Banh mi ban!

Yakisoba Pan | Café Zaiya

Café Zaiya, the Japanese bakery known for packaged food bargains and pastries (the midtown location houses cream-puff purveyor Beard Papa), keeps its grab-and-go-shelves well stocked with grub for just about any appetite. Yet, for every familiar item like an innocent club sandwich, there's a peculiar snack to give even the open-minded pause. Case in point: the yakisoba pan.

The edible study in beige consists of a soft split roll bulging with springy noodles and garnished with little more than a few slivers of pink pickled ginger and sprinkles of green seaweed powder. The addition of Japan’s inexplicable favorite condiment, sweet mayonnaise, makes this handheld meal feel more like a sandwich—that is, if you can accept the concept of mayo melding into stir-fried noodles.

Suitable sub? 2 stars. Admittedly, noodle buns are a genius portable solution, but unless you’re from the land of the rising sun or nostalgic for that year you taught overseas, yakisoba pan feels like a carb-on-carb crime. ($2.75)

Café Zaiya (69 Cooper Square at Third Ave., 212-253-9700; and 18 E. 41st St. between Madison and Fifth Aves., 212-779-0600)