Naporitan or Napolitan (Japanese: ナポリタン) is a popular Japanese itameshi pasta dish. The dish consists of soft-cooked spaghetti, tomato ketchup, onion, button mushrooms, green peppers, sausage, bacon and optionally Tabasco sauce. Naporitan is claimed to be from Yokohama.[1]

Naporitan
Naporitan spaghetti
Place of originJapan
Main ingredientsspaghetti, ketchup
Ingredients generally usedbell pepper, mushrooms, onions, sausage, bacon

Origin edit

It was created by Shigetada Irie for General Mcarthur, because of the limted ingredients available so soon after WW2. The chef had to use what was on hand for the 5 star General who lived at the hotel with his wife.(入江茂忠),[1] the chef of the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama.

Name edit

The chef named the dish after Naples, Italy (hence "Napoli"). Phonetically, the Japanese language does not distinguish R and L as separate sounds, and so uses the same katakana characters to represent R and L sounds of Western alphabets. Thus when converting katakana back into English, based solely on the Japanese spelling in the English alphabet is ambiguous and 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. This could be roughly translated as Neapolitan.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b スパゲッティナポリタンは横浜生まれ! (PDF) (in Japanese). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-23.
  • "ナポリタン! Naporitan, I'm crazy for Naporitan spaghetti!", Fuso "smick" sha – November 2004, ISBN 978-4-594-04832-7 (Japanese)