tokyo through the drinking glass

Break Bread with Me

2016-03-09T12:03:00.002+09:00

A version of my essay on gastrodiplomacy and the power of food appeared in the March issue of Metro Minutes a couple of weeks ago. Thank you, dear Yuu Murakami, for the great Japanese translation.

An unforgettable experience on the Faroe Islands, a land actually surrounded by rainbows.

One summer morning, on the edge of an inlet near Torshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands, chef Poul Andrias Ziska of Koks was foraging for seaweed. Earlier it had rained, and the rocks were slippery as he hopped from stone to stone, gathering handfuls of green and purple algae. A young woman from California trailed behind him holding a basket. A line cook in Los Angeles, she had become intrigued with the Faroe Islands -- a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark located between Norway and Iceland -- after hearing about Mr. Ziska and his creative cuisine, which relies on unique local ingredients. Her fascination led her to apply for a scholarship sponsored by the government of the Faroe Islands to learn more about the region and its food culture. A few weeks into her residency on the islands, she was cooking with dried cod, a traditional local staple, and had begun studying the Faroese language.

Such is the power of food. It can lure us to far-flung places and show us ways of life that we had never imagined. Food is the simplest way for cultures to connect. The success of the 2015 Milan Expo, which featured pavilions from more than 145 countries and attracted 21 million attendees, demonstrates that the interest in exploring different food cultures is profound and universal. Although the concept of “gastrodiplomacy” is nothing new, in recent years more and more governments are recognizing the diplomatic value of cuisine and have been embarking on formal campaigns to raise international standing. Gastrodiplomacy provides a vehicle for countries to communicate national identity, forge alliances between governments, and connect on a personal level to diners all over the world.

The most successful gastrodiplomacy initiatives have clear objectives and bring together talent from various sectors -- chefs, producers, and businesses -- to work with governments. Thailand was the first country to launch a formal gastrodiplomacy campaign in 2002. The program, which aimed to boost exports and increase the number of Thai restaurants globally, offered loans to potential investors and established a certification system for Thai restaurants abroad. To support the initiative overseas, the government worked on increasing food production domestically and improving distribution infrastructure. Peru’s gastrodiplomacy strategies have focused mainly on culinary tourism. Now the country boasts numerous Michelin stars, and Peru was named Best Culinary Destination in South America at the 2014 World Travel Awards. Lima’s annual Mistura festival, which celebrates Peru’s multicultural culinary heritage, has become the largest food fair in Latin America. Global promotions with celebrity chefs Gaston Acurio and Virgilio Martinez have also instigated new lines of trade in major markets such as the US, Europe, and China.

While the economic benefits are obvious, the positive effects of gastrodiplomacy extend beyond the financial realm. Gastrodiplomacy reinforces the identity of a nation. The Nordic food movement began as a joint effort among several regions to improve the general state of food production and preparation in Scandinavia. Over time, the initiative evolved into a reevaluation of traditional food culture that has inspired the Nordic countries to think deeply about what makes each place special. Gastrodiplomacy has communicated those ideas and helped put remote areas like the Faroe Islands on the cultural map, prompting recognition of its unique cultural heritage and cuisine at an international level.

The potential for gastrodiplomacy is tremendous for countries whose cuisine has been largely unexplored. I was reminded of this when I visited Chile, where I had been invited to participate in a culinary tour with a group of international journalists. We traveled with Rodolfo Guzmán, the owner and chef of Chile’s top restaurant, Boragó, through the Atacama Desert sampling local delicacies: llama pâté; corn with fat, milky kernels; and a sticky, sweet syrup made from the fruit of the chañar tree. In the lake district of Pućon, 780 km south of Santiago, we ate deep-fried breads doused with merkén chili paste -- a fundamental ingredient in the cuisine of Chile’s indigenous Mapuche people. I had never heard of any of these foods before, but now I would never forget.

Postcards from the Other Side of the World: Atacama Desert, Chile

2016-02-26T07:04:00.002+09:00

It's nearly midnight in the Atacama Desert, and I'm shivering inside my jacket under the crush of stars dazzling above us. Black mountains loom in the distance -- impassive sentinels guarding this moment from the rest of the world. The sky is alive, the stars so close to the earth. It's rare to see celestial bodies dance with such abandon. The Seven Sisters wink at Orion, and our guide tells us in Spanish that the two constellations are moving slowly closer, in an agonizing cosmic flirtation that could last over 250 million years. I don't speak Spanish but somehow I understand the tragedy of Orion, the patient but doomed suitor, destined to arrive lightyears too late to claim the hand of his beloved. By the time the hunter makes his way across the heavens, the sisters will be dead. Their legacy will be a haze of shimmering dust.

Suddenly, I see my first shooting star.

I was in Chile traveling with a group led by Rodolfo Guzman, the chef behind the Santiago restaurant Borago, the world's first fine-dining restaurant to champion Chile's endemic ingredients and the food culture of the Mapuche people. Earlier in the week, we'd foraged for seaweed on the central coast, and now we were in the north near the Bolivian border. We'd flown into Calama and drove an hour and a half through the desert, past a sprawling mining town that looked like a suburban shanty. The low, box-like structures appeared to be hastily erected but adamant. The buildings were painted the dusty colors of a Miami neighborhood that had been planted in the middle of the desert. Even though it was 8pm, the sun had not yet set.

We spent the next few days gathering herbs like rica-rica, a bushy herb with the flavor of rosemary and mint. The locals like to add it to pisco sours, but Rodolfo uses it to make desserts like ice cream covered with thin, crispy wafers. It's garnished with a sprig of rica-rica that looks like it's pushing its way up through the cracked surface of the earth.

Our journey through the terrain surrounding the Salar de Tara salt flats felt like driving on Mars, all red sand and gravel. Dust twisters in the distance smudged the sharp silhouette of the red mountains against the searing blue firmament like lint specks on a camera lens. We passed monolithic rock formations dropped from the sky by an ancient volcanic explosion miles away -- lonely stone skyscrapers lashed by the wind for eternity.

High altitude gives you a headache and tenses your jaw so that your teeth hurt. The sunlight feels brighter than usual. It's disorienting, but you can judge the altitude by the vegetation. Green bushes give way to brass-toned tufts of vegetation that look like nesting animals. They look so friendly and soft that you almost want to touch them, but you shouldn't. You'll surely be pricked by the thorny blades of the plant that grows beside it. I meant to ask Rodolfo what they were, but I forgot.

The wind had blown sand into our food. Black grains flecked our palmitos, sour mangoes, and tomatoes like ground pepper, adding a silicone crunch to our quinoa salad. Despite the spilled red wine, it was a small price to pay for this luxury -- a picnic lunch under the clearest of late autumn skies, overlooking the placid turquoise salt lagoons, 4,800 meters above sea level. Beside us, black-tailed flamingos feasted on brine shrimp in the pools. I clinked glasses with my neighbor, a journalist from Russia. Even though I was so exhausted that it hurt just to breathe, the day was almost perfect and I was already forgetting the nosebleed I'd get on the descent back to San Pedro.

Rodolfo Guzman Brings the Chilean Food Revolution to Tokyo

2016-02-21T16:06:00.000+09:00

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My article on the talented Chilean chef Rodolfo Guzman and his restaurant, Borago, is on the cover of The Japan Times Weekend Scene. Chef Guzman will be coming to Tokyo to do a collaboration dinner event at the end of the month at Bulgari Il Ristorante Luca Fantin in Ginza:

On a cloudless afternoon a little over a year ago, chef Rodolfo Guzman contemplated a plant he’d discovered while wandering up to the Salar de Tara salt flats, which lie 4,860 meters above sea level, in the middle of the Atacama desert of northern Chile.

“I wonder if you can eat this,” he said, rubbing the leaves between his fingers. The twig resembled rica-rica, a fragrant herb that thrives in the arid Atacama. It has been used for centuries by the indigenous Mapuche tribes to treat everything from indigestion to heart problems. The day before, Guzman had gathered bushels of rica-rica to make ice cream at his internationally acclaimed restaurant, Borago, located about 1,000 kilometers away in Santiago.

Click here to continue reading "Chef Rodolfo Guzman Rediscovers His Roots" on The Japan Times.

The International Language of Sake

2016-02-17T14:18:00.000+09:00


A tasting of sake styles based on historical recipes.

--> Inside a classroom at the National Research Institute of Brewing, in Hiroshima, the discussion was lively and focused. A group of sake instructors from Europe, North America, and Asia stood around a table trying to describe the taste of Japanese history.

“I like number four. It’s bone dry but has a flavor that’s hard to place -- something like cherry liqueur,” said David Munro, an educator from Canada. He had just sampled Okihomare Edo no Junmaishu 90, which had been brewed according to a recipe from the 1850s.

Michael Ou, a chef and sake teacher from Taiwan, favored a deep-amber brew called Kanbun no Shizuku, which recreated a style that was popular in 1665. “The residual sugar in this one is off the charts, but it almost reminds me of soy sauce and dashi (kelp and bonito broth),” he mused.

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Ou and Munro had been selected along with six others to participate in a special teachers’ training course organized by the London-based Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), which began offering sake classes in 2014. Supported by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, the training program included a six-day tour of Japan to give instructors an immersive experience of sake and Japanese food culture.

Japanese food culture was also a key component of the training program.

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WSET Antony Moss was never short on probing questions.

The WSET currently offers its Level 3 Award in Sake in five regions (Great Britain, the US, Canada, Hong Kong, and Dubai) and will be expanding across Europe and Asia this year. At the moment, the Level 3 course, which is aimed at industry professionals, is only available in English, but this summer the organization will debut a Level 1 introductory course in five languages: English, Korean, Chinese, Italian, and German. WSET director Antony Moss says that plans are also afoot to translate materials into French and Japanese. This year’s recruits are perfectly placed to lead the multilingual push for sake education tailored to local markets: the instructors come from various cultural and vocational backgrounds, and all are fluent in two or more languages.

