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“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 kurobuta (Berkshire breed) pork with bok choy, ginger, and leeks, sauced it with soy sauce, mirin, and vinegar, and served it over rice, sprinkled with shichimi tōgarashi seven-spice mixture. This seemed like a reasonable act of Japanese-Chinese fusion. I made some quick-pickled cucumbers on the side. This was before we discovered that anything you do to a Japanese cucumber diminishes it. I should have known this; once I interviewed a Japanese-American farmer who grows more than a hundred Asian vegetables in Washington state. Naturally, I asked him about his personal favorite. Cucumber, he said. "How do you prepare it?" I asked. "Slice and eat." The whole meal was about the same as something I'd make at home, but I cooked it in Japan. It was like the SpongeBob SquarePants episode where SpongeBob has to work the night shift at the Krusty Krab, and he keeps saying things like, "I'm chopping lettuce... at night!" I was slicing cucumbers... in Tokyo!”

Quote by Matthew Amster-Burton

Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
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Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

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“As I tried various restaurants, certain preconceptions came crashing down. I realized not all Japanese food consisted of carefully carved vegetables, sliced fish, and clear soups served on black lacquerware in a highly restrained manner. Tasting okonomiyaki (literally, "cook what you like"), for example, revealed one way the Japanese let their chopsticks fly. Often called "Japanese pizza," okonomiyaki more resembles a pancake filled with chopped vegetables and your choice of meat, chicken, or seafood. The dish evolved in Osaka after World War II, as a thrifty way to cobble together a meal from table scraps. A college classmate living in Kyoto took me to my first okonomiyaki restaurant where, in a casual room swirling with conversation and aromatic smoke, we ordered chicken-shrimp okonomiyaki. A waitress oiled the small griddle in the center of our table, then set down a pitcher filled with a mixture of flour, egg, and grated Japanese mountain yam made all lumpy with chopped cabbage, carrots, scallions, bean sprouts, shrimp, and bits of chicken. When a drip of green tea skated across the surface of the hot meal, we poured out a huge gob of batter. It sputtered and heaved. With a metal spatula and chopsticks, we pushed and nagged the massive pancake until it became firm and golden on both sides. Our Japanese neighbors were doing the same. After cutting the doughy disc into wedges, we buried our portions under a mass of mayonnaise, juicy strands of red pickled ginger, green seaweed powder, smoky fish flakes, and a sweet Worcestershire-flavored sauce. The pancake was crispy on the outside, soft and savory inside- the epitome of Japanese comfort food. Another day, one of Bob's roommates, Theresa, took me to a donburi restaurant, as ubiquitous in Japan as McDonald's are in America. Named after the bowl in which the dish is served, donburi consists of sticky white rice smothered with your choice of meat, vegetables, and other goodies. Theresa recommended the oyako, or "parent and child," donburi, a medley of soft nuggets of chicken and feathery cooked egg heaped over rice, along with chopped scallions and a rich sweet bouillon. Scrumptious, healthy, and prepared in a flash, it redefined the meaning of fast food.”

Japanese FoodToppingsOkonomiyakiDonburi
Book:Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto
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“What to eat? You've crossed a dozen time zones to get here and you want to make every meal count. Do you start at an izakaya, a Japanese pub, and eat raw fish and grilled chicken parts and fried tofu, all washed down with a river of cold sake? Do you seek out the familiar nourishment of noodles- ramen, udon, soba- and let the warmth and beauty of this cuisine slip gloriously past your lips? Or maybe you wade into the vast unknown, throw yourself entirely into the world of unfamiliar flavors: a bowl of salt-roasted eel, a mound of sticky fermented soybeans, a nine-course kaiseki feast.”

