Kinomoto Tsuruya Bakery

Tsuruya Bakeshop is a must-stop for visitors to Kinomoto, a town that was as soon as an important resting point on the tracks from Kyoto to Kanazawa during the Edo duration. Kinomoto is additionally home to the fourth-oldest benefit brewery in Japan, family run and currently run by its 14th generation sake master.

Given that the 1960s, Tsuruya Pastry shop has been making sarada pan, or “salad bread” in the town of Kinomoto in Japan’s Shiga prefecture. Salad bread, the bakeshop’s flagship thing, contains a long, soft white bun that is split and smeared with kewpie mayo and marinaded radish, and cost ¥ 180. The bakery asserts to offer 500 sandwiches daily, primarily to residents yet additionally to visitors, lots of taking a trip to Kinomoto specifically for this unique treat.

Salad bread was invented after World War II as an initiative to boost the caloric value of lunches for college youngsters. The initial model of salad bread contained mayonnaise, cabbage, and bread, but the cabbage wound up making the bread soggy, therefore unattractive to the critical tastes of regional children. In order to provide the sandwich a far better shelf life, the bakery swapped out the fresh cabbage for pickled radish.

While salad bread is probably Kinomoto’s best-known food product, it is not the Tsuruya Bakery’s best-seller. That difference goes to its sandouitchi or “sandwich”: two pieces of fresh-baked chopped round white bread with a single piece of fish-based “ham” and smear of kewpie mayonnaise. Like many other legendary mononyms, it is recognized for being simple yet obvious, and a group favorite.