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Diversity -- in sake, as well as among the participants themselves -- was one of the themes of the training program. The tour began in Ishikawa Prefecture with a visit to Shata Shuzo, famous for their Tengumai brand of umami-heavy yamahai-style brews. Next, the group traveled to Fukui Prefecture and sampled aged varieties of highly polished Born daiginjo at Katou Kichibee Shoten, before moving on to Kyoto Prefecture’s Masuda Tokubee Shoten, where cloudy nigori sake was first developed 50 years ago. In addition to receiving a hands-on sake history lesson at Hiroshima’s National Research Institute of Brewing, the instructors took an intensive sensory evaluation course to practice detecting flaws in sake and judging levels of sugar and ethyl caproate.

From sparkling nigori to aged koshu: diversity at Masuda Tokubee Shoten.

The inimitable Kato-san, of Katou Kichibee Shoten

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On the final night of the trip, the educators convened for a tasting of sake brewed outside of Japan. The light-bodied Yu Namachozo Sake from Canada received mixed reviews, while a smooth and melony junmai-shu from South Korea dazzled. “This is like the UN,” someone joked, passing around a bottle of Nogne O sake from Norway. It was a fitting analogy; sake has always had a way of bringing people together.

Sake from around the world

Small and Beautiful

2013-11-08T09:23:00.002+09:00


Lovely, lovely Momiji from Kumpai Shuzo in Shizuoka

Today in my Kanpai Culture column, I introduce father-and-son brewing team Seiji and Hidetoshi Ichikawa, of Kumpai Shuzo in Shizuoka.

At this point in my sake life, I've seen a lot of breweries. Most of them are small: The overwhelming majority of brewers (870-ish out of 1200-ish) make fewer than 100kl per year. But Kumpai takes small to another level entirely. The Ichikawas make only 14kl. To put this in perspective, Japan's biggest producer, Hakutsuru Shuzo, pumps out over 5000kl per year, and the top five brewers make most of the sake on the market today. With more independent breweries disappearing every year, this is unlikely to change in the future.

As Seiji Ichikawa says, it's not easy being a David in an increasingly Goliath-geared world. These guys do it all -- literally. If I had to spend 6 months of the year working with my family, I would probably be even more insane than I am already. But somehow the Ichikawas make it work. Perhaps it's because they're both so mellow (even the cat that works with them in the shop is pretty chill).

Mellow is also how I'd describe their Momiji Junmai Ginjo Genshu (above). It's super-soft, round, and luscious. But it packs a punch at 17% alcohol. When I visited Priorat, I discovered the dangerously drinkable Les Crestes from Mas Doix, which a Russian friend and I dubbed "The Easy 15" (due to its quaffable character, despite the high alcohol content). Momiji is "The Sneaky 17." During dinner, I remember saying to JP, "I feel oddly drunk, but there's still sake in this bottle." This is something that almost never happens (well, drunkenness happens occasionally, but sake left in the bottle is less common in this house).

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I'm off to California...in a few hours...to cover the CIA Worlds of Flavor Conference in Napa. And to eat some great food in the Bay Area. I may disappear again for a little while but please check out my Twitter feed @MelindaJoe for updates and food photos galore.

The Bluest Sake

2013-10-08T12:22:00.000+09:00

It's really blue! Shirataki Blue Hawaii sake.

Blue is one of my favorite colors. It's the color of the sky on a crystalline winter's day. The color of my husband's eyes (I think). When it comes to food, however, it is the color that God declared, "Thou shalt not eat." Please, don't bring up blueberries. They're not really blue; they're purple.

My aversion to blue food products -- I say, "products" because surely any snack that can also double as a glow-stick must be artificially colored -- generally extends to drinks. You will not find me sipping a blue soda, or eating one of those ambiguously flavored, shaved ice desserts doused in blue syrup that other people go wild for in Tokyo during the summer. So it was with chagrin that I ordered the Shirataki Blue Hawaii sake from Akita Prefecture the other day at dinner.

First, a word of defense: It is a perfectly drinkable brew, with a clean, fruity impact and a dry finish. The producers had used Yamadanishiki rice milled to 55%, and the blue hue comes from food coloring extracted from gardenias. Technically, they could call this Ginjo-shu, but they (perhaps prudently) elected not to. While I quite like the kitschy label (check out the full-on salaryman character beside the hula dancer -- the only thing that would have made it better is if they'd drawn him with glasses), the thought of drinking blue sake doesn't sit well with me on an aesthetic level.

Give that salaryman glasses, and you're gold (and blue).

Then again, I am not the target audience. This is clearly intended for the under-30 crowd. Still, I find it slightly disheartening that a respected producer like Shirataki, whose product line I enjoy very much, has to resort to gimmicky marketing to attract younger drinkers. The trend is apparently afflicting producers of fermented beverages across the board. A French winemaker shocked the world with the launch of its cola-flavored wine, while Japan's beer makers are trying every trick in the book to boost sales -- including dosing lager with fruit syrup. I discussed this disconcerting practice in my last Kanpai Culture column in the Japan Times (see below).

Young drinkers of the world, I implore you. Learn to embrace alcohol as the delicious natural product that it is, rather than a merely means toward inebriation (although that is a happy side effect), so that we journalists will no longer have to read or write articles about fruity beer cocktails...

Morbid curiosity had prompted me to order a "Two-Tone” beer cocktail at the Kirin Ichiban Shibori Beer Garden in the Akasaka district. I had read, with no small measure of disbelief, that Tokyo’s latest summer beer fad was lager mixed with fruit juice or sweet syrup, and I had to see it with my own eyes. My mind struggled to grasp the concept of beer flavored with blueberry syrup, which according to one article in The Wall Street Journal, has been a popular choice this year. Perhaps most staggering of all was the combination of beer and Calpis, the yogurt-flavored soda inspired by fermented yak’s milk from Mongolia.

Click here to continue reading on The Japan Times.

You Say Ceviche

2013-09-30T12:16:00.000+09:00

And I say, well, I say ceviche, too. I have, however, seen it spelled “cebiche” on several occasions, which has caused me to wonder, perhaps ungraciously, whether or not this alternative spelling springs from Peru’s large Nikkei population, who are of Japanese descent. The Japanese language, with its limited syllabary, lacks certain sounds, most notably l, r, and v -- a phonetic circumstance that can sometimes result in unfortunate misspellings. The emotional intensity of a phrase like “I love you,” for instance, is much diminished when written, “I rub you,” notwithstanding the true intent of the speaker. Of course, it makes no sense that the Nikkei should be responsible for the “cebiche” phenomenon; doubtless, it is as unlikely for a second-generation Japanese to have a Japanese accent as I am to have a Chinese one.

But I digress. One of the themes of my week in Lima was ceviche. It is, if not the national dish of Peru (yes, yes, Chileans, I know yours is famous, too), certainly one of its culinary treasures. A simple preparation of fresh fish marinated in citrus, chili, and onions, it is typically eaten as a snack or appetizer during the lazy, hazy Peruvian afternoons -- but never after 5pm, when the peak of freshness has passed. The marinating liquid, called leche de tigre, is rumored to be an effective cure for hangovers, and I noticed many of my colleagues slurping it up during the trip.

El Rincon Que no Conoces

My first encounter with this dish was at the traditional Peruvian restaurant El Rincon Que no Conoces, a charming local hangout, which had been run until a few years ago by the beloved Mama Teresa. The ceviche there was rustic, served in sizeable, uneven chunks alongside boiled potatoes and a cob of what I will refer to as "big-ass corn," but the vibrant leche de tigre lifted it to another level. It was a fresh prelude to my heaping plate of arroz con pato, a slow-cooked duck thigh on top of savory, cilantro-infused rice.

Next was Gaston Acurio's fine-dining riff: Cebicheando por Chucuito. It was a really delicious plate -- finely cut pieces of raw fish, set on the edge of a puddle of red pepper puree, topped with tiny fried squid and seaweed for texture. One of my favorite dishes at Astrid & Gaston.


How pretty is this? Ceviche, Nikkei-style.

Another surprising variation -- featuring fish, clams, and crunchy tobiko in a cold dashi broth -- was found at Maido, the excellent Nikkei restaurant helmed by Peruvian-born Micha Tsumura. I really enjoyed my meal here. Living in Japan, I usually try to avoid Japanese food when I travel, but Nikkei is really more Peruvian than Japanese. It's very of-the-moment, and Micha has a winning way with fish.

Ceviche at Chez Wong

Javier Wong, of the renowned Chez Wong, makes some of the most famous ceviche in town. The man is a real character, nearly 70 and always wearing the best pair of retro aviator shades. So flashy. He makes his ceviche by slapping a huge fish on the cutting board and attacking it with a cleaver, then mixing it with sliced octopus in a simple, chili-flecked leche de tigre. I heard that he used to be a crime reporter before he got into the food business.

Ceviche with uni and corn, at La Mar

My ceviche journey ended, quite fittingly, at La Mar, where they serve a head-spinning variety of marinated seafood. But one of my favorite discoveries of this trip was the tiraditos there, which not only looked beautiful but tasted amazing. You can think of tiraditos as ceviche's second cousin, which incorporates the Japanese cutting technique of usugiri and also incudes aji amarillo in the marinade. Unforgettable.

I had intended to upload this post last week, but time got the better of me. Next up will be some snapshots of chilly Sweden, where I spent the last week exploring the food scene.

If you have time for only one serving of traditos in Lima, let it be at La Mar.

Notes from Yet Another Airport

2013-09-16T11:16:00.000+09:00


Luscious, lovely uni. Peru, who knew?

At 6:40am, I touch down at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, deeply disoriented, a transcontinental somnambulist with a blank passport. Despite the best efforts of the cabin crew and the other passengers on my flight from Lima to deprive me of sleep, I managed to snooze most of the way. Slumber still clings to me as I wander through the empty electric corridors. Tired and hungry, I spill into the red plastic-covered booth of a fast-food diner and order bacon and eggs (which, I notice later, are not real eggs but egg substitutes). The bearded man behind me has a thick Southern accent, and I’m surprised when he asks for a hamburger and a vanilla shake. Hamburger I can understand, but vanilla shake? Who does that before noon?

