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372dbce Iris's favorite item at Tenta is , sea eel. Unlike its freshwater cousin , anago is neither endangered nor expensive. A whole anago at Tenta is about $7.50. I ordered one, and the chef pulled a live eel out of a bucket. It wriggled like, well, an eel. Iris screamed as water droplets flew toward us. The chef managed to wrestle the unruly thing into the sink and knocked it unconscious before driving a spike into its head and filleting it. H.. backbone tempura eel Matthew Amster-Burton
704a0a5 In the U.S., to have a personal relationship with a Japanese chef across the counter, you have to go for sushi. I enjoy sitting at a sushi bar, but there is always the whiff of haute cuisine in the air (or, if you pick the wrong sushi place, the whiff of something worse). You can visit an expensive, artisan counter in Tokyo and order unusual and impeccable seafood, but come on: tempura is fried stuff. You drink frothy mugs of cheap beer and.. Matthew Amster-Burton
c4b65b5 We ate spiral-wrapped eel meat. We ate guts. We ate liver, which is somehow different from guts. We (mostly Iris) ate two bowls of of crispy fried eel backbones. We ate eel meat wrapped around burdock root and eel fin wrapped around garlic chives. We ate smoked eel that tasted like Jewish deli food. I ate better than anyone, because I was the only member of the family willing to try the offal. All of it was precisely like Oishinbo, down to .. eel meat Matthew Amster-Burton
2a4c251 At Iris's direction, we enjoyed all sorts of skewered bits. While most yakitori places serve various cuts of chicken and a few vegetables, the menu at Yakitorino was all over the place, and nearly everything was good: breaded and fried beef cubes on a stick; fried lotus root; pork jowl with miso; peppers. But Iris and Laurie's single favorite dish at Yakitorino was neither meat nor vegetable and was not served on a stick. "If you'd really.. onigiri rice-balls yakitori Matthew Amster-Burton
1122988 Before heading to our respective baths, Laurie, Iris, and I went to the food court and got lunch. I loved this food court, not because the food was especially good (although it was seventeen times better than the average American food court) but because it was such a perfect microcosm of the Japanese dining landscape. There were three noodle stands (udon, soba, and ramen), a sushi stand, a dessert shop selling soft-serve sundaes with fruit .. japanese-food Matthew Amster-Burton
2f3227d The hot case at a kombini features tonkatsu, fried chicken, (a breaded hamburger patty), Chinese pork buns, potato croquettes, and seafood items such as breaded squid legs or oysters. In a bit of international solidarity, you'll see corn dogs, often labeled "Amerikandoggu." One day for lunch I stopped at 7-Eleven and brought home a pouch of "Gold Label" beef curry, steamed rice, (sushi rice in a pouch of sweetened fried tofu), cold nood.. kombini ramen Matthew Amster-Burton
60ad9da A depachika is like nothing else. It is the endless bounty of a hawker's bazaar, but with Japanese civility. It is Japanese food and foreign food, sweet and savory. The best depachika have more than a hundred specialized stands and cannot be understood on a single visit. I felt as though I had a handle on Life Supermarket the first time I shopped there, but I never felt entirely comfortable in a depachika. They are the food equivalent of Bo.. street-food tokyo pastries french Matthew Amster-Burton
0441fe2 A soup dumpling is a little marvel of engineering. Called in Chinese, in Japanese, and "soupies" by Iris, soup dumplings consist of silky dough wrapped around a minced pork or crab filling. The filling is mixed with chilled gelatinous broth which turns back into soup when the dumplings are steamed. Eating a soup dumpling requires practice. Pop the whole thing in your mouth and fry your tongue; bite it in the wrong place and watch the so.. panfried fillings soup Matthew Amster-Burton
bcd96e6 In Tokyo, ramen is a playground for the culinary imagination. As long as the dish contains thin wheat noodles, it's ramen. In fact, there's a literal ramen playground called Tokyo Ramen Street in the basement of Tokyo Station, with eight top-rated ramen shops sharing one corridor. We stopped by one evening after a day of riding around on the Shinkansen. After drooling over the photos at establishments such as Junk Garage, which serves oily,.. tokyo Matthew Amster-Burton
894f866 Yoshoku is the Japanese take on Western foods; much of it was created during the Meiji period (1868-1912), when, after centuries of isolation, Japan began importing goods and ideas from the outside world, including food. Yoshoku dishes such as (salisbury steak in brown sauce), curry rice, potato croquettes, and "spaghetti " are now much-loved comfort food. They're also so unlike the dishes that inspired them that they tend to be really h.. yōshoku western Matthew Amster-Burton
