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Mega Yakisoba Pan takes Japanese convenience store food to crazy new places

Oona McGee Oct 28, 2023
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Convenience store chain’s extreme yakisoba bread is even frightening the locals.

If you’ve ever browsed the bread aisles at a Japanese convenience store, your eyes might’ve widened at the sight of something that looks like it doesn’t belong there — a hot dog roll filled with noodles.

That’s what the locals call Yakisoba Pan, with “yakisoba” meaning “fried noodles” and “pan” being the Japanese word for “bread“. Locals have grown up eating this noodle sandwich from a young age so they don’t tend to bat an eyelid at the carb-on-carb extravaganza anymore, but over at Lawson it’s recently become a hot topic, because the chain has taken things to the extreme by serving up…

▼ …Mega Yakisoba Bread.

Our reporter Mr Sato had heard the buzz about the bread online, with people saying they were frightened by the amount of noodles it contained. Having tried various yakisoba pan over the years, Mr Sato figured this big eat would be a walk in the park for him, but when he stopped by his local Lawson to look for it, he couldn’t find it.

▼ A pack of noodles on the top shelf, and a bunch of bread below…but where was the yakisoba bread?

▼ Hang on a sec… could that pack of noodles really be…yakisoba pan?!?

At first, all he could see through the plastic packaging was a mound of fried noodles, and it was even packed in a plastic tub that kind of resembled a bento meal. However, looking closer, he discovered that this really was the Mega Yakisoba Pan, and the amount of noodles it contained was truly insane.

▼ From this angle, you can’t even see the bread!

As stated on the package, the total weight of this product is over 200 percent more than Lawson’s regular Yakisoba Pan, or “Bread with Fried Noodles” to use its official product name in English.

Interestingly, this Mega Bread with Fried Noodles costs 354 yen (US$2.36), which is more than twice the price of the regular, which costs 171 yen. That means there’s no real saving to be made by customers for going big — it’s not like you get twice the amount for the price of one — but the extra expenditure will be worth it, just for the experience of the visuals alone.

▼ The plastic container is filled to the brim with fried noodles, with the bread almost completely concealed below.

By some feat of magic, Mr Sato managed to take the Yakisoba Pan out of the container without spilling all the noodles, and when he popped it on a plate, he could see that the word “overflowing” didn’t do justice to the state of the noodles here.

Puzzled over how it was created, Mr. Sato marvelled at the way the fried noodles seemed to have been simply poured over the bread, while managing to be stuffed into the crack at the same time.

He was tempted to pick it up with both hands like he usually would with a yakisoba bread, but even he isn’t that much of a magician, so he decided to eat it with some chopsticks.

This eating technique helped to keep his hands clean for the first part of the meal, and he was pleased to say that the noodles were delicious, with the rich and sticky sauce delivering bagfuls of sweet and salty flavours. The faint aroma of spices stimulated his appetite to the point where he thought he might not even need the bread, but seeing as he’s our unofficial King of Big Eats, he couldn’t leave the job unfinished.

Taking a bite of the bread and filling together, Mr Sato found that the noodles were clearly the star of the show here, with the flavour of the bread playing second fiddle, somewhat buried, as it was in the package, under the noodles.

The yakisoba was so good that Mr Sato didn’t mind it dominating the palate, and despite its hefty size, he found the quantity to be perfect. While a regular yakisoba bread does well as a snack, the Mega Yakisoba Bread makes for a great lunch, so he’ll definitely be seeking it out again…when he isn’t out trying all the secret staff cafeterias in Tokyo.

Photos © SoraNews24
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