Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Teriyaki Chikin Piza
Teriyaki chicken pizza — teriyaki chicken, mayonnaise, corn, and nori
Pizza topped with teriyaki-glazed chicken, mayonnaise, corn, and nori. Said to trace to a domestically capitalized delivery-pizza chain founded in 1987, which describes it as a topping it developed before anyone else in the world.
- Origin: Tokyo Toshima
- Pizza
Lineage
What it's made of
Chicken coated in a sweet-savory teriyaki sauce sits under mayonnaise piped in lines, scattered with corn and shredded nori. The tomato sauce's acidity, the teriyaki's sweet-savory pull, and the mayonnaise's richness layer together on one pizza — a combination said to be found almost nowhere else in the world, and one that has remained a long-standing best-seller on delivery menus.
How it's made
The usual method is to spread a thin layer of tomato sauce on the dough, top it with chicken seasoned in a sweet-savory soy sauce and corn, bake it, then pipe mayonnaise in lines over the top and scatter shredded nori once it's out of the oven. Adding the mayonnaise after baking rather than before is said to preserve its tang and texture, and many shops marinate the chicken in teriyaki sauce before cooking it.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that a domestically capitalized delivery-pizza chain that opened in 1987 is said to be behind this topping, developed, by its own account, before any chain elsewhere in the world tried it. With no foreign template to draw on for the ingredients, it's said the chain landed on the sweet-savory flavor and mayonnaise combination Japanese diners favor, and it has stayed a mainstay of the menu 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.
- 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.
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."