It’s bright now, and the concourses begin to buzz with human traffic -- herds of doughy Americans, invariably bulky from the waist down; random groups of Chinese tourists, who fan out across the walkways, ensnaring me in a web of Mandarin; a tangle of Indians buying snacks; countless Spanish speakers. A middle-aged maintenance man swaggers by with his hair slicked back in a duck’s tail and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one of his sleeves. He’s properly Rockabilly, without a trace of irony, and I can see that he was once very handsome. His good looks still linger despite the wrinkles and fleshy jowls, but just barely, like a jacket about to slip off of his shoulders.

It feels as though I’ve never been here, in this airport, but of course I have. I’d changed planes here just eight days ago, on my way from Tokyo to Lima. At that time, I rushed to get through immigration and customs before running to the gate. I got in line just in time for boarding, surrounded by missionaries, engineers in the oil business, Peruvians carrying colorful, oversized shopping bags woven from plastic fibers, and one elderly woman from Canada on her first trip abroad to see the “sacred sights.”

My purpose was altogether different: As usual, I was traveling for food. I’d been invited to the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurant awards ceremony and would be attending a series of gastronomic events during my week in Peru: the Mistura festival, a 10-day celebration showcasing local food; Limay, the international culinary congress featuring star chefs like Rene Redzepi and Massimo Bottura; and GELINAZ! (all-caps and punctuation theirs), an extraordinary food-art performance that defies definition.

My thoughts from the trip are still a jumble. I cannot yet begin to make sense of everything I’ve experienced over the last few days. In Lima, they have sea urchin with lobes the size of fingers, as I discovered at La Mar, where they serve it to you raw piled high in a martini glass (this memory stays with me all throughout the journey from Lima back to Tokyo). The tumbo fruit and other local citrus are amazingly fragrant, almost floral, and must be the reason why Peruvian ceviche is so simple but so good. Guinea pig tastes a lot like rabbit, succulent and mild in flavor. Eating coca leaves is not like doing cocaine at all (or so I’ve been told). The varieties of seaweed in Peru astound me -- I tried one variety at the restaurant Central that’s shaped like little marbles and reminiscent of tapioca. Also at Central, I ate a jelly made from the wood of the huampo tree; the ingredients from the Amazon and the Andes are endlessly fascinating. I’ve developed a taste for tiradito, crispy quinoa, and pisco sours and am enchanted with Nikkei cuisine, a fusion of Japanese and Peruvian traditions.

Never mind that it takes over 22 hours to get to Peru from Japan. I know I have to go back some day.

Snap, Sparkle, Pop

2013-08-30T03:00:00.000+09:00

At last, the seemingly interminable days of relentless heat and insanity-inducing humidity have begun to ebb. Summer in Japan is never pleasant, but this year was a record-breaking doozie. For the last two months, the mere act of stepping outside had been enough to elicit a string of unladylike expletives from my mouth (though that’s probably neither here nor there), but I think that this brutal heat wave is finally on the wane. My neighbors are thankful.

Throughout this sweaty ordeal, I’ve been drinking a lot of sparkling sake (among many other things, but that, too, is probably neither here nor there), mostly because the bubbles suit the party-heavy mood and the lighter palate of the season (and heat or no heat parties during the summertime are a must). Last year, I wrote about the trend of brewers experimenting with unorthodox sake styles -- low-alcohol, yogurt-infused brews, and flavored sake -- but the one fad that’s endured has been sparkling sake. Although some varieties are thick and some can be cloying, there are a number of lovely sparkling brews out there.

One of my perennial go-to’s is the Dassai Happou Nigori-shu 50. Effervescently fruity with a light texture that keeps it from being too sticky, this crowd-pleasing sake is perfect for parties.

A slightly drier sake that is also good for summer is Hakkaisan Happou Nigori Junmai. It’s nice and tight, with a crisp finish. The sparkling effect is the result of added CO2, rather than secondary fermentation, which some purists may find off-putting. But this should hardly be a problem for most hosts, unless your guests lack the social grace to refrain from mentioning that they are disturbed by this fact.

But the sparkling sake that I’m most enamored of right now is Amabuki Junmai Ginjo Sparkling from Saga Prefecture. Made from Gin no Sato rice, it’s gently fizzy and nicely balanced, with the kind of nuanced flavor that really grows on you. But beware: It’s dangerously easy to drink, and before you know it the bottle will be empty, which is fine for a party but less so if you’re sipping it while writing an article due in the morning.

Thanks to my favorite French virtual concierge, Serge Lescouranec, for prompting me to think about this question and thus update my poor neglected blog.

World Class Cocktails by Tsuyoshi Miyazaki

2013-07-12T09:59:00.002+09:00

Very classy: Tsuyoshi Miyazaki of Nara Hotel and his signature Ciroc Vineyard cocktail.

In my Kanpai Culture column today, I take a peek inside the Diageo World Class Japan Final competition. This was my second brush with the world of bartending contests, and, though different, it was no less bizarre than my first experience, at the Diageo World Class Global Final in Rio de Janeiro last year. Compared to the global final, the Japan final was much smaller and more subdued, the presentations more like studied expositions rather than stage performances (one notable exception was Toshiyuki Kubo, of Ark Bar in Aomori Prefecture, who is obviously a natural showman). But, thankfully, the fashion was every bit as over-the-top and fun as I'd hoped.

The winner of this year's Japan final was Tsuyoshi Miyazaki, from Nara Hotel. A proper and technically proficient mixologist, Miyazaki is a great example of a practitioner who has clearly been trained in the classical Ginza style of Japanese bartending but is open to new ideas. His contemporary twist on the Rob Roy was made with muddled maraschino cherries, blended with Johnnie Walker Gold Label, sweet vermouth, Grand Marnier and orange bitters. This all sounded rather staid until I discovered that he served the drink in an antique glass from the 1800s, which he had perfumed with incense prior to pouring.

Although I wasn't able to make it to the global final this year, I was happy to hear that Miyazaki-san was named Best Bartender in the Asia-Pacific region a couple of days ago. Try your hand at his signature serve, a Francophilic cocktail called the Ciroc Vineyard:

30ml Cîroc

10ml Blanquette méthode ancestrale

5ml Ugni blan sparkling wine

5ml Pineau des Charentes

5ml Homemade syrup

Sea salt

Orange zest

Gelatin

A (Rainy) Week of Japanese Wines

2013-06-28T12:10:00.001+09:00

Another raniy day in Tokyo. This is the tsuyu, the rainy season that cloaks the horizon in wet cotton wool from June until mid-July. Around this time, Japanese housewives prepare themselves to battle the mold that creeps over everything -- walls, tiles, and, most distressingly, food. For the next few weeks, we will all think twice about wearing our best shoes out.

The rainy season this year has been erratic, starting late and dumping buckets for hours before clearing up and steaming the concrete-lined urban areas like jacket potatoes. Earlier this month, there were terrifying floods in parts of the country, which were inundated with 180mm of water in a day.

But it’s not all bad. Thanks to these damp conditions, our good friend Aspergillus Oryzae, koji-kin, is able to thrive, without which there would be no sake, no miso, no soy sauce. And at least on this drizzly morning, the temperatures are moderate. The touch of the air on my skin is cool like glass. I wake up to find the cat curled up at the foot of the bed, and before JP’s alarm goes off, I put vanilla in his coffee.

The rain puts Japanese winemakers in a far less sanguine mood. Theirs is a quixotic endeavor, a battle against what represents for wine producers anywhere in the world Enemy Number One: storms that pelt the vines with water during the crucial pollination period of June to July.

Why do they do it? The answer is pure, obdurate passion and, as winemaker Hisa Kawabe tells me, a penchant for risk-taking. Kawabe is the oenological director of Takahata Winery in Yamagata. Before that, he’d been a winemaker at Silverado Winery in Napa Valley.

I’d interviewed Kawabe-san about how Takahata copes with the elements in mountainous Yamagata for my Kanpai Culture column in The Japan Times. When I’d visited Priorat (another famously mountainous region) in May, I’d been struck by how hard the winemakers have to struggle to grow grapes in such an unfertile, inhospitable area. Growers in Yamagata face opposite yet equally tough conditions. Their approach is completely different, but the level of effort is admirable in both cases.

A rain guard protects grapes and the ground at Takahata Winery.

In Japan, the work has been paying off for Takahata Winery. JP and I spent a week tasting their wines and were fairly impressed. We were pleased to discover that they’re all terrifically food friendly; even the oakier 2010 Barrique Chardonnay was a great match for roast salmon and onions.

A few notes:

2011 Barrique Chardonnay: Oak influence more integrated compared to the 2010, fresh fruit on the palate (citrus, stone fruit) with a noticeable mineral edge. Good, balanced acidity, quiet finish. This worked well with vegetables and seafood salad.

2010 Barrique Cabernet Sauvignon: Full, intriguing nose. Medium body. Fruity attack, lots of cassis and some plum with soft oak on the palate, and backed by sufficient acid/tannin structure. The finish, however, didn’t follow through as I had hoped.

2012 Yoshi Sparkling Pinot and Chardonnay: This was the surprise of the bunch. Furiously sparkling, with a delightful cherry-blossom-pink tinge, this bubbly started out bone-dry and then developed a lovely, high-note sweetness during the meal. It was the perfect match for homey Chinese chicken curry and cucumber salad. I’d like to try this again with spicy dishes.

The wine makers in Priorat have figured out how to produce legendary wines. While the Japanese still have a long way to go, maybe they’ll get there one day. I’ll be rooting for them.

How to Crash a Gala Event

2013-06-10T08:06:00.001+09:00

The Roca brothers, photographed by the author after a few glasses of Champagne.

The answer, in a word, is persistence. When circumstances contrived to put me in London around (albeit not exactly near) the timing of the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony, I seized the opportunity to attend. Well, "seized" is not entirely accurate -- I waffled on the decision to go for a while. I'd been invited to judge at the International Wine Challenge, but the competition was scheduled to take place almost two weeks before the 50 Best. The idea of hanging around London for that long, though appealing, didn't seem practical. Luck, however, smiled on me, and I found places to stay and plenty to do (one thrilling side effect of the W50BR ceremony is the burst of food-related activity around that time).

