Yakisoba-pan, Japan’s Spaghetti Sandwich

One of our recurring bugbears here at the Tribunal is the dreaded carb-on-carb sandwich. The Chip Butty, Guajolota, Toast sandwich, Spaghetti sandwich… Seems like a lot of people around the world like sticking something starchy in between a couple pieces of bread and trying to choke it down. Rather than put something tasty in there, or a variety of things with different flavors and textures, they just stick a big wad of masa, or noodles, or god forbid more bread in the middle.

These sandwiches are not, in short, among our favorite things.

Yakisoba-pan is one of Japan’s entries in this category. Yakisoba is a dish made with Chinese-style noodles and vegetables (and, optionally, pork belly or another meat) in a sauce reminiscent of Worcestershire. I only know of two places in the Chicago area that sell them, and they’re both within a block of each other.

On the top is the Yakisoba-pan from Pastry House Hippo, the bakery embedded in the Japanese grocery Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights. On the bottom is the Yakisoba-pan from Bakery Crescent, just a few doors down Algonquin Road from Mitsuwa. Both are in house-baked buns (which neither of these bakeries actually sell outside of these pre-made sandwiches). Both feature Yakisoba with carrots and cabbage, and are garnished with red pickled ginger, or Beni Shoga, a common garnish for Japanese drinking snacks.

The Pastry House Hippo version tastes like… noodles and bread. The bread is a longer narrower bun, and seems slightly less fresh than its counterpart from Bakery Crescent. The Bakery Crescent noodles, on the other hand, have a substantial coating of the Yakisoba sauce, probably a bit too much of the Beni Shoga, and a generous shaking of aonori, a salty dried seaweed seasoning. It’s a little excessive, but at least it tastes like something other than starch.

Since those are the only two local Yakisoba-pans I could find, that was all I was going to try this month. Unless, of course, I made my own, and Mitsuwa Marketplace was the right place to get the ingredients I needed.

These Yakisoba noodles came frozen, fully cooked, in a bag containing three smaller bags of individual servings. They are meant to be thawed before use, and once they’re at room temperature, they can be run under warm water to easily separate them and make them pliable and ready for stir-frying.

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I asked my friend Sean, who is married to a Japanese woman and as such often eats Japanese food, whether the sauce for Yakisoba is really made from Tonkatsu sauce and Worcestershire, as a recipe I’d read claimed. He thought it sounded reasonable but checked with his wife and got back to me. He said when he asked if they used Tonkatsu sauce and Worcestershire to make Yakisoba she made a face at him. He asked her what she does use and she answered, “Yakisoba sauce.” So that is apparently a thing. It was also available at Mitsuwa, in a 16.9oz bottle wrapped in plastic, very similar to the Kewpie mayonnaise I also bought. Of course I also brought home some of the red pickled ginger that is used to garnish Yakisoba.

To make Yakisoba, I cut up some onion, napa cabbage, and Chinese chives; julienned some carrots; sliced some shiitake mushrooms. I stir fried the onions and carrots for a few minutes in a very hot wok before adding the cabbage, then the chives and mushrooms. Finally, I added the whole package of noodles, softened and loosened under warm running water, and dressed with plenty of the Yakisoba sauce.

I stuffed the noodles into a split-top brioche hot dog bun from Aldi spread with Kewpie mayo, and topped them with a big old wad of the pickled ginger. This sandwich was, as you might imagine, not very good. The noodles were not saucy enough and the ginger was too powerful. It was also missing the nori. I didn’t have any nori at home but I did have some Furikake, a Japanese rice seasoning consisting of nori and sesame seeds. I tried that, along with slightly less of the ginger and slightly more of the sauce.

This was better, but it still wasn’t right. I picked up some sheets of nori at a local store and chopped it up to simulate the aonori. I made the noodles nice and saucy, and cut down on the ginger just a bit more.

This was about as good as I was going to be able to make this sandwich. It’s just not something I’m ever going to like very much. Someone did tip me off to another use for Yakisoba noodles though. Seems that there’s a dish called Omusoba which is an omelet that’s stuffed with Yakisoba noodles. So I broke a couple of eggs.

I rolled the omelet around the noodles, along with a little of the pickled ginger, and topped it with Tonkatsu sauce, Kewpie mayo, and some more of the nori.

This was… not terrible! Having a protein wrapped around the noodles rather than another starch made it feel more like real food, and as a breakfast it kept me quite sated until well past noon.

So as a sandwich, I cannot recommend Yakisoba-pan, though I know there are plenty of people out there who think it’s great. I can’t even honestly recommend it as a noodle dish, as I find the combination of noodles with a Worcestershire-like sauce to be novel but slightly off, not something I’m going to return to again and again. But for whatever reason, add eggs to it and I’m game.

Taste is a tricky thing. If you’re into Yakisoba-pan, good for you. It wasn’t for me but tons of people all over the place love it. I’m glad to have tried it, but ready to move on to the next.