That’s not even a photo of the completed sandwich.

In Japan, restaurants often boas about their “one-coin” lunch specials, referring to meals that cost 500 yen (US$4.50) or less, 500 yen being the largest denomination of coins. On occasion, though, we like to splurge and treat ourselves to a paper-money lunch using the largest member of Japan’s currency clan: the 10,000-yen (US$90) bill.

That doesn’t mean we order anything fancy. On the contrary, we keep to the same low-priced fare we usually eat, but just ask for a ton of it. In the past, we’ve gorged ourselves on 10,000 yen worth of hamburger picklles, pork cutlet curry, and tempura shrimp, but this time our quest for gluttonous glory took us to Subway.

With its extensive lineup of veggies and general lack of fried goods, Subway might not seem like the preferred destination of big eaters, but the chain allows you to customize your sandwich with your choice of toppings. On a previous Subway run we loaded up with roast beef, one of the chain’s more expensive options, so this time we decided to throw our money at the opposite end of the spectrum and see how massive an egg sandwich we could get for 10,000 yen.

We started by ordering a 390-yen egg sandwich, which is made with two scoops of creamy eggs. Additional scoops cost 60 yen each, which meant that our 10,000-yen war chest was going to be enough for 160 more scoops, after which we’d be getting 10 yen in change back.

Subway may pride itself on speedy service, but 162 scoops is a major undertaking. As the process get underway, we whipped out our camera to document the construction.

To reiterate, we simply ordered a regular egg sandwich and asked Subway to pile on 160 extra scoops of eggs. Since all that was going to have to be contained by the two slices of bread of a standard sandwich, before long it reached a towering height, even with it being served open-faced.

▼ At 50 scoops, the sandwich no longer has anything close to the proportions of a subway car.

Subway famously calls its employees “sandwich artists,” and on this day they truly earned that title, as they had to continually resculpt and rebalance the eggs to keep the pile from falling over.

But even the greatest artisans have their limits, and after 80 additional scoops, it was simply impossible to add any more.

Between the 80 extras and the basic egg sandwich’s original two, that’s 82 scoops of eggs, far more than the four scoops which the employees told us was their branch’s previous record.

Majestic as it may be, the 82-scoop sandwich falls quite a bit short of our original goal of 162 scoops. On the plus side, this means that it cost us only 5,190 yen (US$47), meaning that our original budget would almost be enough to buy two of these monstrosities.

Oh, and while we’re talking numbers, the 82-scoop sandwich was more than big enough to easily feed nine people.

So sadly, while we didn’t get to eat a 10,000-yen sandwich after all, we can take pride in knowing that we ate the largest Subway egg sandwich that’s capable of physically existing.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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