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Alex Dutson
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Jul 10, 2015
Britain's food revolution hits Tokyo
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that, generally speaking, English meals are bad." So begins Nozomu Hayashi's best-selling 1991 treatise on British food, "Igirisu wa Oishi" ("England is Delicious").
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Jun 5, 2015
The best places in Tokyo to taste Vietnam in a baguette
Remember that rumor about “Mama” Cass Elliot from the Mamas and Papas? The one about how she died in bed while munching on a sandwich? I heard that as a child and for years I took it as a cautionary tale about bedtime snacking, or else as evidence that fate has a rather whimsical sense of humor....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
May 1, 2015
Diving into the potent flavors of Japan's Iberian Peninsula cuisine
The seaside town of San Sebastian, in Spain's Basque Country, is well known as a crucible of culinary experimentation. It's a town where bars offering pinchos (small snacks) groan under the weight of vast spreads of braised beef cheek, hake throats laced with shouty salsa verde and blood puddings spiked...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Apr 3, 2015
Japan's French bistro dining keeps the focus on the food
Each year, approximately 20 Japanese tourists are struck down by a rare and mysterious disorder.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Mar 3, 2015
Swedish cuisine: so much more than meatballs
Some Swedish delicacies, such as lutefisk (dried cod treated with lye), attract comments that are less than flattering. And when I say less than flattering, I mean downright slanderous. "Reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog, or the world's largest chunk of phlegm," is one immortal line delivered by...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Feb 10, 2015
Singapore food fling provides 'messy and satisfying' feast
It's Friday night and I'm staring death in the face. The face in question happens to belong to a red snapper, and it's peeking out from the dark depths of powerful tamarind broth shimmering with crimson chili oil.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Jan 6, 2015
Embark on a Peruvian adventure without boarding a flight
Sitting in the wood-clad, dimly lit dining room of the Miraflores restaurant, I begin to feel like I'm planning a year volunteering abroad. A glance at the Peruvian flag on the wall, the figurines on the bar counter and the map plastered across the door, and I imagine gleefully imposing myself on whichever...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Dec 2, 2014
Finding comfort in a Belgian bowl
The mercury has dropped and the nights are getting longer. As the temperature plummets so does the need for culinary sophistication. Filigree garnishes, amusingly carved vegetables and light bonito broths frankly no longer cut it. To put it another way: December is less about yuzu-infused shoyu, and...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Nov 11, 2014
The best wine this side of Burgundy comes from . . . Canada?
Jamie Paquin is a man who likes a challenge. Three years ago, the 42-year-old Ontario native opened Heavenly Vines, the world's very first all-Canadian wine store, in the leafy backstreets of Ebisu. Day in day out, he's a tireless champion for what Matt Kramer of U.S. magazine Wine Spectator has called...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Nov 4, 2014
Pizza the way they make it in Naples — more or less
With pizza, as with many things in life, simple is often the best. And it doesn't get any more minimal than a true pizza Napoletana.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Sep 30, 2014
Searching out the subtle but scorching spices of India
Turbaned and bejeweled Kashmiri princes recline on soft nan pillows, sipping chai as servants scamper over rugs of a luxuriant weave and between silk curtains rippling and fluttering in the light breeze of a Srinagar palace pavilion.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Sep 2, 2014
Hankering for the grills and thrills of Greek cuisine
Few things in this world are more pleasurable than sinking your teeth into heavily herbed, charcoal-grilled paidakia, the fabled lamb chops adored and revered by the Greeks.

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Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition