Food Porn: Tokyo
Complex culinary histories tend to yield restaurants that are genred. In the United States, for example, we tend to categorize our eateries along ethnic lines, with the notable exceptions of BBQ joints, bar & grills, fast food, and the like. It’s all part of our we-call-it-a-melting-pot-but-it’s-really-a-salad-bowl culture. Japan certainly has its fair share of ethnic restaurants (though don’t go looking for Mexican because there is not a burrito or chalupa to be found), but the primary organizing principle is cooking method.
My eating experience in Japan, while delicious, was not quite comprehensive. I was restricted by several factors. First was work. I generally had to eat wherever the job took me, usually within five blocks of my hotel in Shinjuku. Also, relating to work, we have an unofficial moratorium on street food. No one likes a strange ethnographer in their home with the runs. It's just awkward. Then there was the language problem. When without a translator, we were forced to fend for ourselves, and by “fending” I mean, look for English menus or, barring that, plastic food models to point at. Limitations aside, I can say for certain that maki is not sushi and not a single piece of chicken teriyaki passed my lips.
Sushi
Probably the least interesting thing that I ate in Japan was sushi. It was delicious, mind you, fresh and buttery and generally far superior than anything one can expect to find living 700 miles from the nearest ocean. I did stray from my usual orders, often because I had no idea what I was asking the waiter for, but never got further afield from my Chicago norm than a raw clam or sea urchin roe. Mostly I gorged myself on deep wine-colored tuna and any and all eel I could get my grubby American hands on. This actually worried one of my Japanese cohorts at a work lunch. She feared that, as a foreigner, I had mistakenly ordered something so slithery. They don't have those at Mickey D's. I dropped the word unagi to reassure her, but, always mindful of being a good host, I think her fears persisted.
The main difference, other than the obvious one of quality, between American and Japanese sushi is the lack of maki, the above photo notwithstanding. It is a much simpler, and perhaps, refined, dish there. I saw no fishy fusion hybrids, "Tropical Makis" with avocado, jalapeno, and mango. Mostly it was a expertly cut slice of fish on a lightly vinegared fist of rice. Though I did come across one instance of wheatgrass sushi that appeared without explanation. Other than being a non sequitur, it is not worth mentioning.
The one gimmick, of course, was the conveyor belt, kaiten-zushi. Like all fast foods, it was not as good as its higher priced cousin. However, there is something comforting for the foreigner. That something is that fact that you don’t need to order anything, except for a cold and monstrously portioned Asahi to be shared among friends. You sit at a counter and grab the plates that look best, or at least those identifiable to you. No pressure, no embarrassment of being rendered mute by an incomprehensible language. As an added bonus, you get to stack each successive plate into a tower that dwarfs those of the Japanese diners, reassurance that you are an American and proudly stuff yourself as such.
Yakitori
Meat and sticks go together like a horse and carriage. I think that’s how the old song goes. It is an accessible type of cooking and readily recognizable, though the line between chicken and chicken gizzard may be blurred to the naked eye, putting off the preemptively squeamish eater. It’s all grilled and lightly seasoned, making for a light meal where many non-sushi items end up fried. Though, truth be told, we did order tender fried octopus as an appetizer on our yakitori excursion. It’s all part of a balanced meal.
If you hold the not-entirely-unfair prejudice that no part of the animal is off limits in Asia, then order veggie yakitori. The eggplant is delicious and I even ate some sort of marinated mushroom which, I’ll admit, made a dent in my long-standing anti-fungi armor.
Tempura
You all know about tempura, so I don’t need to tell you about it. I do have a story though. One evening, on a recommendation, we went to a tempura restaurant in the bowels of the nearby Hilton. The meal came out in several courses. The sake was cold and all was going swimmingly. Before the final round of the fry up, the waitress and the chef came over to our table, each carrying a shallow metal dish. They were grinning broadly, either out of pride or a mischievousness from freaking out foreigners.
In the dish lay our soon-to-be next course, alive, though perhaps not well, existentially. The chef poked the shrimp on his tray, either to show it was still frisky and fresh or to prod it into begging its hangman and hangwomen for mercy. Not one to go down without a fight, the shrimp took the chef's urging as a cue to make a break for it. It leaped out of the tray and began scuttling across the rug to sweet sweet freedom. The prisoner was quickly apprehended to meet death by [ahem] lethal convection.
