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 bins, and like a meal from a baby’s fever dream, is unrestrained and excessive in all the proper methods. The toppings usually encompass thinly sliced candy onions, mushrooms, inexperienced bell peppers, and the occasional cherry tomato, with tiny bites of cured meat tucked beneath 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 Conflict 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, after all, 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 practice line within the coronary heart of Tokyo’s Yurakucho neighborhood, Café Benisica has been serving pizza toast since 1964, making it the primary recognized place in Japan to take action. On the time, pizza was costly and regarded a luxurious merchandise, accessible solely to the rich. Whereas in search of a extra inexpensive different, café house owners used shokupan instead of conventional dough. The fluffy bread garnished with cheese and numerous toppings reminded lots of pizza, but it surely was accessible at a fraction of the associated 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 just lately visited Café Benisica. I arrived to see individuals 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” had been emblazoned on the menu, a bit “offered out” sticker was subsequent to it. I requested the employees when it will be accessible once more, considering I might return on one other day. However they stated they hadn’t offered it in months as a result of their cheese vendor’s mozzarella hadn’t met their commonplace of high quality, in order that they had 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 await the unique to return.

Although many Japanese pizza toasts are made with a ketchup-based sauce—that is additionally widespread 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 offers a candy, wealthy tomato taste with out the additional liquid usually 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 organize 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 if you reduce 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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