UnfamiliarTokyoNoodlesJapanese FoodJapanese Cuisine
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“Go out the north exit of Nakano Station and into the Sun Mall shopping arcade. After a few steps, you'll see Gindaco, the takoyaki (octopus balls) chain. Turn right into Pretty Good #1 Alley. Walk past the deli that specializes in okowa (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 see the bicycle parking lot in front of Life Supermarket, you're going the right way. During the two-block walk through a typical neighborhood, you've passed more good food than in most midsized Western cities, even if you don't love octopus balls as much as I do. Welcome to Tokyo. Tokyo is unreal. It's the amped-up, neon-spewing cyber-city of literature and film. It's an alley teeming with fragrant grilled chicken shops. It's children playing safely in the street and riding the train across town with no parents in sight. It's a doughnut chain with higher standards of customer service than most high-end restaurants in America. A colossal megacity devoid of crime, grime, and bad food? Sounds more like a utopian novel than an earthly metropolis.”

TokyoJapanese FoodOctopusTakoyaki
Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
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“Don't get me wrong- tempura is served as a side dish in Tokyo, too, especially at soba and udon restaurants. Step into a branch of of the Hanamaru Udon chain, and before you select your bowl of noodles you're confronted with an array of self-serve, a la carte tempura: eggplant, onion, and squash, yes, but also hard-boiled quail eggs on a stick, squid tentacles, or a whole baby octopus. And the way most diners eat their tempura strains the definition of "side dish," because they plunk the crispy morsels right into their noodle broth. Japanese cooks are experts at frying food to a crisp and equally adept at ruining that crispy perfection through dunking, saucing, and refrigeration. I never learned to appreciate a stone-cold, once-crispy pork cutlet, but I enjoy tempura falling apart in hot soup and eaten at the moment when it has taken on broth but maintains a hint of crispness. The ship has hit the iceberg, but it's still momentarily afloat.”

Japanese FoodSide DishTempuraDeep Fried
Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
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“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 jelly and mochi dumplings, and a Korean stand specializing in rice dishes. I went straight for the Korean place and got myself a dolsot bibimbap, a hot stone bowl of rice topped with beef, assorted vegetables, and Korean hot sauce. Laurie and Iris returned with ramen and gyōza, and we sat together in the main hall in our yukata.”

Japanese FoodFood Court
Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
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“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 aebleskivers, 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've always been more into the takoyaki aesthetic than the actual food. Takoyaki are always served in a paper or wooden boat and usually topped with mayonnaise, bonito flakes, shredded nori, and takoyaki sauce.”

BallsJapanese FoodOctopusToppingsJapanese CuisineStreet FoodTakoyaki
Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
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“After more sake, we dipped into salmon roe for fecundity, followed by salmon and kelp rolls. We also had slices of rare beef that had been seared in a drip of soy, plus grilled duck and pickled lotus root rounds, representing the root of the lotus flower that blooms in the lake of the Land of Happiness where Buddha lives. Each morsel lay nestled in separate sections of the various lacquer boxes. "Have some tai (sea bream)," said Tomiko, passing me a container holding several slices of the coral-red fish, eaten because it sounds like medetai, meaning "auspicious.”

SalmonJapanese FoodSurf And Turf
Book:Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto
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“From the salty bite of gizzard shad to the supple sweetness of horse mackerel to the crunch and brine of ark shell clam, Sawada guides you through the full spectrum of ocean taste and texture. A giant prawn split into two pieces delivers dessert levels of sweetness. Saltwater eel is equal parts crunchy skin and tender flesh. Smoked bonito, in all its concentrated, fire-kissed intensity, will keep you awake at night.”

SeafoodFlavorsSushiJapanese Food
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“Half the food that he sends out is raw: ruby cubes of tuna dressed with a heaping mound of fresh wasabi; sea grapes the size of ball bearings that pop like caviar against the roof of your mouth; glistening beads of salmon roe meant to be stuffed into crispy sheets of nori. The other half gets the blowtorch treatment. Tuna is transformed into a sort of tataki stir-fry, toasted, glazed with ponzu, and tossed with a thicket of spring onions. Fish heads are blitzed under the flame until the cheeks singe and the skin screams and the eyes melt into a glorious stew meant to be extracted with chopsticks. Even sea urchin, those soft orange tongues of ocean umami, with a sweetness so subtle that cooking it is considered heretical in most culinary circles, gets blasted like a crème brûlée by Toyo and his ring of fire.”

SeafoodJapanese FoodOsakaStreet FoodBlowtorch
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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