Give your drivers and customers the Google Maps experience they know and love with routes that cover 40 million miles of roads in over 200 countries and territories.Īll you need to do is to save your home and office addresses in Google Maps, and the system will automatically fill them in as you type, speeding up your search. Whether you’re expanding your ridesharing operations into Australia or deploying a two-wheeler service in India, we’ve got you covered with detailed, high-quality data for urban areas and cities around the globe. If we’re in a position where we need to pick just one, though, for now, 7-Eleven is the king of convenience store pork buns.Deliver great experiences all over the globe Honestly, even with the sogginess of the Lawson bun, none of these were bad, and we’d in no way regret chowing down on any of these contenders the next time we’re hungry. Fluffy outer layer, nice big filling piece on the inside, and the most pronounced meatiness of the bunch. The dough, though, was quite nice, and managed to avoid the mushiness of what was inside.īecause of how Japan’s sales tax is calculated, the price is officially listed as 140.40 yen, but that rounds down to 140 at the register. Like the Family Mart nikuman, the pieces are large-cut, but the overall mouthfeel, and especially for the meat, was on the soggy side. Instead, the problem was with the texture of the fillings. Here the nikuman price is back up to 140 yen, but the issue we had wasn’t with the price. Family Mart goes with the recently popular style of larger pieces for its bamboo shoots, and they actually end up sort of overshadowing the meat, but overall this is a delicious choice if you’re craving something both meaty and sweet, and the bun’s outer layer is nice and fluffy. They’re also have the most unique, and pronounced, flavor, with a sweetness that almost had us thinking of teriyaki sauce. Really, the only problem is that Mini Stop doesn’t have nearly as many branches as the other convenience stores we’re including in this test, and the tasty but very familiar flavor of their nikuman might not be worth making a special trip to a Mini Stop for, if you don’t happen to already be near one.įamily Mart’s nikuman are the lowest-priced of the bunch, at just 130 yen each. This is the opposite of the recent trend for larger, more distinct chunks of the different ingredients, but the old-school approach works just fine here. In addition to pork, nikuman often have sliced bamboo shoots and mushroom, and in Mini Stop’s bun everything is finely diced for a uniform texture. It turns out that the Mini Stop nikuman is a very orthodox take on the pork bun. Sure, we could have waited until we were back at the office, but nikuman are at their most delicious fresh from the steamer, before they’ve had time to get cold or soggy, and we wanted to give each store a fair chance at winning the pork bun crown. Japanese convenience stores keep their buns in a steamer case near the register, so we asked the clerk for one, and as soon as we had it we headed outside to eat it right then and there. Mini Stop’s steamed pork bun is priced at 140 yen (US$1.22), which has become the current going rate for convenience store pork buns. We decided to round out the test by including Mini Stop, a second-tier convenience store that nonetheless occasionally produces some wonderous snacks (like the bento boxed lunch inside a rice ball and the Gyoza Dog), and it was Mini Stop that was our first stop on this taste test odyssey. Obviously, nikuman from the big three of the combini world, 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Lawson, were must-eats. So to maximize our dining pleasure, we decided to find out which convenience store chain has the best pork buns, or nikuman, as they’re called in Japanese. Still, we have to admit that as the temperatures go down, our cravings for piping-hot steamed buns goes up, so we plan to eat a whole bunch of them over the next few months. That didn’t turn out to be the case at all, and nowadays convenience stores sell steamed buns all year round. Once upon a time, Japanese convenience stores only sold steamed buns in the fall and winter, under the assumption that because they’re served hot, people wouldn’t want to eat them during the warmer parts of the year. We visit Japan’s big three combini, plus one dark horse contender, on our search for nikuman bliss.
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