Kushiage
That beautiful wooden building house Hantei in Nezu, an older and quieter neighborhood near Ueno. When searching for information for Hantei on the internet please do not mistype in "hentai," which refers to the genre of cartoonishly, literally and figuratively, big breasted anime porn.
Hantei specializes in kushiage, a kind of cross between tempura and yakitori. Food on sticks meet the fryer. Part of Hantei's charm is the decor, dark woods and bamboo. It makes you feel like you are dining in an older incarnation of Tokyo, which you kind of are. The food itself was nothing fancy, but well done and diverse. Ordering is easy because you only have to specify number and not the food itself. Dishes come out one at a time, each dish has three skewers, two dish minumum. And there's a bulk discount, each successive set of two dishes gets cheaper.
Anything that can go in a fryer does: I had twelve skewers, no repeats. I take great pleasure in variety. Eventually it will make me fat - people eat more when offered a selection than when presented with a lot of the same thing - but long-term negatives don't diminish the big short-term positive. The set included: shrimp, scallop, some sort of whitefish, a whole sardine-like fish, ginger, eggplant, lotus root, and a corn nugget.
Izakaya
Wondering what the oddest thing I ate was? I'll give you a hint. When I told my co-worker she exclaimed, "You ate Shadowfax?" Geeky, but funny response.
The izakaya is the Japanese bar and grill: loud, smoky, and serving up lots of booze and arterially unfriendly foods. A few years ago I was in one in Vancouver, Guu with Garlic, and I guess that it was pretty authentic. I met up with my friend R in her old neighborhood of Shimokitazawa and hit the izakaya as a prelude to karaoke, just a Saturday night on the town in Tokyo.
Fried tofu (tofu is magical in Asia), potato salad with roe, grilled octopus, pork skewers, sharply pickled Japanese eggplant, spring rolls as an affirmative action roughage inclusion, beef carpaccio, and...horse...raw horse. I have no problem eating horse. If I am going to eat a docile cow or an adorable lamb or a badass elk (what's a good elk adjective?), then I have no moral ground to stand on for not eating the noble equid. I do, however, wonder where they come from. I have read that older horses are slaughtered and exported from the US, but this didn't seem tough enough. Sorry Shadowfax, if I am going to eat you I should at least get your story straight.
Ramen
Top Ramen is a travesty.
Street Food
I know I wasn't supposed to eat street food, let alone seafood stored out in the sun, but I was at a festival at the Tsukiji Shrine and, you know. octopus balls.
Dessert
The Western sweettooth has some tricky waters to navigate in Japan. Beautifully packaged and presented, the actual substance of a given treat can be a mystery if you can read descriptions. Texture especially is alien. There are airy cakes and rich chocolates, but also worlds of mochis and jellied...jellies. The mochi is wonderful. In the US we have been introduced to mochi as a kind of Japanese ice cream surrounded by a squishy shell. It is delicious in its own right. In Japan, it's more of a squishy pastry, often green tea flavored and occasionally filled with a chalky cream. It's chalky in a good way, because the Japanese are just that good.
The most overly decadent of the sweets were the crepes. Dotted about Tokyo are crepe stands, not filled with the refined jellies and nutellas of the West, but crammed with chocolate, caramel, cinnamon, coconut, or whatever, and obviously topped with a massive cloud of whipped cream. The one below was born to fill a late night yen after my izakaya/karaoke night.
Look out Krispy Kreme, Japan has it's Rube Goldberg cake making machine. Actually they have Krispy Kremes now also, which are apparently wildly popular and no doubt a contributor to Japan's growth towards collective obesity. The mesmerizing contraption below was in the Ameyoko Market, Ueno. You walked to a counter and for 500 yen you were handed a box of eight warm and pillowy (medium firmness) cakes, browned on the top and yellow and moist on the inside. The good news is that they don't ruin an appetite. We scarfed a few down and headed directly for Hantei.
Tapas
OK. Tapas? Really. Well, it's not Japanese per se, but the dully named (or maybe dully translated) Tapas Dining provided what may have been the tastiest dish I had in Japan. This is no fault of Japanese food, but rather praise for Japanese chefs. As my co-worker said repeatedly, "Another reason why they're better than us." By implication, they must also be better than the Spanish.
The service was questionable, but the food was delectable. Even the most bizarre dish, raw eggplant stuffed with mint and dusted with sea salt, was interesting. The picture below, octopus and shoestring potatoes, both broiled in ample butter was unreal. The butter browned and the octopus, often chewy, seemed to have replaced any sinewiness with that very butter. They are better than us, especially in the kitchen.
