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Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
May 19, 2002

Where kujira cuisine is a matter of course

Eating at Taruichi can be a bit daunting. First there's the decor. For those not cowed by the dried, meter-long whale's phallus dangling overhead, the next challenge is the menu.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
May 19, 2002

Where the adventure begins

Wine complements all sorts of moods. At times, it is convivial. We share a bottle around the table, and our group of friends become merrier, the conversation seasoned with laughter. Yet wine can also nourish quiet contemplation. Sip a glass alone or with one other person (a beloved, perhaps), and then...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
May 12, 2002

High fives for the best kind of Japanese food

There are five sets of five rules one must consider when attempting to make traditional Japanese food: the five colors (goshiki); the five methods (goho); the five flavors (gomi); the five senses (gokan); and finally the five viewpoints/considerations (gokan no mon), a Buddhist treatise on the proper...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
May 5, 2002

Now is the season to indulge your shellfish gene

For thousands of years, populations living close to the sea have found shellfish an easily obtainable and convenient source of protein and trace minerals. Shellfish is the general term for crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster) and mollusks (clams, oysters, squid and octopuses). All of these shellfish (kokakurui...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 20, 2002

Salah Hannachi

From April 19 to 25 the Hilton Hotel Tokyo is hosting a culture and food promotion evocatively themed "Breeze From Tunisia." Chefs from Hilton Tunis are presenting authentic Tunisian cuisine. At a gala luncheon April 22 a raffle will be held for tickets for the Japan-Tunisia World Cup match, and for...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Apr 14, 2002

Not that Nobu, just the opposite

Mention the name Nobu to most jet-setters and they will recall the international restaurants serving "nouvelle Japonais" cuisine. The one in Tokyo occupies a sprawling, bungalow-style structure that hogs an impressive chunk of street front on Roppongi-dori near Shibuya. But what all the globe-hopping...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Apr 14, 2002

Kappo R: And on the seventh day, we dined

Sunday evenings are always the most difficult time for dining out, especially if it's full-fledged Japanese cuisine you're after. With the markets closed and the streets deserted, choices are always limited, even in the most up-market parts of town.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Apr 7, 2002

Harmonie: Harmonizing great food in the key of fine wine

Keen-eyed Nishi Azabu-watchers will have noted the arrival of a whole slew of new restaurants in recent months. The influx has been especially noticeable on the southwest quadrant of the crossing known to old-timers as Kasumicho Crossing and to foreign punsters as Hobson's Choice.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Mar 31, 2002

Fancy a bowl of baby eels?

Personal preference, when it comes to taste and flavor, depends as much on conditioning and experience as on the actual taste buds. The same little sensors on different people's tongues may have a violent or favorable reaction to a given food item depending on the individual's personal history with it....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Mar 24, 2002

What squids shine in yonder bay

Squid, octopus and cuttlefish belong to a large group of marine invertebrates called cephalopods. The word means foot-headed, and it is an appropriate name for these creatures because their tentacle feet sprout from above their eyes and brain. They are found all over, and sometimes in the stomachs of...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 24, 2002

Tune in for the final stretch

Next Sunday, Nippon TV's irreverent variety show "Denpa Shonen," the prototype of bizarre Japanese reality-TV programs, will once again end its long successful run with a pledge to be reincarnated in the near future. On Saturday at 9 p.m., however, there will be a special two-hour installment summing...
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Mar 17, 2002

In search of the hidden children of bamboo

While I was growing up, bamboo shoots were an exotic vegetable that came from a can bearing foreign characters — foreign to my American eyes, that is. Despite the slight preservative and tin-can flavor, the tender shoots remained one of the delicacies that deepened my interest in the cuisine of countries...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Mar 15, 2002

There ain't no mountains high enough

During Golden Week of 1999, 26-year-old Tom Fearnehough and six friends skied down Mount Fuji. A Japanese man had attempted the same feat the year before and plummeted 2,000 meters to his death. Fearnehough and his friends, however, were better prepared.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 9, 2002

Kasit Piromya

It is still early days for the public to note the Thai Food Festival on May 11 and 12. For organizers Team Thailand, however, time is getting short, especially as this year's festival will be double the size of those of the last two years. The festival aims to strengthen the ties between the peoples...
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Feb 24, 2002

Sansai-gayu : a porridge found further afield

There is perhaps nothing more rewarding for a chef than to get out into the field and secure the best ingredients possible: vegetables, dry goods, fish and seasonings. The early spring is especially exciting because the season for foraging wild plants officially begins.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Feb 17, 2002

