Nippon Ham Chilled Bakery Meat Pie

Since I started working part-time, my eating schedule has been forcibly changed two days a week. Usually, I have the luxury of eating dinner at 7:00 or 8:00 pm, but on the two days on which I work, I get home at 10:30 or so after eating lunch around 5:00. I don't want to eat a lot late at night, so I've been pursuing some different options. As a result, my readers will be "enjoying" some different food reviews than before. In fact, chances are that there will be more convenience foods which resemble "real food". Honestly, this is all the better for the continued life of this blog as I really am starting to see fewer and fewer attractive options in the snack aisles. That's not to say there aren't things I haven't sampled, but that variations on a theme get pretty boring after awhile.

This is more pie than "meat", but that's okay with me. I'm not a great fan of meat anyway and chose this for a light meal prospect. The pie is flaky and slightly buttery. It has a light crispiness which is very pleasing and a tender interior. The meat filling is more of a "paste" which has a touch of tomato paste flavor, but nothing really too strong. It reminds me of the sloppy joe mix we used to get in elementary school.

This is actually pretty good as long as you have exceptionally low expectations of the meat filling and reasonable hopes for a nice flaky pie. I enjoyed this quite a lot, much as I enjoyed its companion piece, the cheese pie. I'd pick up either as a filling snack or breakfast if the spirit moved me. Both have better than average bakery qualities for something you pick up in the refrigerator case at Seiyu. At 298 yen ($3.72) for 4 pies, they're cheaper than the local bakery's offerings as well. I kept this around in the fridge for about a week with no degradation in quality, which was a bonus. If you get home late, like a more filling snack, or just want a little breakfast variety, I'd recommend giving this a try.