Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Koon Mayo Piza
Corn mayo pizza — corn and mayonnaise
Pizza topped with corn and mayonnaise. Said to show how even globally ordinary ingredients get translated into something distinct once paired with Japan's fondness for mayonnaise.
- Pizza
Lineage
What it's made of
Yellow corn kernels scatter over the cheese, tangled with lines of white mayonnaise. Corn's sweetness meets mayonnaise's tang and richness, and the pair is often joined by potato or tuna. It's a combination almost never chosen in the United States, but one that's said to have become a standard in Japan, popular with families and children alike.
How it's made
The usual method is to spread tomato sauce on the dough, top it with boiled corn and mayonnaise, and bake it. Some shops add the mayonnaise before baking so it browns, others pipe it on in lines after baking, it's said. Many shops load it further with potato, tuna, or onion, valuing the bright color it brings to the plate.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that in Japan, a food culture fond of mayonnaise, even globally ordinary ingredients like corn and potato are said to have been translated into a distinct pizza once paired with mayonnaise. Its spread through family-restaurant menus is also said to have helped it take hold, settling in as a favorite with children as well as adults.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- Ebi Mayo PizaPizza topped with shrimp coated in mayonnaise sauce. Said to trace to the same domestically capitalized delivery-pizza chain founded in 1987, which describes it as a topping it developed before anyone else in the world, alongside teriyaki chicken.
- PizaPizza with its tomato-and-cheese base intact but reworked with Japan-only toppings built around sweet-savory flavors and mayonnaise. Said to have spread mainly through delivery-pizza chains from the 1970s on.