Naporitan

Naporitan spaghetti

Naporitan or Napolitan (Japanese: ナポリタン) is a pasta dish, which is popular in Japan. The dish consists of spaghetti, tomato ketchup or a tomato-based sauce, onion, button mushrooms, green peppers, sausage, bacon and Tabasco sauce. Naporitan is claimed to be from Yokohama. An instant Naporitan is also available in Japan today.

Origin

It was created by Shigetada Irie (入江茂忠), the general chef of the New Grand Hotel (Hotel New Grand) in Yokohama, when he was inspired by one of the military rations of GHQ, which was spaghetti mixed with tomato ketchup.

Naporitan is not to be confused with Neapolitan sauce, or Neapolitan ragù, which are from Naples and often called "Napolitan" outside Japan.

Name

The chef named the dish after Naples, Italy (hence "Napoli"). Phonetically, the Japanese language writes "R" for both R and L sounds and the spellings in the Roman alphabet for Japanese sound can vary. The spelling Naporitan is derived from the usual romanization of Japanese, while the spelling Napolitan takes the origin of the name into account.

See also

• Neapolitan ragù

References

• "ナポリタン！ Naporitan, I'm crazy in Naporitan spaghetti!", Fuso-sha – November 2004, ISBN 978-4-594-04832-7 (Japanese)