"Opportunity" is also something of a misnomer: I hadn't been invited to the event. The awards ceremony is notoriously difficult to get into. Although I'd covered the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants awards in Singapore previously, I knew that securing a seat would be a challenge, particularly at such a late date. But I persevered. A nudge here, a wink there. Ok, a lot of nudges and several winks. The point is that I got there in the end.

Was it worth the palaver? Yes and no. The ceremony differs very little from other awards ceremonies, except that the winners are chefs, and the canapés are better (at least they were in London -- the food was prepared by the restaurant Lima). Because the chefs were asked not to make speeches, the announcements were mercifully brief. As a whole, it was a much more stylish and fun affair than the Asia's 50. But what's really exciting is the fact that the event brings people in the industry from around the globe together for a few, fleeting days. For me, it was a chance to see friends with whom I communicate often but rarely see in person, and to celebrate the work of some of the world's most talented chefs.

In essence, I went for the after parities.

While sorting through some of the digital files stored on my voice recorder yesterday, I discovered an hour-long, accidental recording from what I assume to be the party at The Clove Club. It's mostly blaring dance music and the sound of glasses being cleared, feet shuffling, drunken shouts of "What?" and the like. I couldn't bear to listen to the whole tape (the only thing I hate more than the sound of my recorded voice is the sound of my inebriated recorded voice), but I did smile at one exchange.

Random voice: It was a great night.
Me: It was.
RV: I'm glad we went to the other party, too.
Me: Mmm, same. It's been such a great night.
RV: It really has, hasn't it?
Me: Yes.

Every party should end this way. Even in this crap recording, I could hear it vibrating through our Champagne-and-gin-soaked vocal chords: that incipient bloom of nostalgia, the pearly-pink seed that eventually grows into a glittering memory. The sigh that follows a belly laugh. After you've hugged so many strangers that you've forgotten that you're really shy. While you still feel more like Cinderella than the pumpkin. Before the harsh, Atlantic sun has the chance to remind you that you have a flight to catch and a hangover to quell.

When I came home to Tokyo, I wrote a piece about the event, which was published in The Huffington Post last month. Click here to see the original version, or just keep reading.

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By the time I’d arrived at the Guildhall, half an hour before the World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards in London, the scene had descended into quiet chaos. The guests had started to migrate from the courtyard into the hall for Champagne and canapés, and journalists were scrambling to snatch two minutes with the top chefs. A wall of reporters five-people deep surrounded Noma’s Rene Redzepi, forming a small but impenetrable citadel of cameramen.

While waiting for an opening in the human barricade, I met a young Italian copywriter with a difficult-to-place accent (he lives in France) and a formidable Afro. He wasn’t going to the ceremony but had stopped by to spread the word about the after parties.

Partying was the last thing on my mind. The week leading up the 50 Best had been a string of late nights and food-related bacchanals. It had started with a boozy, pop-up Sunday lunch prepared by James Lowe, of the guerilla cooking team The Young Turks. Next came the LAB festival, where I ate ants that tasted like lime caviar from the Noma test kitchen; elbowed my way through a hungry mob for a bite of the stunning, minimalist Parmesan risotto Massimo Bottura serves at his restaurant, Osteria Francescana (No. 3on this year’s 50 Best List); and discovered why Danny Bowien, of Mission Street Chinese Food, had once been crowned the pesto champion of Genoa. The day before the ceremony, I’d attended the Identita Golose London Lunch of a Lifetime at Harrod’s, a 13-Michelin-starred collaboration featuring seven of Italy’s most celebrated chefs, followed by a launch party for the new Cook It Raw book released by Phaidon.

The grand finale of my time in London was the announcement of the 50 Best List, the controversial ranking system created by Britain’s Restaurant Magazine 11 years ago. With 49 of the 50 nominated chefs in attendance -- a testament to the rising prominence of the awards -- the atmosphere was one of buzzy excitement. Like many of the chefs, Seiji Yamamoto, of Tokyo’s Ryugin (No. 22), had come to London specifically for the event. He had flown in the night before and was scheduled to return to Japan the following day.

“How terrible,” I said, recalling that I, too, would be making that trip in under 24 hours.

“I’m fine,” he shrugged. “I’m not here long enough to feel the jet lag.” Such is the life of a traveling chef.

When I finally caught up with Redzepi, I was surprised to find the famously healthy Danish chef puffing on a cigarette.

“Have you always smoked?” I asked.

“Only on wonderful occasions,” he replied, flashing a boyish smile.

I chatted with him about the destination he’s the most interested in now (Mexico) and what he thought would be the next big thing in gastronomy (South America, a “world of totally new flavors”). I’d already heard him tell the previous two journalists that although it would be nice to remain in the No. 1 spot, he didn’t feel like Noma needed to win this year. Instead of repeating the question that had surely dogged him all afternoon, I wished him luck.

As the guests took their seats at the ceremony, however, news quickly spread that the results of the 50 Best List had been leaked. Twitter flaunted that the rankings were already “all over the Internet.” Thanks to the early disclosure, few were surprised to hear that Spain’s El Cellar de can Roca had pushed Noma into the No. 2 position and had risen to the top of the list.

After spending ninety minutes trapped in the media center, tweeting, the prospect of Champagne suddenly sounded like a rather appealing idea. And so I went, into that dark night, to the official after party downstairs.

“Just for a minute,” I told my friends. Fatal last words.

We carried on at Roka, where the Roca brothers -- Joan, Josep, and Jordi -- were celebrating, together with several of the night’s winners. Between glasses of bubbly and bites of sea-bream sushi, celebrity chefs like Dinner’s Heston Blumenthal (No. 7); Thomas Keller, of The French Laundry (No. 47); and Alex Atala, of D.O.M. in Sao Paulo (No. 6), floated around the room, exchanging hugs and congratulations. Asian chefs Yoshihiro Narisawa, of Narisawa in Tokyo (No. 20, and winner of the first Sustainable Restaurant Award), and Andre Chiang, of Restaurant Andre in Singapore (No. 38), made appearances later, and Alinea’s Grant Achatz (No. 15, and winner of the Chefs’ Choice Award) rolled in well past midnight.

Apart from saying what an honor it was to be included on the 50 Best List, the chefs didn’t comment on the awards. Our conversations turned instead to Japan, where I live. Apparently, several gastronomic luminaries are heading there in the upcoming months for business and pleasure: Achatz and Chiang, for example, are scheduled to participate in a culinary congress on Modernist cuisine in Hokkaido in September.

By 2am, I was itching to get to The Clove Club, the hip new restaurant in east London helmed by another Young Turk, Isaac McHale. While the vibe at Roka had been exclusive and subdued, The Clove Club was heaving, with people spilling out onto the steps and along the pavement. Inside, ankle-throbbing music reverberated off of the high ceilings, and mustachioed bartenders outfitted in suspenders and vests mixed potent gin and tonics as half of the Osteria Francescana team trailed by in a conga line.

The energy in the place was almost as intense as the music. Here, alongside big names like Rene Redzepi, was the next generation of rising stars, bursting with the kind of exuberance that comes from knowing that your best work is ahead of you. The Young Turks. James Knappett, a Noma alum whose restaurant, Kitchen Table, had impressed me a few nights before. Junya Yamasaki, the chef at the cultishly popular Japanese restaurant Koya. And perhaps most significantly, the sous chefs and kitchen staff that keep many of the world’s top restaurants running every night -- ambitious, young men and women you haven’t heard of yet but will soon.

Past 4am, I tottered away from The Clove Club on four-inch heels as treacherous as Champagne flutes, happy but dreading the 12-hour flight back to Tokyo that I’d have to face later that afternoon. Unlike Seiji Yamamoto, I could feel the jet lag already.

Talking with Chefs: Hajime Yoneda of Hajime

2013-05-31T13:56:00.002+09:00

Chef Hajime Yoneda at work. Photo: HAJIME

Hajime Yoneda is a trim man in his early 40s, with a full head of spiky, black hair and square-framed glasses that give him a bookish appearance. Out of his chef's whites, he wears a casual pullover top tucked into his jeans, with slightly dressy leather shoes. It's a look that works for him, one that jives with his serious comportment and pragmatic disposition. One can easily imagine Mr. Yoneda working quite ably, if not happily, as an engineer.

In fact, when he was in his 20s, he did work as an engineer, before he went into the restaurant business. Although he'd always dreamed of becoming a chef, his parents had other plans (a problem familiar to many Asian children who harbor creative aspirations that fall outside of the profession "concert violinist"). Instead of going into debt, Mr. Yoneda earned a degree in engineering from Kinki University and worked at a computer company while he saved up enough money to go to culinary school. Serious.

In 2002, he relocated to France to work at Bernard Robin the Loire region. When he ran into visa trouble unexpectedly, he decided to use his time to study painting and even held a handful of exhibitions there. Interestingly, Mr. Yoneda's talent as a painter eventually helped him get his work permit: The local mayor, who had been impressed by one of his shows, had a word with President Jacques Chirac, and the problem was quickly solved. Pragmatic.

I met Chef Yoneda for the first time last December, when I interviewed him for The Wall Street Journal Asia about his environmentally themed dish, Chikyu. It's a stunner of a piece -- literally dozens of varieties of vegetables (110 at the time), meticulously prepared and served on a gorgeous ceramic plate the size of a small table. The dish, he says, was inspired by the connection between the mineral-rich waters that produce Japan's best seafood and the densely forested mountain areas that surround them. I'd never thought about the secret lives of shellfish and how closely they were tied to terrestrial plants, but of course it all made sense.

"Fallen leaves from the forest enrich the earth, and the nutrients flow into the sea," he explained. Click to see how Chef Yoneda prepares his Chikyu dish.

Chikyu (Planet Earth) at Hajime. Photo: HAJIME

While working on a piece about sustainable restaurants for The Japan Times, I contacted him again. I know that he's a strong supporter of locally grown produce and figured he'd have some thoughts on the topic. I was not wrong. Despite being terribly busy, he wrote a three-page-long answer to my queries on the Shinkansen ride from Tokyo back to Osaka.

Until recently, major businesses have not actively promoted sustainable produce (Ema Koeda told me that companies aren't interested in marketing "sustainability" because the organic movement was not successful), but Chef Yoneda says that a lot of restaurants, particularly in the fine-dining category, are interested in organic and sustainable ingredients.

