Thick-Slice Trend (厚切りサンド)

At a Japanese bakery counter the loaf is ordered by number: yon-mai for four slices to the loaf, go-mai for five, roku-mai for six. A thick-cut sando (厚切りサンド) is built from the four and five end of that scale, slabs of roughly 2.4 to 3 cm, about twice the height of the six- to twelve-slice cuts that sandwich guides usually recommend. Shokupan is baked in a lidded tin, so the crumb is fine, tight and tall, and a slab of it takes a thumb's pressure and springs back. Everything else about the sandwich follows from that height: the filling has to be generous enough to be met at the first bite, and the cut has to be clean enough that the two slabs sit square on each other.

The most documented thick slab in Tokyo belongs to Pelican Café in Asakusa, which opened in the summer of 2017 as the cafe of the old Pelican bakery nearby. Its charcoal toast is a single thick slice grilled over live coals until the surface takes a net of dark lines, then brought out with butter and apricot jam. The room smells of char and warm milk, and the cut edge crackles while the middle stays pale and damp. The fruit sandwich uses the same bread untoasted, filled with cream and a run of pineapple, melon, banana, strawberry and dragon fruit, so the cut face is a cross section of colors held between two white walls.

A cutlet gives the slab something to push against. The beef katsu sando at Centre The Bakery in Ginza comes between thick slices of a square loaf made from domestic flours, and the crust of the cutlet shatters against bread that gives way slowly, with the sweet-sour sauce soaking only the inner faces. The thick slab keeps the cutlet upright and the sauce from reaching the outer crust. Egg is the harder filling. A warm omelette block keeps a square shape between the slabs, and a loose egg mash needs a heavy hand or it vanishes into the crumb on the first bite.

Age.3 puts the slab in a fryer. The shop began in Fukuoka and opened in Ginza in December 2023, where it deep-fries thick shokupan to order and fills it with whipped cream on the spot. The crust goes golden and brittle, almost like a doughnut shell, and the cream inside is cold enough that the first bite is hot on the outside and cool in the middle. Flavors run from plain cream through crème brûlée and matcha to savory egg salad and keema curry, and every one of them depends on the walls being thick enough to survive the oil.

Eaten in the hand, a thick sando asks for two palms. The cut face sheds a faint dust of crumb, the crust edge is thin and slightly crisp, and the first bite takes in more bread than filling, soft and a little sweet from the milk, with the savory or fruity part arriving behind it like the center of a layered cake. Shops that sell nothing but the loaf have made this cut familiar. Ginza Nishikawa opened in Tokyo in 2018 with shokupan alone on the counter and opened its first overseas shop in Los Angeles in 2022.

Counting slices, then counting shops

No record names a cook or shop that first put filling between slices cut four to a loaf. What is documented is the unit: bread in Japan is sold by the count of slices per loaf, so a customer who asks for yon-mai is already asking for the thick cut. Shokupan is commonly eaten in thick slices, toasted and topped, and the sandwich takes the same cut with a filling between.

The Pelican bakery in Asakusa dates to 1942 and built its trade on shokupan and rolls. The cafe opened seventy-five years later under the same name, and its menu is written around that bakery's bread.

Pelican Café opened in the summer of 2017 with the charcoal toast and the fruit sandwich as its signatures. In November 2023 the bakery opened a second cafe in Azabudai Hills, where a ham katsu sandwich of thick-cut ham and cabbage joined the charcoal toast on the morning menu.