Lunch Pack falls flat in the noodles-and-bread department, but there is a silver lining.

Yamazaki Baking’s popular Lunch Pack series of sandwich pockets has become famous around the world for its unusual fillings, but now there’s a new limited-edition variety that takes things one step further.

▼ Iekei Tonkotsu Shoyu Ramen Style.

Iekei (literally “house/family style”) is a type of ramen that features tonkotsu shoyu (pork bone and soy sauce broth) with thick, straight noodles, and it was first invented in Yokohama in 1974, by a ramen shop called Yoshimuraya.

This new sandwich has been created under the supervision of Yoshimuraya, and it’s the fourth of its kind, following previous releases in 2016, 2019, and 2021. Scheduled to be sold in the Kanto region (in and around Tokyo), Nagano Prefecture, and parts of Shizuoka Prefecture from 1 May through to the end of June, we were keen to find out how this new release would taste, so we picked one up at our local supermarket for a taste test.

Upon opening the pack, we pulled out what looked to be a plain, white bread sandwich.

After slicing it in half, though, the truth was revealed, as its saucy centre gave us a peek at the contents. To our surprise, there really were noodles here, and they were thick, in the style of Iekei.

▼ Seeing noodles inside white bread like this makes for a very unusual sight.

The thick sauce raised our expectations for a mouthful of rich pork bone and soy sauce broth in the style of Iekei ramen, but when we took a bite…

▼…we were sorely disappointed.

To put it bluntly, it just didn’t taste like Iekei ramen. While it was indeed soy sauce-based, it had more of a sweet, teriyaki-like flavour, and it was such a departure from what we were expecting that we didn’t even get the feeling that this was ramen at all. After taking another bite, we felt it lacked the flavour of chicken oil (chiyu), which is one of the characteristics of Iekei ramen.

▼ Checking the ingredients, though, we could see that chicken oil (“鶏油”) was listed as an ingredient, but it was indiscernible on the palate.

For those who aren’t familiar with the taste of Iekei ramen, this sandwich will be a novel experience, thanks to the unusual filling, but for diehard Iekei lovers, it’s a sad disappointment.

▼ The flavour of the Iekei you’d hoped for will feel blurred and distant when you eat this sandwich.

▼ Taking a look inside the sandwich reveals the short-cut noodles are paired with chopped pieces of char siu pork.

But they just don’t have the hearty richness of the large pieces you get in a bowl of Iekei, pushing the flavour further into the distant recesses of the mind.

To be clear, this is not a bad sandwich – it’s just more like a mysterious savory bread that longs to be like Iekei ramen. After thinking about it, though, we came to the realisation that the way it hints at Iekei without actually getting there is a clever selling point, because after eating the lunch pack we found ourselves yearning for a bowl of Iekei ramen.

This craving was so strong that we recommend checking your surroundings to see if there are any Iekei ramen shops nearby before trying this sandwich. That way, if the lunch pack falls short of your expectations, you’ll be able to fill the gap with a real bowl of noodles, and if you’re near this ramen joint you can try a different bread-and-noodles experience with a baguette and grilled cheese topping.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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