"We often see restaurants adding the label 'organically farmed' to their menus," he said. "Guests who dine at famous restaurants probably assume that those places use organic ingredients, as it seems only natural."

But, he notes, it's not simply that "organic" equals delicious produce: What you're tasting is the passion of the farmer.

One comment that caught my attention was about ethically sourced meat and seafood. Mr. Yoneda says that the concept has yet to really take off in Japan, partly because there are few reliable sources of information. I'd be interested in looking into this further.

To bring about real change, more education is needed. "It's not about getting people to eat organic and ethically sourced products; the important thing is to make people understand why these issues are important in the first place," he said.

This is Serious: Sake and Wine Judging at the International Wine Challenge

2013-05-28T10:54:00.000+09:00

Controlled pandemonium: Wine judging at the IWC requires 2 weeks and hundreds of judges.

A day of sake judging at the International Wine Challenge begins with coffee and croissants, followed by an orientation/pep-talk by the event organizers. This pep-talk reminds me of what my elementary school teachers used to say before the games commenced on field day ("Do your best and, above all, have fun") but is actually necessary: As judges, we might be given 70 - 90 bottles of sake to sample in a day. And it is a long day -- from 9:30am until 5:30pm.

Whenever I tell people this, they almost invariably say, "Oh, you must get trashed." While it's true that some of the alcohol does get absorbed into the bloodstream over the course of the day, it's important to remember that "tasting" differs greatly from "drinking." When I'm judging (and also when tasting at a sake event), I spit every time (and so should you). Okay, every once in a while I may swallow, if it's at the end of the day, and especially if it's a sake I've deemed a gold medalist.

Based on my experience the last two years (the sake judging was held in Tokyo last year but returned to London in 2013), the first flights are honjozo. This usually elicits a groan from the panel. Thanks to the light and low-profile character of these brews, you really have to focus to discern the subtle differences. Honjozos are the wall flowers of the sake world: quiet, receding, happy to hum along in the background rather than take center stage. Ultimately, it's a good way to start, as it sharpens your attention and primes your palate for the bigger flavors that come later.

The most difficult thing, besides maintaining your concentration throughout, is putting your personal preferences aside. Some people, for example, have difficulty appreciating jukusei-shu (aged sake) because it tastes hine (old, or "off") to them. I have the same problem being impartial to really aggressive namazake because I feel that the "nama-ness" has a tendency to mask the other flavors. It's something I'm working on.

Our sake judging panel, led by the great Yuji Matsumoto.

One of the best things about judging at the IWC is the fact that the competition brings together Japanese and non-Japanese experts to get a range of opinions that reflect today's global sake consumers. The other thing that I love is that judging is done in panels, the same way that wine is evaluated at competitions. After each judge gives an individual score, the panel discusses the sake until a consensus is reached. This is great for consumers because it means that the judges have to put a lot of thought into their decisions. It's also good for judges because you get the chance to hear different perspectives (the way a sommelier assess sake can differ from the way a retailer or a journalist does), and less experienced judges can learn from senior judges.

This year, I was doubly honored to be invited to participate in the wine judging as an associate judge, tasting alongside some of the sharpest palates on the planet. Such a fantastic experience.

But you don't have to be a sake pro to improve your tasting skills. In my Kampai Culture column this month, I talked with the Kikisakeshi World Champion Kaoru Izuha about simple ways to work on your sake palate. A version of this article appeared in The Japan Times (click here to view the original and see Kaoru's sake pairing tips).

Kaoru takes the same approach to sake tasting that she does to wine tasting. First, she checks the color, which can give indications about the sake’s age. Generally speaking, older sake, particularly when aged at higher temperatures, takes on a darker hue and a stronger character. After sniffing and then sipping the sake, she tries to identify particular aromas and flavors.

“Many people just judge whether a sake is dry or sweet, but I think the most important thing is to look for certain kinds of flavors. There are only five tastes (salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami) but over 500 flavors,” she said. “I ask myself what kind of fruit, vegetable, or kind of tree the flavor reminds me of.”

Ginjo and daiginjo-grade brews typically display fruity aromas and flavors like melon, apple and pear. Some modern styles may have strawberry or tropical-fruit flavors of pineapple, mango or kiwi. Herbal notes such as watercress, anise and mint are also common. More full-bodied kimoto and yamahai styles, however, are likely to show earthier flavors like dried shiitake mushroom, toasted grain or wood. Because most varieties of sake contain some residual sugar, Izuha says that she also looks for sugary flavors: sweet rice powder, brown sugar, refined sugar, or honey.

To fully appreciate the brew’s bouquet and range of flavors, she recommends using a wine glass, rather than the small cups commonly used to serve sake in Japan.

Training your palate takes time, but it’s easy to get started: “You can do this your everyday life, just by going to the supermarket and learning the flavors of fruits and vegetables,” Izuha concluded.

This is Hardcore: Notes from Another Airport

2013-05-20T14:12:00.001+09:00

Oh, Barcelona, you stunner, you.

10 things I learned in Spain:

1. A large number of the men in Catalonia are named Jordi.

2. A typical Spanish breakfast consists of Jamon Iberico, chorizo, and Manchego cheese, followed by freshly baked pastries stuffed with apples and dried fruit, and glazed with icing sugar. The breakfast of champions includes a glass of cava.

3. The word for “slate” in Spanish is llicorella, a beautiful example of the seductive musicality of the language. Just try saying it: llicorella. The syllables roll off your tongue like pearls.

4. The white wines of Priorat -- an appellation famous for big, bold reds -- have a lot of potential. Many of these wines are made from white Grenache and are especially delicious with crusty bread and some of the piquant local olive oil.

5. Goat’s cheese, fresh anchovies, and olive tapenade on toast is an outstanding combination, the perfect accompaniment to a glass of cava and an hour of people watching at the tapas bar Quimet y Quimet.

6. After a few glasses of cava, the world shimmers with possibility. Despite the fact that you have not slept for days, can’t speak Spanish (or Catalan), and have a deadline looming over your head, you will feel excited to be alive and hanging out in Barcelona.

7. Getting a reservation at Tickets is difficult, but well worth the effort.

8. To arrive 2 hours before your flight at 6:50 am, you need to wake up at 3:35. Arriving 2 hours before your flight at 6:50 am is entirely unnecessary.

9. Dealing with JAL is a study in misery. Air France is only marginally better.

10. Even before you set foot on the plane, you will miss this country and dream of returning one day.

I have not yet cracked the mystery of how the Spaniards manage to eat dinner at 10 pm and still get up early for work in the morning.

Overlooking vineyards in Priorat.

The days have whizzed by in a blur. It’s been an amazing trip, down the leafy boulevards of Barcelona and on through the captivating, austere terrain of Priorat, two hours southwest of the city. The Priorat is a land of tough nature: serpentine mountain roads, twisted trees and grapevines sprouting from near-vertical slopes, and forests concealing tiny villages that look as though they’ve been forgotten by time. After the last few years of scant precipitation, the winemakers have welcomed this year's unexpected, heavy rain. Usually, the Priorat is a somber monochrome of burnt sienna and dusty sepia tones. Now, spiky bushes jut up from the hillsides and brazen wildflowers pepper the ground with sprays of yellow and fuschia. The landscape wears its verdant robes like an act of defiance -- a flinty-eyed Cinderella decked out in late-spring finery, ready to dance on bare, calloused feet. Beneath this mantle of unruly foliage, you can still see the dry, slate-flecked earth that gives the wines their mineral character.

Our schedule was demanding: a tasting of 50 wines before embarking on the journey to Priorat, morning vineyard visits followed by five hours of tasting and late, Spanish-style dinners. Or, on another day, a long lunch in the stone cellar of a winery, surrounded by barrels and a 12-bottle line-up of wines. To be honest, I’ve lost track.

Back in Barcelona, I rushed to meet my friends Alan and Anna, who, in true rock-star style, flew all the way from Hong Kong on a whim, to have dinner with me at Tickets (a great meal, which I will write about later). One more day, a lot more food, and two hours of sleep later, I’m back in the air -- looking forward to finally being home sweet home.

Hello, Goodbye

2013-05-14T01:50:00.001+09:00


It's nearly 11 by the time I leave Paris.

5/12/2013

Paris. 6:30am.

The international terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport is a long, airy structure with high ceilings and glass panels that give it the appearance of a giant greenhouse. Inside, the bruised petals of fatigue are blooming behind eyelids and around eye sockets. From my stool at the espresso stand, I watch fat cumulus clouds move slowly across the sky overhead, a reminder that time is passing. The light flooding the building is strong and tinged with the orange-pink hue of early morning. It dazzles the retinas of the travelers -- many of whom, like me, have flown overnight, or must have risen well before dawn. It’s bright enough to wear sunglasses, but no one does because it seems silly to wear shades indoors.

The faces of the people connecting here are largely Caucasian, mostly French. You can spot the Americans by their breakfast choices: large coffees and orange juices to wash down a sandwich-and-chocolate-croissant combo. There are a few Spaniards scattered about, some Germans, a table of Nigerians, and, somewhat inexplicably, a large group of Cantonese-speaking Chinese. From what I can discern, most of the Japanese that had come over with me have disembarked and are already beginning their adventures in Paris (or else, preparing to be afflicted, as so many of them are, by Paris Syndrome).

So different is this scene from the last time I changed planes, in Kuala Lumpur, en route to and from Singapore. When I’d arrived at the airport in KL on the way there, it was before 8am, and a simmering chaos permeated the air. Flocks of women in brightly colored headscarves migrated from one end of the terminal to the other, chatting and laughing; near the entrance, stalls selling Malaysian noodle dishes and Indian vegetarian food exhaled curry-scented steam; shops peddling discounted Diesel jeans abutted roti stands. Everyone was talking on cell phones.

So here I am in Paris again. It feels like I was just here -- because I was, only four short weeks ago. It had been a brief but somewhat hectic stay, an unexpected detour during my three-week sojourn in London. I flew back to Tokyo full of stories and delirious from a lack of sleep. A little over a week later, I got on a plane and turned right back around again. This is my life recently.