Mmmm . . . tastes like crab

In virtually every cuisine on the planet, there are attempts to dress food up and make it look like something it isn't. Whether it's a classical Chinese cook carving vegetables to make them look like a phoenix, or a French chef twisting his bread dough to resemble a lobster, food often appears in costume....
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 17, 2002

Shonzui: Right at home with fruits of the vine

We finally made it to Shonzui the other day. Not that it's particularly hard to find, it's just that it has taken us far too long to get around to visiting this friendly little wine bar down in Roppongi.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 14, 2002

North Korea: signs of trouble but no evil

CAMBRIDGE, England -- I have just returned from a week visit to North Korea, one of the countries on U.S. President George W. Bush's "axis of evil." I was one of three British academics running a workshop under a new technical assistance program inaugurated when the two countries opened diplomatic relations...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 10, 2002

Hantei: Kushi-age on a higher plane

There are still people who believe the idea of a classy kushi-age is a downright contradiction in terms. After all, they reason, it's a cross between two basic, blue-collar staples: yakitori and tonkatsu. How could such a mongrel hybrid, better suited to greasy neighborhood nomiya, ever be worthy of...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 27, 2002

The genuine Korea Town article

Times are changing in Korea Town. Those couple of kimchi-scented blocks just north of Kabukicho are still the best place in the city to find home-style cooking as spiced up as you'd get on the Korean Peninsula. But, slowly, the inexorable process of gentrification is under way.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Jan 27, 2002

Harnessing the preservative power of the sun

Culinary standards are often determined by prosperity. In Japan's past, food was not always as abundant as it is now. In lean harvest years, there was no rice to import from foreign nations and no cheap vegetable stocks to rely on when the local crop failed. Polished white rice was scarce among peasants...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 20, 2002

Fifty lashings for serving up wet noodles

This week, former teenage beauty queen Ryoko Sakaguchi returns to "Tuesday Suspense Theater" (Nippon TV; 9:03 p.m.) for the fifth time. She stars in "Rinsho Shinrishi (Clinical Psychologist)" as college lecturer Yuri Matsunami, who uses her psychoanalytical skills to solve murder mysteries that leave...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 20, 2002

Aramasa: The nostlagic taste of the great north

To duck under the rope noren at Aramasa and slide back its sturdy front door is to take a step into the past. Not a giant, disorienting leap all the way back to feudal Edo or the gilded age of Taisho, but an unthreatening half-pace back to the postwar days of Showa, when salarymen ruled the roost and...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 19, 2002

Who am I?

Traveler A: For my winter vacation, I tried to join the "Around the World in 60 Minutes" campaign tour but lost the lottery. So I booked a different package tour: five days and three nights in Thailand and Cambodia. The package included airfare, hotel and some meals.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 13, 2002

Matsugen: Noodles at the cutting edge of Azabu

To call Matsugen a new-wave soba shop would be misleading, since the noodles it rolls, cuts, cooks and serves are entirely traditional. But judge it on looks and attitude alone, and it belongs without question to the present century, not the last.
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Dec 30, 2001

Reasons to celebrate good-tasting bargains

Recent Vineland columns have focused on distinctive, luxury wines for holiday gift-giving and festive dinners. For our last column in 2001, we pursued an elusive category -- delicious bargain party bottles. It's a tantalizing quest. Few achievements are more gratifying to a wine lover than discovering...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 30, 2001

Delicious plum choices from 2001

In a city the size of Tokyo, it is simply impossible to visit every single new restaurant or to keep track of changes at all the established places. For that reason, the Food File does not presume to assign year-end rankings or pronounce its best-of lists for the year, especially since, in the end, it...
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Dec 16, 2001

Tazukuri: an acquired taste worth acquiring

The o-sechi foods of the New Year exemplify traditional Japanese cuisine, utilizing the fruits of the mountains and the bounty of the ocean to celebrate all of the gifts that nature provides. Nowhere is this land-and-sea pairing more evident than in the classic sanshu-zakana triumvirate of black beans...
JAPAN / LAST CALL FOR SAKE
Dec 13, 2001

Sake brewers seeking to please palates overseas

NIIGATA -- When movie star Robert De Niro visited Hokusetsu Shuzo's cellar in the village of Akadomari on Sado Island in fall 1998, he reportedly held up a 10-year-old bottle of sake and said he wanted it shipped to his restaurant in the United States.

Longform

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