Japan’s Pizza Hut Lunch Pack sandwiches are here!【Taste test】

Japan’s pocket pouch sandwiches shined on the Olympic stage, and now they’re teaming up with Pizza Hut Japan.

The Olympics are always an opportunity for cross-cultural discovery, and among of the surprise stars of Tokyo 2021 Games were Japanese sandwiches. Specifically, it was Japan’s enclosed pocket-pouch sandwiches that deliciously delighted visiting international press crews, and while the Olympics may be over, Yamazaki Baking Company is still striving to create new flavors for its Lunch Pack sandwich series.

Their latest innovation? Pizza Hut sandwiches.

To clarify, these aren’t sandwiches you buy at Pizza Hut branches in Japan. Like other Lunch Pack varieties, you can get them in Japanese supermarkets and convenience stores. What they are, though, is an attempt to give you the flavor of a Pizza Hut pizza, but in sandwich form.

Two different Pizza Hut Lunch Packs are on offer. One is Quattro Formaggi (four-cheese pizza), but with the idea of a pizza sandwich already being a hybrid of sorts, I decided to keep the crossovers going and picked up a Pizza Hut Teriyaki Mayo Chicken Lunch Pack for a combination of eastern and western flavors.

Both flavors are priced at 181 yen (US$1.65) and come with two sandwich pouches to a pack.

As you can see, Lunch Packs have no crust (unless you’re very lucky), and their bread is soft, fluffy, and airy. To get a cross-view sneak-peak, I sliced one I half with a knife.

Part of the appeal of Lunch Packs is their convenience, though, and they’re meant to be eaten as finger food, so I grabbed the second sandwich from the pack and bit into it uncut…

…and got a whole bunch of mayo. Well, actually, it’s not just mayonnaise. This is actually a cheese mayo sauce, and combined it and the teriyaki sauce boast a surprisingly large number of seasonings, including onion, garlic, ginger, and even apple puree.

That might sound like it should be a heavy-handed mess on your taste buds, but the seasonings are impressively balanced and subtle. The taste is complex and interesting, but the individual ingredients’ identities are a lot clearer in hindsight, looking at their list on the back of the package after taking a few bites.

As you get closer to the center of the sandwich, where the teriyaki chicken is, all of the flavors combine, and the cheese sensation really does feel pretty close to the flavor of cheese on a pizza.

You’ve probably noticed that there’s been no mention of tomatoes or tomato sauce, since Pizza Hut Japan’s teriyaki mayo pizza doesn’t use them either. If you’re not used to pizzas without tomato sauce, the Pizza Hut Lunch Pack might remind you a bit of a quesadilla in the flavor department, which isn’t a bad thing either.

If there is something to complain about, it’s that you don’t get a ton of fillings inside the sandwich, but at less than a buck each, it’s hard to get too worked up about it, especially since the bread itself is as tasty as you’d expect from a company that’s been in the baking game as long as Yamazaki has.

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