Cheese, crunchy and retro: Japanese iconic pizza toast

With toasted thick slices Shockupan– Japanese milk bread – Sweet, bitter tomato sauce and high pizza fastening, pizza toasted crispy, cheese, delicious and fantastic reassuring. It is a food that ticks all the boxes and as a child's feverish dreams, unlimited and on top of all right ways. The dressings are usually made of thinly sliced ​​sweet onions, mushrooms, green ringing peppers and occasional cherry tomatoes, with tiny bites, marinated meat, which was glued under a golden brown mozzarella cheese. Like Hambagu and OmuraThe pizza toast is a Yoshoku (West Japanese) dish that has been deeply embedded in Japanese culture.

This dish is a key menu item of Retro Japanese cafes called Kissten, which is said to be died by the Meiji era (1868-1912) and became popular after World War II. Like American dining rooms, Kissaten has rolodexes of famous foods, including neon -green melon -flavored soda. vanilla ice creamTo spaceAnd of course the pizza is toast. Kissten nostalgic places for many Japanese dining rooms, and served foods often provide comfort and satisfy the desire for past times.

Café Benisica has been serving pizza in the heart of Tokyo Yurakucho's neighborhood along the bustling Yamanote railway line, making it the first known place in Japan. At that time, the pizza was expensive and considered it a luxury item, which is only available to the rich. As they were looking for a more affordable alternative, the café owners used Shokupan instead of traditional pasta. Fluffy bread decorated with cheese and various dressings reminded me of many pizza, but it was available at a fraction of the cost. The dining rooms came to Benisica Café for their pizza toast, and over time, the food became the most sought after element of the café. Shortly before pizza toast is spread to cafes and home kitchens throughout Japan.

To try to try the original pizza toast for myself, I recently visited Café Benisica. I arrived for people to chat with the swirling, soft-capital ice cream that drips with chocolate syrup and siphon cooked coffee sips, but there is no pizza toast. Although the words “pizza toast” were glued to the menu, there was a small “consumed” sticker next to it. I asked the staff when it would be available again and I thought I could return another day. But they said they hadn't sold it for months because the cheese manufacturer Mozzarella had not met the quality of quality, so they waited for it to improve. In other words, the idea that selling the lower pizza toast – especially in the birthplace of the food – was inconceivable. Fortunately, many other KissaTen pizza toast is available in Japan to fill the emptiness while I patiently wait for the original to come back.

Although many Japanese pizza toasts are made in the ketchup-Based sauce -This is common for other KissaTen dishes, including spaghetti napolitan -a few places make Marinara sauce with tomato instead of ketchup. Ketchup is probably popular because it provides sweet, rich tomato aroma without extra fluid, which is usually found in canned and fresh tomatoes and resulting in concentrated sauce. When paired with dried oregano, basil and garlic, its taste is reminiscent of the Italian-American pizza sauce.

The pizza toast is also very different from the café to the cafe: some places use ultra -thick Shokupan slices to make a luxurious piece of pizza toast, while others make knives and wolf salad sandwiches, using a single piece of pizza toast, so when you cut a piece of egg. In Japan, the most common dressings are onions, green ring peppers, mushrooms and smoked meat. But do not let this prevent you from dreaming of flavor combinations – the only limit is pizza toast imagination.

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