish).

After I inhaled my SPAM Dog, I took the other one and began to make my way around the newsroom. It’s no secret that if you leave food out here, it disappears within minutes… if not seconds!

It didn’t take long to find the first volunteer for my unscientific taste test. Star-Bulletin copy editor Jason Seaborn was more than happy to try the SPAM Dog:

“Seriously one of the best-tasting hot dogs I’ve ever had,” he said. “The only things that were missing were a beer, sunshine, bleachers and the Dodgers playing in front of me.”

Even the ladies in our newsroom like to get down with free food. Star-Bulletin staff writer Rose Bernardo was up next:

“The flavor of the SPAM hot dog weighs heavily on the sausage and kim chee,” she said. “I can rarely taste the SPAM.”

Okay, so that’s three semi-positive reactions. Time to take things to another level.

Even though she refused to let me take her picture, I had to get Star-Bulletin food critic Nadine Kam’s professional opinion.

Although a little stuffed from eating bread pudding earlier in the day, she was still game enough to take a dainty little bite from the piece I gave her.

“It doesn’t taste like SPAM, it tastes more like pork sausage,” Nadine said. “I would rather it taste more like SPAM … but it’s okay.”

According to Mike Adaniya, a decision hasn’t been made yet to add the SPAM Dog to Hank’s regular menu.

For now, the only chances you’ll have to try one will be at the Hawaii State Capitol on Tuesdsay during a Hawaii FoodBank fundraiser, and on April 18 during the annual ‘Iolani Fair.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Food & Drink, Outside The Club, Picture Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.