Review: The 7-Eleven Tamago Sando

7-Elevens in Canada now have the tamago sando available

A few months ago there was a lot of excitement that 7-Elevens in Canada would finally be stocked with the famous Japanese-style egg salad sandwiches, the tamago sandos featuring shokupan, or slices of fluffy milk bread with butter, and a creamy egg salad in between.

Last December, the executive chef of 7-Eleven Canada, Benny Cheng, went to Japan for seven days and ate two tamago sandos each day, trying to memorise the taste and texture, and then recreate it back in the convenience store's headquarters in Surrey, British Columbia.

They are a reasonable $5 each

Before that he was already researching the sandwich and told The Vancouver Sun it took a year to source all the right ingredients, including Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise and the milk bread; he found a bakery in Vancouver to make it to his specifications.

Finally the Japanese-style egg salad sandwich was launched on March 6, and while some influencers were too polite to be critical of the Canadian version of the tamago sando, others were not shy in saying it was not the same as the ones from Japan.

Over a month later I finally tried the sandwich myself. I bought it downtown for $5, ($5.25 plus tax) and opened the packaging.

Inside are what looks like it could be fluffy slices of bread, but a bite into them and they're on the dry side. The egg salad filling has a cheery shade of bright yellow, however the dominant taste is butter not egg. 

Examining the ingredients listed at the back, it's not butter, but actually margarine... and there is a long list of non-natural flavours.

The egg salad is a bright yellow

For example, for the shokupan bread there's vegetable monoglycerides, soybean lecithin, and potassium sorbate, beta carotene. In the egg salad there's xanthan gum, mustard, lemon juice concentrate, paprika, tumeric and garlic powder.

It only takes minutes to demolish the sandwich, and then you're left... unsatisfied. Maybe a Japanese fruit sando would do the trick?