Tacky, Crunchy, and Retro: Japan’s Iconic Pizza Toast

With toasted slices of thick shokupan—Japanese milk bread—slathered in a candy, tangy tomato sauce and stacked excessive with pizza fixings, pizza toast is crunchy, tacky, savory, and wonderfully comforting. It is a dish that ticks all of the packing containers, and like a meal from a toddler’s fever dream, is unrestrained and excessive in all the appropriate methods. The toppings sometimes include thinly sliced candy onions, mushrooms, inexperienced bell peppers, and the occasional cherry tomato, with tiny bites of cured meat tucked below a blanket of golden-brown mozzarella cheese. Like hambagu and omurice, pizza toast is a yoshoku (Western-Japanese) meals that has turn out to be deeply embedded inside Japanese tradition.

This dish is a key menu merchandise at retro Japanese cafés known as kissaten, which reportedly date again to the Meiji period (1868-1912) and gained reputation after World Battle II. Like American diners, kissaten have their Rolodexes of well-known dishes, together with neon inexperienced melon-flavored sodas topped with scoops of vanilla ice cream, spaghetti Napolitan, and, in fact, pizza toast. Kissaten are nostalgic locations for a lot of Japanese diners, and the dishes served typically present consolation and fulfill a eager for bygone instances. 

Positioned alongside the bustling Yamanote prepare line within the coronary heart of Tokyo’s Yurakucho neighborhood, Café Benisica has been serving pizza toast since 1964, making it the primary identified place in Japan to take action. On the time, pizza was costly and thought of a luxurious merchandise, accessible solely to the rich. Whereas searching for a extra reasonably priced various, café house owners used shokupan instead of conventional dough. The fluffy bread garnished with cheese and varied toppings reminded a lot of pizza, however it was accessible at a fraction of the fee. Diners flocked to Café Benisica for his or her pizza toast, and over time, the dish grew to become the café’s best-selling merchandise. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than pizza toast unfold to cafés and residential kitchens all through Japan.

In an try to attempt the unique pizza toast for myself, I not too long ago visited Café Benisica. I arrived to see folks chatting over swirled soft-serve ice cream sundaes dripping with chocolate syrup and salarymen sipping on siphon-brewed espresso—however no pizza toast in sight. Though the phrases “pizza toast” have been emblazoned on the menu, a bit of “bought out” sticker was subsequent to it. I requested the workers when it might be accessible once more, considering I might return on one other day. However they mentioned they hadn’t bought it in months as a result of their cheese vendor’s mozzarella hadn’t met their commonplace of high quality, so that they have been ready till it improved. In different phrases, the considered promoting subpar pizza toast—particularly on the birthplace of the dish—was unthinkable. Fortunately for me, there are many different kissaten pizza toasts accessible in Japan to fill the void whereas I patiently watch for the unique to return.

Although many Japanese pizza toasts are made with a ketchup-based sauce—that is additionally frequent for different kissaten dishes, together with spaghetti Napolitan—some locations put together marinara sauce with tomatoes as an alternative of ketchup. Ketchup is probably going well-liked as a result of it gives a candy, wealthy tomato taste with out the additional liquid sometimes present in canned and contemporary tomatoes, leading to a concentrated sauce. When paired with dried oregano, basil, and garlic, its taste is harking back to Italian-American pizza sauce. 

Pizza toasts additionally range extensively from café to café: Some locations use ultra-thick shokupan slices to arrange luxuriously chunky slices of pizza toast, whereas others make knife-and-fork egg salad sandwiches with it, utilizing a single piece of pizza toast as the highest, so while you minimize in, you get a chew that is half egg salad and half pizza. The commonest toppings in Japan are onions, inexperienced bell peppers, mushrooms, and smoked meat. However don’t let that cease you from dreaming up your taste combos—the one restrict is your pizza toast creativeness.

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