I fell asleep last night -- by which I mean technically this morning -- in a huff, squeezed into the middle seat of the middle row of a ridiculously packed flight from Tokyo to Paris. JAL had enraged me. The online check-in service, once I had managed to access it (after two phone calls and six confusing web pages later), had lied to me. Flat-out lied. The seating chart, which had shown my seat to be positioned on an aisle, had deliberately misled me into thinking that I would be moderately comfortable during the painful 12-hour night flight. I found out, too late, that this was false when I boarded, and man was I steamed.

I never fly in the middle seat. No one likes it, I know, but I have a visceral, claustrophobic reaction to being trapped between two people. I get ancy. I sweat. I curse. I have to go to the bathroom repeatedly. It’s not a pretty scene. As a result, I do everything I can to avoid this, but it happened nonetheless.

Mercifully, sweet somnolence eventually overcame me. After a few pages of Wolf Hall, I drifted off into a dreamless, shallow slumber, my fists clenched like spiteful snails. I woke up somewhere over the Baltic Sea, confused but no longer angry.

Next stop, Barcelona.

* Friends, by the time you read this, I'll be on the road again, headed to vineyards in Priorat.

The Flavor of Time

2013-04-02T12:34:00.001+09:00

A different beauty: petals covering the ground in early April.

The cherry trees in my neighborhood are in transition. The branches, once adorned with downy pink pom poms, are molting like baby chicks; soon, they'll be covered in spiky green leaves that catch the light like slick, new feathers. The sakura now blanket the ground, bruised by the fall and crushed underfoot before being carried away by the wind, but still dignified even at the height of their vulnerability. It's a different kind of beauty. The fallen petals make every place look like there's just been a wedding party. Sitting beneath the cherry trees as the blossoms make their descent can be magical and inexpressibly sad at the same time. The poignant end of the sakura season is a reminder of the fleeting nature of youth.

The Japanese have a complex relationship with time: a fascination with transience interwoven with a vein of nostalgia. Despite a preoccupation with "permanent" objects that has resulted in, among other things, the obdurate persistence of the fax machine, the Japanese seem to savor the passage of time in ways I hadn't experienced in other cultures. So many of the holidays and seasonal traditions -- tsukimi (moon-viewing) in autumn, hanami in spring -- are rituals that celebrate the present while mourning the past, and to some extent, the future.

Seasonality is one of the most important features of Japanese cuisine, but the Japanese philosophy of seasonality goes beyond the common sense that oysters are at their briny best in winter, while tomatoes are tastiest in summer. The word shun is used to describe the peak of the season, but this state can be parsed into three distinct phases -- hashiri, sakari (or shun), and nagori. Hashiri refers to the early stages of freshness; sakari, the pinnacle. Nagori, on the other hand, is reserved for the last of the season, the moment before the ingredients disappear from the shelves completely until the following year. I love the concept, and the fact that the Japanese have given each of these phases a name. Just think of how many times you've eaten a peach before you know it's ripe, simply because you couldn't wait for summer to begin, or stocked up on apples of dubious crispness because you weren't quite ready to say goodbye to winter. It's something that most of us take for granted, and yet it's such a human impulse: the hastiness of anticipation and the anticipation of longing. It's also a fitting analogy for the stages of life.

After reading this, I challenge you to make it through your next meal without contemplating your mortality.

There are still a few blossoms clinging to the trees. If you're looking for a place to view them from the comfort of a window, check out these recommendations from the food writers of The Japan Times.

Images from the World Sushi Cup in Japan

2013-03-28T14:05:00.000+09:00

Sushi is one of Japan's greatest gifts to the culinary world, a dish of such elegant simplicity that one wonders if a more perfect food has ever existed. But sushi today is a far cry from the original -- and I'm not just talking about California rolls. It used to be made by gutting and salting a whole fish, and then filling the cavity with koji (rice inoculated with our good friend, the mold koji-kin) to facilitate fermentation. Once the fish was sufficiently preserved, the rice was discarded and only the fish was eaten. This technique was developed in Southeast Asia before being brought to Japan, most likely by the Chinese, some time in the 8th century.

We have the busy merchants of Tokyo to thank for the raw-fish-on-vinegaired-rice version that modern folks know and love. Apparently, Edo-era Tokyoites were so pressed for time, they had to figure out a way to turn sushi, a dish that had once required days to prepare, into fast food.

I picked up these interesting tidbits from chef Koji Sawada, when I had the chance to dine at his legendary restaurant, Sushi Sawada, recently. (That meal, along with some of the other amazing sushi experiences I've had in the last few months, will have to be the topic of another blog post.) The thought of how drastically sushi has changed returned to me while attending the World Sushi Cup competition earlier this month in Chiba.

Covering the World Sushi Cup event was a special kind of torture. I was close enough to see -- and smell -- the elaborate seafood concoctions as they were being constructed, but not a single piece of fish crossed my lips the entire time.

Chefs demonstrated the intricate art of bamboo-leaf cutting, turning leaves into delicate butterflies and dragonflies.

While it was fascinating to see how chefs from around the world approached the cuisine, it was somewhat frustrating not knowing exactly what they were doing. Unfortunately, the chefs were not allowed to describe their dishes to the audience.

Marek Hora from the Czech Republic.

Restaurant-category winner Pontus Johansson adds the finishing touches to his Swedish-accented nigiri.

I was, however, able to chat with winning chef Pepi Anevski, of Umami restaurant in Copenhagen, after the contest, and I had already talked with Jeff Ramsay about his dishes. If I had managed to interview Takeshi Matsumoto as well, I would have gotten the scoop from all three of the winners of the individual chef category, but I had to bail before the results were announced. Still, it was a great stroke of luck.

On the final day of the restaurant competition, I got a taste of the sushi at last, when I managed to snag a piece of Pontus Johansson's salmon nigiri -- a complex morsel of contrasting flavors and textures. It turns out that Chef Johansson went on to win the restaurant competition, so I really lucked out there, too.

Individual champion Pepi Anevski impressed judges with his simple presentation.

A fancy display by Danish chef Nirat Cherdwongsoong Stoltze.

Yes, it's a real sushi boat.

I believe this is winning sushi by the Japanese chef Takeshi Matsumoto.

Jeff Ramsay hard at work.

Chef Ramsay's Las-Vegas-inspired sushi.

You can read my full account of the competition here.

Pretty in Pink

2013-03-22T09:05:00.000+09:00

The sakura trees are already in full bloom in Tokyo.

The cherry blossoms have arrived early this year -- in record time, actually. Sakura-lined streets and people chilling out under the trees is something I'd normally expect to see in April, or at least at the end of March. Moreover -- for the first time in practically ever -- spring in Tokyo feels like, well, spring. Temperatures have been hovering around 18 degrees Celsius for well over a week. Often, hanami (cherry-blossom-viewing) parties are somewhat painful affairs that involve fighting the crowds for a spot to lay your blue tarp, after about an hour of not being able to find your friends because the overcrowding has led to mobile-phone-service blackouts; then boozing it up, usually with the cheapest alcohol available, while freezing your butt off until you can no longer stand it. A time-tested tradition.

But this year promises to be different. I'll be ditching the fake beer and bringing sake to my hanami. This month, there are loads of sakura-themed bottles to choose from. One that caught my attention recently was this Raifuku Sakura no Kobo Junmai Nama from Ibaraki Prefecture. The sake was made with cherry blossom yeast, and, although it doesn't impart cherry aromas to the brew, the flower yeast gives it a certain tropical-fruit character. On impact, there's green banana and sugar cane, with a touch of herbs (mint). While it's initially sweet, the finish is dry and taut. At first, I thought that the sake was pink, but it's actually just the bottle.

Raifuku from Ibaraki.

Another was Atago no Sakura, made by the producers of Hakurakusei in Miyagi Prefecture. This one is a Daiginjo, but extremely dry and light-textured, with umami rounding out the finish. I wouldn't drink this one alone as a cocktail, but it's a versatile food-sake. I found that it goes really well with one of my favorite picnic foods, salty black caviar. Because, my peeps, that's just the way I roll.

Check out The Japan Times next Friday for more picnic-friendly sake recs from me, plus a round-up of great restaurants with a sakura view. Happy hanami!

Atago no Sakura from Miyagi.

Talk the Sake Talk

2013-03-18T08:08:00.000+09:00

Some of my team mates on my last sake-making expedition.

Public speaking is not my strong suit. In truth, I kind of loathe it. When I stood up to ask a question at last month's Tokyo International Literary Festival, I was barely able to make a complete sentence before my heart started pounding and my voice began to shake. My nervousness wasn't entirely alleviated after sitting down: When addressing the question, author Junot Diaz directed his bespectacled, squinty gaze right at me, which made me feel like I had to keep smiling and nodding until he was finished.

For this reason, I regarded the invitation to speak about my work with sake at the Minato International Association with a mixture of excitement and dread. I know that I have to get over my fear of speaking in front of strangers, so it was a great, low-pressure chance to practice, but it also meant that I had to actually stand up and talk in front of strangers. The horror.

Add to this the fact that, after arriving at the wrong address, I showed up fifteen minutes late for the lecture. Then, there was a problem connecting the projector to my computer. Honestly, when it rains it pours.

But I went ahead with it anyway, sans power point. I'd decided to talk about the growing popularity of sake abroad, the international community of sake lovers, and my own experiences in the sake world. To my surprise and delight, over 30 people showed up for the event, and, after giving an introduction and reading a few pieces from my Kanpai Culture column, I spent around 40 minutes answering questions about sake and the drinks market.

Here's the introduction I'd prepared.

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If you’re sitting in this room, you probably already know the answer to the question, “What is sake?” The simple answer is that sake is an alcoholic drink made from rice. But sake is a lot more than just a tipple: it’s a uniquely Japanese creation that expresses a lot about the culture that developed it. Sake making is intensely physical work that requires a great deal of attention to detail. I know this to be true because I’ve had the chance to make sake at a couple of breweries, and I’ve discovered that I’m not quite tough enough to do it full time. This is why I just write about it. The experience has given me a new respect for nihonshu producers. Despite the long hours and all the backbreaking work, they remain committed to their craft. Sake is a product born of passion, rather than love of money or status.