cbbc945 Now, back to Sapporo-ya. The place is deep enough below street level that the windows let in no natural light; harsh fluorescent lamps made everyone look ill. The walls are greenish-yellow. If you are directing a modern adaptation of , shoot the purgatory scenes here. The waitress set down my hiyashi chuka (sesame sauce). It was in every way the opposite of its surroundings: colorful, artfully presented, sweated over. The tangle of yello.. hiyashi-chūka sapporo-ya ramen salad Matthew Amster-Burton
d4bac8f White bread in Japan is a steroidal megaloaf called . Brioche-like and great for toasting, shokupan is sold in bags of four, six, or eight perfectly square slices, without heels. Where do the heels go? Out back with the imperfect vegetables? I bought shokupan several times before figuring out why the four-, six, and eight-slice sacks all sold for the same price. It's the same loaf, cut into thicker or thinner slices. Eight-slice shokupan i.. shokupan slices white-bread japanese Matthew Amster-Burton
c405e4d Our neighborhood ramen place was called Aoba. That's a joke. There were actually more than fifty ramen places with in walking distance of our apartment. But this one was our favorite. Aoba makes a wonderful and unusual ramen with a mixture of pork and fish broth. The noodles are firm and chewy, and the pork tender and almost smoky, like ham. I also liked how they gave us a small bowl for sharing with Iris without our even asking. What I rea.. fish pork ramen toppings eggs noodles Matthew Amster-Burton
2471ef6 If you already hate tofu, the term "tofu skin" is probably an effective emetic. But this stuff is addictive. You start by making fresh soy milk. I'm not going to soft-pedal how much work this is: you have to soak, grind, squeeze, and simmer dried soybeans. The result is a thick milk entirely unlike the soy milk you get in a box at Whole Foods in the same way Parmigiano-Reggiano is unlike Velveeta. Then, to make tofu skins ( in Japanese), y.. silken soy-milk tofu yuba skin Matthew Amster-Burton
c855fd8 Okonomiyaki, meanwhile, is to American pancakes what Japanese wrestling is to American wrestling. The basic batter contains flour and water, grated nagaimo (that big slimy yam again), eggs, and diced cabbage. You then augment this base by ordering little bits and nibbles a la carte to be added to the batter. We could not figure out the ordering system, but we listed off ingredients we liked and ended up with two pancakes' worth of batter te.. how-to okonomiyaki pancake ingredients Matthew Amster-Burton
9d66f04 While I struggled with the menu, a handsome middle-aged guy from a nearby table came over to help. "You like sashimi? Cooked fish? Sushi?" he asked. His English was excellent. He was originally from Okinawa, he said, and a member of Rotary International. I know nothing about the Rotarians except that it's a service organization; helping befuddled foreigners order food in bars must fall within its definition of charitable service. Our servic.. hachi rotary scallop izakaya sushi pub seafood Matthew Amster-Burton
2c5ae78 We took a short ride on the Oedo line and surfaced near a sashimi-oriented izakaya called Uoshin. The upstairs counter snaked through the room so everyone could have a seat at the bar, and tucked into nooks at various parts of the arrangement were white-coated chefs, each with a knife and a wooden board full of freshly sliced sashimi. We ordered a few selections from the board, and then Mark, who is apparently one of those wiry guys with a .. izakaya sashimi japanese-cuisine seafood Matthew Amster-Burton
15c9ad2 Takoyaki are octopus balls- not, thankfully, in the anatomical sense. They're a spherical cake with a chunk of boiled octopus in the center, cooked on a special griddle with hemispherical indentations. If you're familiar with the Danish pancakes called , you know what a takoyaki looks like; the pan is also similar. Takoyaki are not unknown in the U.S., but I've only ever seen them made fresh at cultural festivals. Iris is a big fan, but I'.. japanese-cuisine street-food toppings takoyaki japanese-food octopus Matthew Amster-Burton
99d994c True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find familiar American brands such as Kellogg's, but often without English words anywhere on the box. One of the most popular Kellogg's cereals in Japan is Brown Rice Flakes. They're quite good, and the back-of-the-box recipes include cold tofu salad and.. kellogs rice supermarket sugar salt japan inventory Matthew Amster-Burton
59269a7 Buying fish in the supermarket in Japan is a delight, even if the fish is displayed in styrofoam trays, as it is at Life. The most common supermarket fish, mackerel, also happens to be my favorite, and it's sold in a variety of precise quantities. Want three small mackerel fillets? Sure thing. One large? Right over here. Mackerel costs practically nothing and is a snap to cook with the fish grill. I also tried marinated (Spanish mackerel).. mackerel Matthew Amster-Burton
c41d083 When you visit Gindaco, spend some time watching the cooks make takoyaki before ordering, because it's an amazing free show. The shop has an industrial-sized takoyaki griddle with dozens of hot cast iron wells, each one about an inch and a half in diameter. The cook squirts the grill with plenty of vegetable oil. She dunks a pitcher into a barrel of pancake batter and sloshes it over the grill, then strews the whole area with negi, ginger, .. grill japanese-cooking skewer takoyaki tokyo octopus Matthew Amster-Burton
