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We don’t know if Japan’s Pizza-Tara is really pizza, but it’s really good

Master Blaster Oct 11, 2019
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Look for Pizza-Tara hanging by a hook in a Japanese discount chain store near you!

On his way to work, our star reporter Mr. Sato decided to stop into Don Quijote for some pomade. Don Quijote is a Japanese chain of discount stores offering a wide variety of cheap and occasionally bizarre products – and Mr. Sato just happened to visit on one of those occasional days.

As he stood in line with his jar of hair grease, he spotted something odd hanging on a rack near the checkout. It appeared to be…pizza?!

Our writer was taken aback by this odd way of storing pizza. There’s no way that actual pizza could endure to the full forces of gravity and ambient temperature in such a way. On the other hand, it looked exactly like a regular slice of pizza.

As his turn in line suddenly came up, he quickly yanked a slice off the rack and bought it for 398 yen (US$3.70) so that he could analyze it back at the office.

▼ Listed components: “Fish meat sheet, salami, velvety cheese”

It turned out that this product was called Pizza-Tara which is a play on the popular Japanese snack Chee-Tara. Chee-Tara is a stick of processed whitefish (surimi) coated with cheese, and this is essentially what Pizza-Tara is too.

However, rather than a stick, Pizza-Tara is a “sheet of fish meat” shaped like a square slice of pizza and has slices of salami on top to add to the overall pizza effect.

It’s an effect that worked amazingly well. Even though Mr. Sato knew fully well what this was, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to eat some pizza.

Even as he waited thirty seconds for the slices to heat in the microwave and slathered some pomade on his hair, Mr. Sato scoffed to himself, “Pfft, this isn’t pizza…I think.”

When the Pizza-Tara was ready, our reporter pulled it out. The cheese was nice and gooey and the salami slices even had little pools of oil in the center just like a real slice of pizza.

“It’s not pizza,” rationalized Mr. Sato, “buuuuut it looks just like pizza…so it must taste just like pizza too. Let’s do this!”

With that Mr. Sato took a hearty bit of the Pizza-Tara…

Only to immediately realize that this was not pizza at all. The squishy, gelatinous texture of processed fish meat came through loud and clear for Mr. Sato.

▼ “Th-This is!!!”

It was a disturbing realization at first, but once he got used to it, Mr. Sato really enjoyed the Pizza-Tara for what it was: the savory yet light taste of a Chee-Tara with a pizza twist from the flavorful salami slices and extra gooey cheese.

It made Mr. Sato think about the true nature of pizza altogether. Sure it’s not what he would normally consider to be the world-famous Italian dish, but maybe it could be accepted as such in the future.

After all, today’s common sense is not necessarily tomorrow’s common sense, and in this kooky world we live, anything’s possible.

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