Neo Kobe Pizza

Neo Kobe pizza is a style of pizza made popular by the video game series Snatcher produced by Konami Digital Entertainment.  Neo Kobe is the name of a city in the game.  So Neo Kobe pizza is basically the style of pizza eaten in Neo Kobe city.

Its origins however, are said by some to be from real life.  In Japan, there is a dish of fried balls of octopus eaten in soup.  The history of soup itself is that it was typically eaten with a piece of bread or dumplings in it.

What’s special about Neo Kobe pizza is that pizza is used as the “sop” for the soup.  You basically soak pizza in hot prepared miso soup until the bread softens and the cheese is melts nicely, and then eat the pizza with chopsticks.  Supposedly, a Japanese student accidentally dropped his pizza into his soup, and took a chance and tried it.  Others say that it was the invention of Jeremy Blaustein, the one who did the localization for Snatcher in English.  Maybe it was a little bit of both.  It has taken awhile though, for the trend to take off.  Snatcher came out in the late 80’s.

It has evolved to include just about any kind of pizza or pizza-like croutons or dumplings in just about any kind of soup.  Some people use mini-pizzas to dunk in the soup, while others bake a pizza pastry on top of a crock of soup.  There are many ways to make it.

I bought this domain basically to reserve it before some exploitive domain squatting business took it.  If Konami wants it for their own purposes, I’m happy to give it to them.  Unless or until that happens though, I don’t mind shamelessly promoting them for free, and sharing Neo Kobe pizza recipes with the world.

Neo Kobe pizza is just a darned good idea.  I’m a long time lover of soup and of pizza.  I’ve been eating Neo Kobe pizza for years even though I wasn’t sure what to call it.  So let’s get to dippin’!