Unfortunately, sake’s popularity has continued to diminish domestically for the past three decades. Once a staple in homes and restaurants, a drink so quintessentially Japanese that the word sake refers to alcohol in general, sake is no longer the drink of choice in Japan. Since peaking at 1.7m kilolitres in 1975, sake consumption in Japan has fallen every year to a record low of 589,000 kilolitres in 2010. The Japanese drink just a third as much sake as they did 30 years ago, when it accounted for a quarter of all sales of alcoholic drinks.

Having said that, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel -- or at least a glimmer of hope for sake makers and fans of the beverage. In 2011, for the first time in over 16 years, sake sales rose across the board to 601,807 kiloliters, according to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association. Part of the reason behind the increase is the fact that sake has become a global phenomenon. The number of sake shipments overseas reached 14,013 kiloliters in 2011 — roughly double that of the previous 10 years. While exports alone are not going to be enough to save the industry, they have done a lot to help matters.

One of the factors driving the boom has been the popularity of Japanese cuisine around the world. The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) estimates that there were 14,129 Japanese restaurants in the United States in 2010, while the number has risen to 1,000 in France and about 500 in Britain. Japanese food is gradually becoming part of the global culinary landscape, and savvy gourmets are no longer limiting themselves to sushi. Authentic izakayas Japanese-style pub-restaurants, yakitori restaurants and ramen shops have become trendy in major cities like New York and London.

Of course, the main reason that so many people -- from Stockholm to Sydney -- love sake is that it’s delicious.

I tried sake for the first time when I was living in San Francisco, at the end of my university days in the late 90s. As was common then, the drink was served piping hot, so much so that the liquid seared my tongue and then my throat as it made its way to my stomach. Aside from the burning sensation, I can’t really recall much about the sake. To be fair, it was a long time ago, but if it had been especially tasty, I’m quite sure that I would have remembered it. Remembering how things taste is a big part of my job. In all likelihood, it was bad-to-average sake, but I had fun drinking it all the same. I didn’t pay much attention to the flavors and aromas of the brew. I simply enjoyed the novelty of it, and the fact that I was drinking it with sushi, a food with which I was (and remain) obsessed. Having sake with sushi seemed so fashionable and sophisticated, especially to someone like me, who had grown up in the decidedly un-cosmopolitan city of Shreveport, Louisiana (the boot-shaped state next to Texas). Still, I wasn’t in a hurry to seek out sake to drink at home.

When I moved to Japan, I decided to give sake a second, and more serious, try. I’d started learning about wine and began applying the same tasting techniques to premium sake. In the same way that I had discovered that the more I learned about wine, the more I enjoyed it, I began to see sake in a new light and wanted to learn and taste as much of it as possible.

So I studied, under Japan’s most prominent non-Japanese sake authority, John Gauntner. Mr. Gauntner is the author of several books on sake, and teaches intensive sake courses for professionals both in Japan and several cities in America. The course in Japan attracts people in the industry from all over the world, and the year that I took it (or so I like to think), the group got along exceptionally well.

A naturally shy person, I was nervous on the first day of class and took my seat next to a friendly-looking couple from New York, Hiroko Furukawa and Rick Smith, who now own the only sake specialty store on the east coast in the US, Sakaya. I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly or not, but I think that I asked Hiroko if I could borrow a pen during the lectures. And that was how I started to create my own sake family.

Making one sake friend leads quite naturally to making many sake friends. The community, though growing, is still small. The people, and the connections you make, are the best things about working in the sake world.

A Great Day for Japan

2013-03-13T11:56:00.001+09:00

The winners flash big smiles at the first Asia's 50 Best Restaurant Awards, a big victory for Japan.

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I’m not a gambler, but I should have gambled on this one (where’s a British bookie when you need one?). Two days before the first Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony, I was sitting in a wine bar in Singapore speculating on the results with my friend Paco Galdeano, Waku Ghin’s talented sommelier and an all-around restaurant-industry insider.

“So who do you think is going to be the top?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I hedged, “but I feel like it’s got to be either Narisawa or Ryugin, based on how they’ve placed on the World 50 Best list before…but who can say? It could be a complete surprise.”

I was trying to take the logical approach -- calculating the odds.

At the time, though, it was far from clear. In the months leading up the event, some had suspected that the top accolade would go to a Singaporean chef: namely Ignatius Chan of Iggy’s. Iggy’s had ranked above both Narisawa and Ryugin at the 2012 W50BR awards, and the fact that the ceremony was being held in Singapore, rather than Tokyo or Hong Kong seemed like a sign.

But as the game of poker teaches us, it’s always wise to listen to the odds.

A huge congratulations to Narisawa-san of Narisawa, Yamamoto-san of Ryugin, and all of the 16 Japanese restaurants who places among Asia’a 50 Best Restaurants in 2013!

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A roar of applause erupted as Japanese chef Yoshihiro Narisawa was crowned the S. Pellegrino Best Restaurant in Asia at the inaugural Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony, held on Monday in Singapore.

After receiving the prize, Narisawa stood on stage and bowed deeply for several seconds, a sign of gratitude and respect in Japanese culture.

The list is compiled from votes cast for restaurants around the world by The Diners Club World 50 Best Restaurants Academy, which is comprised of 900 influential chefs, food critics, and industry professionals.

The Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants awards program is the first to focus on a single region, but William Drew of organizing body William Reed Business Media hinted that other localized awards could be soon to follow.

“It’s fair to say that, as we did with Asia, we are assessing other regions in detail in order to ascertain whether further regional awards are viable,” he says.

Those in the highest rankings on the Asia’s 50 Best list are likely to secure a spot on the World 50 Best Restaurants list, which will be announced on April 29 in London.

Continue reading about the top 10 winners in my article on CNN.

Ringing in the Year of the Snake

2013-01-08T16:01:00.000+09:00

My handiwork: Made in Karasuyama sake from Shimazaki Shuzo.

Color me proud. As I lifted the lid off the package from Shimazaki Shuzo, a sudden rush of excitement came over me. Inside the box were two bottles of sake that I'd helped -- albeit, in a very small way -- produce. Over the past seven months, I'd gone to Tochigi Prefecture three times for the Karasuyama sake-making program, which had begun with rice planting and ended with sake brewing, and the fruits of our labor had finally arrived at my door.

Oddly, I hadn't anticipated any major feelings of accomplishment. I'd brewed sake before, much more intensively, at Niida Honke in Fukushima and with the staff of Daimon Shuzo in Osaka (where I'd even been given the responsibility of tending the koji). At Shimazaki Shuzo, I'd merely helped separate the steamed rice while the professionals handled the tricky stuff.

But the program had been about more than the technical points of sake making. The experience had taken me into the rice fields, turning the abstract concept of farming (and the difficulties that accompany it) into muscle memory. I learned how to maneuver through muddy water, saw the way that the natural landscape changes over time, and watched a community work together to achieve a common goal.

During the second and third sessions, we were also taught how to make traditional washi paper, which we painted to fashion labels for our sake. Although I'd majored in art in university, I hadn't picked up a paintbrush in at least a decade. It was slightly awkward -- a little like running into your ex on the train and then having to sit next to him for twenty minutes. After some deliberation, I chose two New-Year's-themed images, a snake and a mikan tangerine, and touched the tip of my brush to the paper with trepidation. The snake turned out reasonably well (if more menacing than I'd originally imagined), but the tangerine ended up looking like an out-of-season tomato. I was not satisfied with my work.

Yet seeing the labels attached to the sake bottles, I couldn't help smiling. The snake, loosely coiled amid a swirling pink cloud, seemed friendlier. In the yellow light of our living room, the tangerine had taken on an appropriately orange hue and was altogether less tomatoey. I was surprised and delighted.

An even bigger surprise was the sake itself. In 2010, when the program first began, the group had made nigori-zake from Koshihikari table rice. I knew that the Gohyakymangoku rice we'd grown would be made into junmai-ginjo, but I was expecting sake that was cloudy and less refined. When we opened the snake-label bottle on New Year's Day, I discovered that the sake was clear. It was fruity and vivacious, with a smooth texture, pleasing weight, and ricey undertones in the finish -- an auspicious start to the New Year.

Here's hoping that the Year of the Snake will bring everyone delicious new adventures in 2013. Happy New Year!

Sorry, Santa: A Story About Reindeer and More Memories from Cook It Raw in Lapland

2012-12-25T12:33:00.002+09:00

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The reindeer was one and a half years old, a brown and white male calf weighing 30 kilograms. It was a crisp autumn morning, and he munched leisurely on a fenced-in patch of grass at the edge of a farm in Kuivasalmi, Lapland.

As he was led out of the circular pen, the deer hesitated but made no sound. Two butchers gripped his horns gently but firmly, and he was felled with a single bullet between the temples.

I winced in spite of myself. Apart from a brief stint as a vegetarian in high school, I’ve been an avid carnivore since childhood. I’ve always understood, at least abstractly, that the consumption of meat involved the taking of life. I’d read Michael Pollan’s account of killing a chicken in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and endured the rabbit-skinning scene from the movie Roger & Me, but nothing had truly prepared me to witness the slaughter of a live animal at such close range.

The calf was bled from the neck, the blood collected in a white plastic bucket, which they whisked constantly to keep it from coagulating. Dressed in white from head to toe, the butchers severed the reindeer’s head with swift, fluid knife strokes and extracted its tongue. Later, the head would be boiled and seasoned with herbs to make traditional Lappish headcheese, while the blood would be used in black pudding, or made into savory pancakes.

I shuffled uncomfortably, unsure of where to direct my gaze. Most of Lapland is thick with trees and dotted with lakes, but Kuivasalmi’s grazing pastures stretch out in a long ribbon of grassland, broken intermittently by lonely wooden shacks and the quiet houses of reindeer farmers. Suddenly, the flat expanse of green felt oppressively wide, vulnerably open.

Normally, the slaughter of a reindeer would take place in one of northern Finland’s 30 licensed abattoirs, not out in the fields. This, however, was an extraordinary circumstance. I’d traveled halfway around the world from Japan to participate, along with a group of international chefs and journalists, in an unusual culinary conference called Cook it Raw, and the slaughter was part of the program.