Basically, cabbage stir fried with thick cut bacon and its accompanying grease
Paella croquettes
Peppered duck
Beef carpaccio
My eating experience in Japan, while delicious, was not quite comprehensive. I was restricted by several factors. First was work. I generally had to eat wherever the job took me, usually within five blocks of my hotel in Shinjuku. Also, relating to work, we have an unofficial moratorium on street food. No one likes a strange ethnographer in their home with the runs. It's just awkward. Then there was the language problem. When without a translator, we were forced to fend for ourselves, and by “fending” I mean, look for English menus or, barring that, plastic food models to point at. Limitations aside, I can say for certain that maki is not sushi and not a single piece of chicken teriyaki passed my lips.
Sushi
Probably the least interesting thing that I ate in Japan was sushi. It was delicious, mind you, fresh and buttery and generally far superior than anything one can expect to find living 700 miles from the nearest ocean. I did stray from my usual orders, often because I had no idea what I was asking the waiter for, but never got further afield from my Chicago norm than a raw clam or sea urchin roe. Mostly I gorged myself on deep wine-colored tuna and any and all eel I could get my grubby American hands on. This actually worried one of my Japanese cohorts at a work lunch. She feared that, as a foreigner, I had mistakenly ordered something so slithery. They don't have those at Mickey D's. I dropped the word unagi to reassure her, but, always mindful of being a good host, I think her fears persisted.
The main difference, other than the obvious one of quality, between American and Japanese sushi is the lack of maki, the above photo notwithstanding. It is a much simpler, and perhaps, refined, dish there. I saw no fishy fusion hybrids, "Tropical Makis" with avocado, jalapeno, and mango. Mostly it was a expertly cut slice of fish on a lightly vinegared fist of rice. Though I did come across one instance of wheatgrass sushi that appeared without explanation. Other than being a non sequitur, it is not worth mentioning.
The one gimmick, of course, was the conveyor belt, kaiten-zushi. Like all fast foods, it was not as good as its higher priced cousin. However, there is something comforting for the foreigner. That something is that fact that you don’t need to order anything, except for a cold and monstrously portioned Asahi to be shared among friends. You sit at a counter and grab the plates that look best, or at least those identifiable to you. No pressure, no embarrassment of being rendered mute by an incomprehensible language. As an added bonus, you get to stack each successive plate into a tower that dwarfs those of the Japanese diners, reassurance that you are an American and proudly stuff yourself as such.
Yakitori
Meat and sticks go together like a horse and carriage. I think that’s how the old song goes. It is an accessible type of cooking and readily recognizable, though the line between chicken and chicken gizzard may be blurred to the naked eye, putting off the preemptively squeamish eater. It’s all grilled and lightly seasoned, making for a light meal where many non-sushi items end up fried. Though, truth be told, we did order tender fried octopus as an appetizer on our yakitori excursion. It’s all part of a balanced meal.
If you hold the not-entirely-unfair prejudice that no part of the animal is off limits in Asia, then order veggie yakitori. The eggplant is delicious and I even ate some sort of marinated mushroom which, I’ll admit, made a dent in my long-standing anti-fungi armor.
Tempura
You all know about tempura, so I don’t need to tell you about it. I do have a story though. One evening, on a recommendation, we went to a tempura restaurant in the bowels of the nearby Hilton. The meal came out in several courses. The sake was cold and all was going swimmingly. Before the final round of the fry up, the waitress and the chef came over to our table, each carrying a shallow metal dish. They were grinning broadly, either out of pride or a mischievousness from freaking out foreigners.
In the dish lay our soon-to-be next course, alive, though perhaps not well, existentially. The chef poked the shrimp on his tray, either to show it was still frisky and fresh or to prod it into begging its hangman and hangwomen for mercy. Not one to go down without a fight, the shrimp took the chef's urging as a cue to make a break for it. It leaped out of the tray and began scuttling across the rug to sweet sweet freedom. The prisoner was quickly apprehended to meet death by [ahem] lethal convection.
Kushiage
That beautiful wooden building house Hantei in Nezu, an older and quieter neighborhood near Ueno. When searching for information for Hantei on the internet please do not mistype in "hentai," which refers to the genre of cartoonishly, literally and figuratively, big breasted anime porn.
