Entries tagged with 'Japan'
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New on my list of "Things to Eat Before I Die" is ayu, specifically skewered, salted, and roasted over hot coals as seen in bobby stokes's photo. Ayu, also known as sweet fish, is regarded as "the queen of freshwater streams" in Japan....
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My favorite type of noodle is soba, a Japanese noodle primarily made of buckwheat flour commonly served chilled with its own dipping sauce. FX Cuisine's photo-laden account of making soba at Tsukiji Soba Academy illustrates the labor intensive process from mixing the flours to rolling the dough to precise thicknesses and—my favorite part—ultimately cutting the noodles from the mother dough with a gigantic cleaver. If you ever find yourself in Tokyo, visit Tsukiji Soba Academy to learn the ways of the sobatician. Here's a great video of the soba making process packed into less than three minutes:...
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In his series of videos about life in Japan, Kevin Cooney takes us on a stomach churning tasting tour of Namjatown's Ice Cream City. What could be so bad about a city of ice cream, certainly one of the best things to have ever been concocted by humans? This city may contain the flavors of your dreams, but it also contains the flavors of your nightmares. Twisted nightmares at that, mostly featuring sea life. Observe: [video contains some strong language] Here are some choice quotes if you don't want to watch the nine and a half minute video in its entirety: Octopus: "Oh my god. Oh. Oh my god, this is horrible. It's a sucker. There's an actual sucker..." Squid:...
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The winner of last Friday's first Character Bento competition in Tokyo depicts the scene of a frog and a rainy day, appropriately titled "Rainy days are fun too! Frog bento." The bento was judged not only on its cute and colorful appearance, but also on its high nutritional content and relevance to Japan's rainy season. It's more than carefully arranged vegetables and balls of rice. You may think that this kind of well thought out bento is limited to contests, but there are many dedicated people out there who make intricate bento boxes every day for their loved ones, mostly mothers for their children. I wasn't one of these children, nor do I think I could be one of...
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This instructional website at Nippon Ham teaches you how to turn a boring tube of meat into something that kind of resembles a bunny. Or a duck. Or a hippo. Or a sheep. Now you can fulfill that lifelong dream of creating a menagerie of flesh colored animals with just the power of a knife and a pack of ham-based weiners!...
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When I first saw donut's photo of a cake with a girl's face in Japan, I thought it looked rather cute. And then I read the story behind the cake: Possibly the creepiest thing I ate in Japan. I had this at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art's very elegant cafe. And I gather that this cafe has a tradition of representing the museum's current exhibition in dessert form. Well, the exhibit on right now is Henry Darger, who is best known for his vastly creepy collages of little girls being tortured. And let me say, it was six kinds of weird to eat one of Darger's little lovelies in cake form. ...And now I think it's a little...
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In Japan the sushi-grade tuna shortage has gotten so bad, sushi chefs are being forced to think about using alternatives like raw venison, and eek!, raw horse. While horsemeat is frowned upon here, it is thought to be a delicacy in places like Italy and Japan. The tuna shortage is making many Japanese sushi chefs very unhappy: "It's like America running out of steak," said Tadashi Yamagata, vice chairman of Japan's national union of sushi chefs. "Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi."...
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Earlier today, our own Serious Eats overlord was lamenting the dearth of affordable eats in Tokyo. Will Burger King do, Ed? The chain closed a few years ago, but it's back. The travel blog Gridskipper reports that the line for a Whopper (or Whaler or what have you) at the Shinjuku outlet can be as long as 1.5 hours. A second BK will open in the Ikebukuro district later this month. Photograph from yuichi.sakuraba on Flickr...
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I've never been to Tokyo, but everyone I've talked to who has tells me that finding good, moderately priced restaurants there is not easy. So we should all be thankful for Julia Chaplin's piece on Japan's capital in yesterday's New York Times, which featured three restaurants I would definitely check out on a visit to the country....
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Tien Mao visited Japan earlier this year and just posted photos from an early-morning trip to Tsukiji Fish Market, the world's largest wholesale seafood market, where millions of dollars and tons of fish pass through in the early morning six days a week. If you love food, it's definitely one of the places you have to see when you visit Tokyo. I don't know when I'll be there next, but I do know these red tentacles are making me really hungry. Related: Rion Nakaya also has a lovely set from Tsukiji, taken two years ago. For more market scenes, check out her photographs from Bilbao's Riverside Meat Market and Fish Vendors....
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