Tag - japanese-cuisine

 
 

JAPANESE CUISINE

Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NAGOYA RESTAURANTS
Jul 29, 2014
VegeVege: A lively spot for veggies and their carnivorous friends
The name may be considered a little misleading, as VegeVege does have its fair share of meat and fish dishes, but the entire menu is infused with home-grown goods and local products, so everything available is crisp and garden-fresh.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS
Jul 22, 2014
Pancotei: 'Kushikatsu' morsels prepared with obsessive care
Precision. This is the premise on which everything at Pancotei is based, from the angle of the ear of wild asparagus, the volume of the froth on a glass of beer, the suitability of a single Japanese maple leaf as an adornment to a dish, the knot in the master's tie. Precision, bordering on perfection....
CULTURE / Books
Jul 19, 2014
Umami: the taste we love but can't describe
The word "umami" is, in many ways, literally a mouthful. First coined in 1909 by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, the term translates roughly as "deliciousness." With its satisfying, round consonants and open vowel sounds, the word approaches onomatopoeia — a phonetic approximation of the gustatory...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Jul 15, 2014
Japanese summer garnishes invigorate the taste buds
In Japanese cooking, garnish is not just added to a dish to make it look pretty. The word to describe the herbs and vegetables that accompany a dish is yakumi, which means "medicinal flavor," and originally referred to the concoctions that practitioners of Chinese medicine made using various ingredients...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 15, 2014
Sakana no Nakasei: One of three great Tokyo restaurants for aged beef
Tokyo's taste for high-end meat is maturing fast. For the cognoscenti, breed, provenance and fat content have long been critical. Now add one more key factor: aging. That's the focus at several new venues.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 15, 2014
Kazahana: 28th-floor restaurant offers fine food with a view to match
Very few Japanese restaurants in Tokyo can boast a view to rival that from Kazahana. Sitting 28 floors up in the Conrad Hotel, you gaze out over the centuries-old Hamarikyu garden on the waterfront and across to the Rainbow Bridge and the malls of Odaiba in the mid-distance.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 8, 2014
Ainu restaurant offers a delicious cultural excursion
Spring usually comes in early May in Hokkaido, and it is high season to pick sansai, or edible wild mountain plants. Among them, the Alpine leek — kitopiro in Japanese and pukusa in the native Ainu language — is the most attractive.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jul 8, 2014
Aoi-jaya: Traditional Japanese cuisine without the traditional price tag
A combination of train delays and the restaurant I had intended to eat at closing earlier than advertised meant that I had to find a replacement on the hoof. Fortunately, I was in the Isetan department store in Kyoto Station. The top two floors are given over to restaurants: the 10th floor to mostly...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Jul 8, 2014
What to drink when you're eating oysters
Shucking an oyster is harder than it sounds. A fair amount of dexterity is required to pry open the mollusk's tight-lipped shell and liberate the flesh. The one time I tried to open an oyster with a shucking knife, I ended up smashing it with a hammer instead.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 1, 2014
Kaiseki Ikku: Stave off the unagi eel crash with this fine alternative
It looks like the end of the line for one of Japan's best-loved summer dining rituals. Unagi (eels) are on the endangered list, with catches plummeting and prices heading skyward. The annual "unagi day" summer feeding frenzy has an uncertain future, and so too the wonderful grill-houses that serve them....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Jun 24, 2014
Yokohama 'museum' marks 20 years curating ramen royalty
Now that ramen has taken its place alongside sushi as the world's favorite Japanese food, it's easy to forget what the noodle landscape was like just a couple of decades ago. Back in the 1990s, foreigners knew ramen — if they knew it at all — as cheap fuel for all-night study sessions or as a belly-filler...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE PERSISTENT VEGETARIAN
Jun 24, 2014
Deep-fried veggies are happiness on a stick
Summer evenings are here, and so are the slow hours spent cooling off with a cold beer and crisp fried vegetables at a kushiage restaurant.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Jun 17, 2014
Traditional jelly noodles are cooling as well as healthy
Summertime is the season for cooling jellies, and one of the most popular kinds in Japan is kanten. Overseas, this is known as agar-agar, but here kanten and agar are confusingly considered to be two distinctly different substances.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jun 17, 2014
Ata: A Tokyo seafood bistro that does so much more than seafood
Bouillabaisse, fish and chips, beef Parmentier, foie gras dengaku. For a self-proclaimed seafood bistro, Ata certainly covers a lot of territory — much like its dynamic owner-chef has done in his short career.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jun 17, 2014
Ramen Kugatsu-do: Delicate broth and fine noodles for a slurpsome summer
Born in China and raised in Japan, ramen's hybrid heritage has evolved into a wide range of different guises. At one end of the spectrum are the alpha-male turbo-charged tonkotsu counters. At the other, you find lightness, delicacy and refinement. That's the way Kugatsu-do does it.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 13, 2014
Guide to Tokyo burgers returns with a new edition
When it comes to Tokyo food trends, four years is almost a lifetime. Back in 2010, when Yoshihide Matsubara wrote "The Burger Map," the definitive guide to burgers in the capital area, hamburgers were still generating a fair amount of buzz. Then came pancakes and then, in an unlikely 180-degree twist,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Jun 10, 2014
Meet the Willy Wonka of extraordinary cocktails
Contrary to expectation, the Blue Cheese Martini at the Akasaka branch of Code Name Mixology is a subtle concoction. The cocktail is clear, served in a delicate crystal glass, with three olives on the side. The cheese aroma hovers faintly on the nose, but the first sip is mildly sweet and fruity. The...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jun 10, 2014
What's: Fine Matsusaka beef in a restaurant as unusual as its name
Culinary epiphanies don't happen often, but when they do, they are food for thought. I had one recently dining on prime Japanese beef and it was an experience that, on reflection, recalled a childhood event. Not that I grew up eating wagyū — far from it; rather, the portion of seared beef reminded...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jun 10, 2014
Marumo Kitchen: Bowls with soul
In the DNA of almost every Japanese building there is a gene for "renewal." And so it was inevitable that Porta, the underground mall at Kyoto Station, would close earlier this year for a revamp. When it reopened it was out with the old and in with the new — and yet another Starbucks. Among the new...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jun 3, 2014
Kagura: Refined traditional dining minus the airs and graces
Akasaka's restaurants are an eclectic mix. Cheek-by-jowl with the raucous pubs, ramen counters and Korean kimchee kitchens, you find inscrutable anonymous facades, many of them exclusive ryōtei (traditional restaurants) reserved for politicians and captains of industry.

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Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
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