Hantei specializes in kushiage, a kind of cross between tempura and yakitori. Food on sticks meet the fryer. Part of Hantei's charm is the decor, dark woods and bamboo. It makes you feel like you are dining in an older incarnation of Tokyo, which you kind of are. The food itself was nothing fancy, but well done and diverse. Ordering is easy because you only have to specify number and not the food itself. Dishes come out one at a time, each dish has three skewers, two dish minumum. And there's a bulk discount, each successive set of two dishes gets cheaper.
Anything that can go in a fryer does: I had twelve skewers, no repeats. I take great pleasure in variety. Eventually it will make me fat - people eat more when offered a selection than when presented with a lot of the same thing - but long-term negatives don't diminish the big short-term positive. The set included: shrimp, scallop, some sort of whitefish, a whole sardine-like fish, ginger, eggplant, lotus root, and a corn nugget.
Izakaya
Wondering what the oddest thing I ate was? I'll give you a hint. When I told my co-worker she exclaimed, "You ate Shadowfax?" Geeky, but funny response.
The izakaya is the Japanese bar and grill: loud, smoky, and serving up lots of booze and arterially unfriendly foods. A few years ago I was in one in Vancouver, Guu with Garlic, and I guess that it was pretty authentic. I met up with my friend R in her old neighborhood of Shimokitazawa and hit the izakaya as a prelude to karaoke, just a Saturday night on the town in Tokyo.
Fried tofu (tofu is magical in Asia), potato salad with roe, grilled octopus, pork skewers, sharply pickled Japanese eggplant, spring rolls as an affirmative action roughage inclusion, beef carpaccio, and...horse...raw horse. I have no problem eating horse. If I am going to eat a docile cow or an adorable lamb or a badass elk (what's a good elk adjective?), then I have no moral ground to stand on for not eating the noble equid. I do, however, wonder where they come from. I have read that older horses are slaughtered and exported from the US, but this didn't seem tough enough. Sorry Shadowfax, if I am going to eat you I should at least get your story straight.
Ramen
Top Ramen is a travesty.
Street Food
I know I wasn't supposed to eat street food, let alone seafood stored out in the sun, but I was at a festival at the Tsukiji Shrine and, you know. octopus balls.
Dessert
The Western sweettooth has some tricky waters to navigate in Japan. Beautifully packaged and presented, the actual substance of a given treat can be a mystery if you can read descriptions. Texture especially is alien. There are airy cakes and rich chocolates, but also worlds of mochis and jellied...jellies. The mochi is wonderful. In the US we have been introduced to mochi as a kind of Japanese ice cream surrounded by a squishy shell. It is delicious in its own right. In Japan, it's more of a squishy pastry, often green tea flavored and occasionally filled with a chalky cream. It's chalky in a good way, because the Japanese are just that good.
The most overly decadent of the sweets were the crepes. Dotted about Tokyo are crepe stands, not filled with the refined jellies and nutellas of the West, but crammed with chocolate, caramel, cinnamon, coconut, or whatever, and obviously topped with a massive cloud of whipped cream. The one below was born to fill a late night yen after my izakaya/karaoke night.
Look out Krispy Kreme, Japan has it's Rube Goldberg cake making machine. Actually they have Krispy Kremes now also, which are apparently wildly popular and no doubt a contributor to Japan's growth towards collective obesity. The mesmerizing contraption below was in the Ameyoko Market, Ueno. You walked to a counter and for 500 yen you were handed a box of eight warm and pillowy (medium firmness) cakes, browned on the top and yellow and moist on the inside. The good news is that they don't ruin an appetite. We scarfed a few down and headed directly for Hantei.
Tapas
OK. Tapas? Really. Well, it's not Japanese per se, but the dully named (or maybe dully translated) Tapas Dining provided what may have been the tastiest dish I had in Japan. This is no fault of Japanese food, but rather praise for Japanese chefs. As my co-worker said repeatedly, "Another reason why they're better than us." By implication, they must also be better than the Spanish.
The service was questionable, but the food was delectable. Even the most bizarre dish, raw eggplant stuffed with mint and dusted with sea salt, was interesting. The picture below, octopus and shoestring potatoes, both broiled in ample butter was unreal. The butter browned and the octopus, often chewy, seemed to have replaced any sinewiness with that very butter. They are better than us, especially in the kitchen.
Basically, cabbage stir fried with thick cut bacon and its accompanying grease
Paella croquettes
Peppered duck
Beef carpaccio