e99eb94 The meat section is mostly devoted to presliced meats for hot pots and quick-cooked dishes, with a thin steak or chop here and there. In addition to commodity meat, you'll find Wagyu beef and kurobuta pork. The quality of the meat in an average Tokyo supermarket is higher than at most specialty butchers in the U.S. Time to fess up. Life Supermarket is not the best supermarket in the world; supermarket in Tokyo is the best supermarket in t.. tokyo supermarket Matthew Amster-Burton
60d34ab Japan isn't meat-crazed in the same way as the USA, but when the Japanese want meat, they want it as marbled as the Parthenon. The most popular topping for ramen is pork belly, streaked with fat, rolled up like pancetta and braised for hours in pork broth until fall-apart tender, then sliced into a perfect round. meat Matthew Amster-Burton
9455348 Tokyo boasts similar food theme parks devoted to ramen, gyoza, ice cream, and desserts. If you don't like takoyaki, you're not entirely out of luck: the stand we visited, Aizuya, also offers . You would think radioyaki would mean "takoyaki that grows arms and legs after exposure to nuclear radiation," but no, it replaces the octopus with and beef gristle. Konnyaku is a noncaloric gelatin made from the root of a plant closely related to t.. takoyaki themes Matthew Amster-Burton
96152be We ate three tiny, geometrically engineered appetizers, including a perfect cube of kabocha squash-flavored fish cake and an octopus "salad" consisting of one tiny piece of octopus brushed with a plum dressing. Then the waitress uncovered and lit the burner in the center of the table and set a shallow cast-iron pan on top. She poured a thin layer of sauce from a pitcher. Sukiyaki is all about the sauce, a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sake, .. father-daughter-bond soy-sauce sukiyaki sauces ingredients Matthew Amster-Burton
d5deb04 I've long been a fan of Hi-Chew, the Japanese fruit chews, for their resilient texture and uncannily accurate fruit flavors: sour cherry, apple, grape, pickled plum, and especially mango, which is closer to the flavor of an actual tropical mango than most imported mangoes. mango flavors japan fruit Matthew Amster-Burton
a80f0b6 After lunch we went to have our feet nibbled by hundreds of tiny fish. Then, after that- just kidding, I'll explain. The onsen offers a skin treatment where you dip your feet into a shallow pool stocked with , also known as doctor fish, which perform primitive exfoliation by slurping dead skin off your feet with their tiny jaws. This is illegal in most U.S. states, where health authorities believe that sharing fish between customers is as .. fish skin-treatment nibbling feet Matthew Amster-Burton
fedfdde In Oishinbo: Ramen and Gyoza, Yamaoka and the gang are on an assignment to help a lonely gyoza chef find a new recipe and true love. While investigating, they have lunch at a dumpling restaurant that boasts "100 types of gyoza" on the sign. (Incidentally, a cute thing about Japanese restaurant chains is that they often put the word "chain" in the name, like, "Gyoza Chain Hanasaki.") They eat dumplings with fillings like garlic-miso, flaked .. dumplings fillings Matthew Amster-Burton
ca3eb21 So what does matcha taste like, if you've never had it? It's commonly described as tasting "green," which is true, albeit begging the question. Good matcha is naturally very sweet, a plant sweetness quite unlike bad matcha sweetened with sugar, which is common in shelf-table convenience store drinks and at coffee places. When you're drinking matcha, even high quality stuff, you can rub your tongue against the roof of your mouth and feel tha.. tea-leaves powder Matthew Amster-Burton
5a86853 We planned an Utsunomiya gyoza crawl, but when we emerged from the train station into 92-degree weather, we abandoned the idea and just went to the place with (Iris counted) seventy-four types of gyoza, including yogurt, coffee, tea, chocolate, liver, mochi, squid-octopus, sausage, curry, and whale. You can order a whole plate of your favorite variety or a sampler platter; we ordered a sampler (no whale) with a small order of regular pork g.. gyōza fillings Matthew Amster-Burton
9100980 The ubiquity of great food in Tokyo is beyond imagination. It's not just that I'm interested in food and pay close attention to restaurants and takeout shops, although that's true. In Tokyo, great food really is in your face, all the time: sushi, yakitori, Korean barbecue, eel, tempura, , bento shops, delis, burgers (Western and Japanese-style), the Japanese take on Western food called , and, most of all, noodles. I found this cheap every.. tokyo Matthew Amster-Burton
