Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Ebi Mayo Piza
Ebi mayo pizza — shrimp in mayonnaise sauce
Pizza 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.
- Origin: Tokyo Toshima
- Pizza
Lineage
What it's made of
Plump shrimp are draped generously in mayonnaise sauce. It's a combination that reads almost like Chinese-style shrimp mayo laid onto a pizza, with mayonnaise's richness said to bring out the shrimp's sweetness. Some shops use a mayonnaise-based sauce in place of tomato sauce, giving the whole pizza a pale look rather than the usual red.
How it's made
The usual method is to arrange shrimp on the dough, coat them in mayonnaise sauce, and bake. Because shrimp shrinks and toughens if overcooked, many shops use larger pieces or pre-treat them before topping, it's said. Some finish it with parsley or black pepper for color and aroma, and some go light on the cheese to let the shrimp's flavor lead.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that a domestically capitalized delivery-pizza chain founded in 1987 developed this alongside teriyaki chicken and curry as toppings it says it created before any chain elsewhere in the world. Shrimp and mayonnaise, a pairing already familiar from Chinese-style cooking, is essentially carried over onto a different plate here, and it's said to have stood among the chain's flagship toppings ever since.
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
- Koon Mayo PizaPizza 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.
- 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.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tokyo
- Abura SobaNo broth is poured at all — noodles are tossed in a soy-and-sesame-oil tare pooled at the bottom of the bowl, said to have started at shops in the Musashino area in the late 1950s, with vinegar and chili oil stirred in partway through.
- Ajitsuke NoriSheet nori brushed with a soy-and-sugar seasoning and toasted crisp, said to have been devised as a gift for an imperial visit to Kyoto in the Meiji era. Its snap gives way to a burst of flavor and aroma.
- Anago ZushiConger eel, simmered sweet and savory, is laid over sushi rice and brushed with a reduced glaze called tsume — a staple Edomae topping from a fish that thrived in Tokyo Bay's nutrient-rich waters, its slick skin demanding a sushi chef's careful hand to clean.
- AnmitsuCubes of agar jelly topped with red peas, sweet bean paste, and dark syrup. Said to have begun when a Ginza sweets shop in the early Showa era added its own bean paste to the simpler "mitsumame" — jelly and peas in syrup — marking a point where wagashi met café culture.
- Asakusa shichimiA seven-spice chili blend from a shop tracing back to 1625 in Asakusa's old Yagenbori district, often described as the origin point of shichimi togarashi. The neighborhood's history as a hub for medicinal-herb wholesalers is credited with shaping a blend informed by traditional Chinese medicine, and the shop is known for custom-mixing blends to order.
- Bettara-zukeDaikon salted first, then pickled sweet in rice malt and sugar — said to descend from a lightly pickled daikon once sold at Edo's ebisu-kō market. The rice malt gives it a natural sweetness, and it still headlines Nihonbashi's autumn "Bettara Market."