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Tokyo’s craziest pasta: Our custom-made spaghetti with all the toppings we can get for 10,000 yen

Casey Baseel Feb 13, 2018
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We looked at this Shibuya restaurant’s 2.3-kilogram (5.1-pound) spaghetti serving and said, “Naw, that’s not enough.”

One of Japan’s favorite comfort foods is what the country calls Napolitan spaghetti, a hearty, strong-flavored tomato sauce pasta that began skyrocketing in popularity during the 1950s and ‘60s and has now become a go-to meal for hungry noodle lovers. In particular, SoraNews24’s Japanese-language correspondent P.K. Sanjun recommends the fare at Napolitan specialist Spaghetti no Bancho, a 10-restaurant pasta chain based in Tokyo.

Back in his bachelor days, P.K. used to live right by a Spaghetti no Bancho branch, and he figures he ate there at least once a week. The guy just can’t get enough of the chain’s Napolitan, which is how he ended up outside its Shibuya Minami branch with a 10,000-yen (US$91) bill in his hands.

Like a lot of casual restaurants in Japan, Spaghetti no Bancho offers optional extra-large portions. The standard extra-large Napolitan weighs in at 600 grams (21.2 ounces), but for truly big eaters there’s the 2.3-kilogram (5.1-pound) Napolitan Seijin.

▼ Napolitan Seijin (left) and regular-size Napolitan (right)

If you’re looking for something even more substantial, Spaghetti no Bancho offers various optional toppings, and the complete set of a hamburger patty, bacon, fried egg, cheese, and potato salad costs 550 yen. But between that and the 1,650 yen of the Napolitan Seijin, P.K.’s bill was only up to 2,200 yen, and if there’s one thing P.K. hates, it’s getting change back when paying for his lunch with a 10,000-yen bill, so he decided to go all-in by asking for not one, but 15 complete sets of toppings to be piled onto his pasta, bringing the total bill up to 9,900 yen.

Needless to say, a jumbo-sized request like that requires a lot of manpower on Spaghetti no Bancho’s part, so we don’t recommend just rolling into the restaurant and casually asking for 15 sets of toppings. We called ahead, though, and the staff told us they’d be happy to accommodate us. First, they transferred an already huge Napolitan Seijin order onto a gigantic platter.

Next, they sprinkled it with cheese, which they melted with blowtorches.

Then came the hamburger patties, 15 in total…

…an equal number of fried eggs…

…and, finally, 15 scoops of potato salad.

▼ Our monstrous super-duper-sized Napolitan, next to its regular-size brethren.

P.K. realized that this might actually be too much Napolitan even for him to polish off on his own, so he enlisted the help of our boss, Yoshio, who’d never eaten at Spaghetti no Bancho before.

“Wow, this is really tasty!” said Yoshio as he took his first bite of the chain’s pasta. That was about it for conversation, as the two focused on the enjoyable yet daunting task of trying to devour what felt like an island of spaghetti.

Spurred on by their professional pride, the two continued eating for 30 minutes straight, but eventually found themselves unable to eat another bite. Looking up for the first time in half an hour, they turned their eyes to the platter and were shocked to find…

…that a huge portion of the monster Napolitan was still uneaten. Honestly, their bursting stomachs began to feel surreal, as their brains struggled to process how there could be so much left over if they really had indeed eaten enough to feel so full.

And so P.K. and Yoshio brought their leftovers back to SoraNews24 headquarters, where they turned out to be enough remaining Napolitan to feed nine people.

Because when you work in an office where gargantuan Subway sandwiches are part of the staff diet, you never want to let a heaping helping of delicious carbs go to waste.