ae69b1b Go out the north exit of Nakano Station and into the Sun Mall shopping arcade. After a few steps, you'll see Gindaco, the (octopus balls) chain. Turn right into Pretty Good #1 Alley. Walk past the deli that specializes in (steamed sticky rice with tasty bits), a couple of ramen shops, and a fugu restaurant. Go past the pachinko parlor, the grilled eel stand, the camera shops, and the stairs leading to Ginza Renoir coffee shop. If you se.. takoyaki tokyo octopus Matthew Amster-Burton
fbd051c If a Tokyoite knows anything about Nakano, it's likely to be Nakano Broadway, a shopping mall with several floors devoted to Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime). It is geek central. I found most of it incomprehensible, but I did enjoy browsing at Junkworld, which sells useful electronic discards, like old working digital cameras for $5 and assorted connectors and dongles and sound cards. In the 1980's, when William Gibson was padd.. nakano electronics japan manga Matthew Amster-Burton
37477bf Dairy Chiko, in the basement of Nakano Broadway, is a surrealist ice cream shop known for octuple-decker soft-serve cones. You can also order a smaller cone with less than one billion calories, but the draw at Dairy Chiko is watching how other people eat their towering cones of vanilla, yuzu, milk tea, matcha, ramune, orange, strawberry, and chocolate (flavors may vary). Walking while eating is taboo in Japan, and Dairy Chiko has no seating.. tokyo ice-cream japan Matthew Amster-Burton
26483f1 The most obvious difference between Japanese and American ice cream bars is that if the Japanese bar promises something crispy, it will damn well be crispy. The Haagen-Dazs Crispy Sandwich, for example, is a slim bar of ice cream between two delicate wafers. How do they keep the wafers from getting soggy? Is it a layer of shellac? Maybe it's best not to ask. Crepes, soft but not mushy, are also a frequent player in ice cream bars. Near the .. ice-cream-sandwiches ice-cream Matthew Amster-Burton
dec7760 For my first home-cooked meal in Tokyo, I took an assortment of beautiful Japanese ingredients and did what came naturally: I made Chinese food. I stir-fried some beautifully marbled (Berkshire breed) pork with bok choy, ginger, and leeks, sauced it with soy sauce, mirin, and vinegar, and served it over rice, sprinkled with seven-spice mixture. This seemed like a reasonable act of Japanese-Chinese fusion. I made some quick-pickled cucum.. cucumbers homecooking japanese-food spongebob-squarepants stirfry Matthew Amster-Burton
00af54d But Tokyo offers cat cafes, a commercial solution to the problem of wanting to commune with cats but being unwilling or unable to have one at home. Iris's favorite cat cafe is Nekorobi, in the Ikebukuro neighborhood. When I first heard about cat cafes, I imagined something like Starbucks with a cat on your lap. Wrong. Nekorobi is what you'd get if you asked a cat-obsessed kid to draw a floorplan of her dream apartment: a bathroom, a drink v.. cat-cafe nekorobi japan cats Matthew Amster-Burton
d6a1106 Iris and I will eat at a skeezy yakitori joint and enjoy char-grilled chicken parts on a stick. We'll go to an eel restaurant and eat several courses of eel, my favorite fish. Iris's favorite is mackerel, , tearing off fatty bits with our chopsticks. We will eat our weight in rice... we'll have breakfast at Tsukiji, the world's largest fish market. And we'll eat plenty of sushi from a conveyor belt. rice vacation-plans yakitori tokyo sushi Matthew Amster-Burton
a0ebebd We did go to a skeezy yakitori place, however, which is where Iris discovered , chicken tail, the fattest, juiciest bit of the chicken, and the best to grill on a stick and brush with sweetened soy sauce. yakitori chicken Matthew Amster-Burton
e4a10be Japan is obsessed with French pastry. Yes, I know everyone who has access to French pastry is obsessed with it, but in Tokyo they've taken it another level. When a patissier becomes sufficiently famous in Paris, they open a shop in Tokyo; the department store food halls feature Pierre Herme, Henri Charpentier, and Sadaharu Aoki, who was born in Tokyo but became famous for his Japanese-influenced pastries in Paris before opening shops in his.. desserts fruit-flavors pastry-chef patisserie tokyo pastries french Matthew Amster-Burton
fc81a1f Something about Tokyo's exuberant modernism made Iris and me feel like the city existed just to make us happy: the waving cats seemed to whisper. Iris and I came back with a list of Tokyo attractions we never made it to on our first trip, a list about a month long. And we started to drive Laurie insane by breaking into misty-eyed reminiscences about our cherry blossom days in Japan. Matthew Amster-Burton
de9bdb8 Finally, let's talk about those Kit Kat bars. There is no flavor that can be embodied in Kit Kat form and sold in Japanese stores. Green tea. Black tea. Miso. Cherry blossom. Soy sauce. Toasted soybean powder ( ). Chile. Orange. Melon. Only a few are available at any given time, and right now, evil geniuses at Nestle are coming up with new flavors. I'd like to suggest okonomiyaki flavor, which would consist of a bag of assorted flavors (gin.. fruity kitkats natural-flavors japan Matthew Amster-Burton
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