The concept for the event was conceived by marketing consultant Alessandro Porcelli of Nordic Gourmet Tour and food writer Andrea Petrini. They’re wacky guys, passionate foodies with a penchant for avant-garde cuisine and obscure musical references. Petrini favors plaid Comme des Garcons suits and Joy Division; Porcelli prefers bold floral prints and Daft Punk. Even in the middle of the Lapland forest, both are never less than immaculately groomed.

Cook it Raw began as a response to the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. At first, the focus had been on cooking with as little energy as possible, but the objectives have expanded to include the promotion of local food culture and sustainable cuisine. This year, Porcelli and Petrini brought together 16 of the world’s most celebrated chefs for three days of hunting, fishing, and foraging. And they decided that on the final day, the chefs would be asked to compose dishes on the spot, using a limited range of local ingredients.

Reindeer meat was one of the ingredients the chefs would be allowed to use, and the organizers had wanted all of us to see exactly where the meat came from.

“We are living in a ‘food package’ era, where food items are mainly vacuum-packed and heavily branded. The slaughter is part of the food chain, what it takes to feed a large group of people,” said Porcelli. “By participating in the slaughter act, one will learn to respect food more and waste less of it.”

During the slaughter, I'd tried to remain stoic. The blood had bothered me much less than I’d expected, but the little details haunted me. The carcass was hung by the hindquarters above a tarp, and a shallow incision was made through the skin running the length of the torso. The pelt peeled away effortlessly, exposing the animal’s lithe musculature. The ears had been left attached and dangled sadly from one end.

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Later, when I returned home to Tokyo, I described the experience to my husband.

“It almost was like watching someone take off an overcoat,” I said. Without warning, I started to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s childish to feel this way,” I muttered, “but I wish they could’ve closed the reindeer’s eyes.”

At the time, I’d watched the butchers complete their task in a kind of daze. Some of the participants shed tears; a few turned away. Most regarded it with sober equanimity.

“It’s important to see this,” remarked one observer. “This is the reality behind the food we’re eating.”

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the sober-faced butcher Janne Mustonen and his team worked quickly to keep the meat from spoiling. They removed the entrails and separated the carcass into manageable cuts. The flesh was a dark, purplish-red, the color of velvet roses.

-->Janne Mustonen is a sturdy man of medium height, with blond hair and a Nordic complexion. He speaks in a matter-of-fact, neutral tone of voice and approaches his work with a phlegmatic attitude. The Mustonen family can trace their ties to reindeer husbandry back a few hundred years. Mustonen's grandfather had been a full-time reindeer herder, his father a part-time herder. He keeps reindeer, too, but he’s also one of the shareholders in a meat processing company called Kota-poro, where he’s been a butcher for eight years.

“The first time I killed a reindeer, I was five years old,” he said, seemingly impervious to the swarms of mosquitoes attacking his neck and ears. “I guess you could say I’ve been doing this all my life.”

Reindeer husbandry has long been a part of life in Finland. The indigenous Sami people had been practicing it in the northernmost parts of Lapland for generations before Finnish settlers began herding reindeer in the Middle Ages. Once valued as a form of transportation as well as an important source of food and materials for clothing, the reindeer is virtually synonymous with the concept of sustenance in the arctic regions of Lapland. Today, as in previous times, reindeer are slaughtered primarily for their meat, and almost every part of the animal is used.

Unlike wild game such as moose, reindeer can’t be hunted. They are free to roam the forests and pasturelands, but each reindeer is marked with a red ear tag to indicate its owner. Although herders don’t keep their animals on farms, some supplement their herds' natural diets of wild grass and lichen with hay during the snowy winters.

Reindeer meat production is a significant industry in Finland, protected in some areas by the government. The geographically designated reindeer areas in the north stretch across 114,000 kilometers (78,836 miles) and cover roughly 36 percent of the country. Anyone living within these regions can farm reindeer, but the total number of animals is restricted by law to 200,000 heads nationwide. As we discussed the topic over a dish of buttery reindeer tongue, cooked sous-vide, and served over a brunoise of fresh vegetables, Ministry of Agriculture representative Veli-Pekka Tavela explained that a population any larger than that could potentially devastate the environment.

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I'd never eaten reindeer meat before, but it was delicious. The Finns serve it boiled in soups and simmered and stews, grilled as steaks or roasted in the oven, smoked or salt-cured as jerky. The most common dish is poronkäristys, thinly sliced reindeer sautéed with onions and beer in reindeer fat or butter. It’s Finnish comfort food, rustically decadent in its richness, reminiscent of cold winter nights spent around a fire.

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Mustonen’s slaughterhouse has the capacity to processes 2000 reindeer each year. It’s tiny by American standards but, in Finland, his plant is considered mid-sized. The butchering is all done by hand; the only machines are the meat grinders for making sausages and a couple of industrial-sized ovens for smoking. The company’s 14 owners pitch in to help during the peak season from October to February. In an era where entire chicken factories can be operated by one person, this idea seems like a anachronism. By respecting natural limits and processing the meat on a human scale, rather than a highly mechanized one, the Finns have managed to keep reindeer populations stable without negatively impacting the environment. They’ve achieved a delicate balance, and the resulting product is healthy and chemical-free.

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“I’m this close to becoming a vegetarian again,” I said, half seriously, as we climbed back on the bus. The image of those pathetic little ears was still bothering me.

“That’s not a totally sustainable solution, though,” said the woman beside me. She’d been crying and her eyes were red. “Of course, this is emotional. I was a vegetarian for 15 years before I finally ended it with a hot dog. I know...of all things, a hot dog. But I haven’t looked back since.”

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A version of this story was published in Real Eats magazine.

Chef Michael Anthony Gives Tokyo a Taste of Gramercy Tavern

2012-11-30T16:16:00.000+09:00

I love watching chefs cook. Growing up, I was a Food Network junkie, and I still spend far too much time watching cooking shows on the Internet (usually while procrastinating, particularly on the days I have deadlines). Seeing a chef demonstrate a dish live is all the more mesmerizing -- not only because you're able to get a close-up look at the techniques used, but also because the chefs have a chance to explain the concepts behind the dishes and their kitchen philosophy in general.

Last week, Gramercy Tavern's Michael Anthony spent a week in Tokyo and gave a demo at the Japanese Chef's Association, where he showed us how they work with black cod, that loveliest and fattiest of fishes, back in New York.

Of black cod, I am a fan -- probably more so than is healthy. While I'm not certain that black cod is unhealthy, I suspect that anything so rich and buttery can't possibly be good for you. One of my favorite ways to eat it is Japanese-style, marinated in miso and grilled over hot coals (銀ダラの西京焼き）and the place I always take friends to eat it is actually a little dried fish shop in Azabu Juban that does a brisk trade in grilled fish lunches. But Chef Michael has shown me that there's more than one way to cook a fish, as you'll see below. I don't own a home-smoker, but this recipe makes me want to go right out and buy one.

While preparing his smoked Alaskan black cod dish, Chef Michael talked about the three qualities he keeps in mind when creating recipes for Gramercy Tavern. First and foremost, dishes should be simple and unforgettable (think icons, logos, and the like, and it all makes sense). They should also be connected to a region, either physically, temporally, or culturally. Finally, a great dish is inventive and brings a sense of intrigue to the dining experience.

Adjusting the recipe for Tokyo, he substituted kabu turnips for the sunchokes and baby onions from Hokkaido for the cippollini.

The best part of the demo was the tasting -- a welcome surprise. The careful juxtaposition of flavors succeeded in producing a dish greater than the sum of its parts. The oiliness of the fish was tempered by the earthiness of the smoke and balanced by the sweetness and acidity of the onions and vinaigrette.

It also looked great on the plate.

Hot Smoked Alaskan Black Cod with Sunchoke Puree and Pickled Onions

Serves 4

Sunchoke Puree

Sunchokes, peeled and sliced     2 cups
Shallots, minced                         1
Garlic clove, minced                  1
Water                                          1T
Brown butter                              1T
Salt and pepper                           to taste

1. Sweat sunchokes, shallots and garlic on medium heat with no color.
2. Add 1T of water and cook til tender.
3. Place in blender and puree with brown butter and season to taste.

Pickled Onions

Cippollini onions, sliced into rings                4
Star anise                                                        1
Beets                                                               2
Red verjus                                                       2T
Rice wine vinegar                                           1 cup
Water                                                               1/2 cup
Sugar                                                               1T
Salt                                                                  1 tsp

1. Toast anise in a medium saucepan.
2. Add beets, red verjus, white wine vinegar, water, sugar and salt. Bring to a simmer, then strain. Throw away the solids and keep only the liquid. Add onion slices and chill. This preparation preserves the onions and will hold for several weeks in the fridge.

Pickled Onion Vinaigrette

Onion, medium, minced                      1
Beet juice                                             1T
Raspberry vinegar                                1T
Red wine vinegar                                 1T
Red wine reduction                              1T
Port                                                       1T
Olive oil                                                1/2 cup
Lemon juice                                          to taste

1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan (reserve oil and lemon juice for later use), simmer and reduce until tender.
2. Finish vinaigrette by whisking in olive oil and a drop of lemon juice.

Black Cod

Black cod                         4-6 oz. fillets

1. Smoke black cod for 7 minutes over low heat using apple wood chips.

Assembly

1. Spoon the sunchoke puree onto center of dish.
2. Streak one side of the plate with the pickled onions and the other side with the onion vinaigrette.
3. Place the steam black cod fillet on top of the sun choke puree.

I hope to eat this one day at Gramercy Tavern. Ah, to dream...Happy Friday!

Give Japanese Wine a Chance

2012-11-13T14:24:00.000+09:00


Nouveau wines from Katsunuma Kyogyo, makers of Rubayat

In my Kanpai Culture column last week, I wrote about some changes in the Japanese wine industry. A version of this article was published in The Japan Times.

On the morning of November 3^rd, the line leading to the entrance of Hibiya Park snaked along the sidewalk and coiled around the corner, several meters from the gate. I was there for the Yamanashi Nouveau wine festival but had mistakenly assumed that the throngs of people waiting outside had come for some other purpose. It was a moment of cognitive dissonance: That there could be so many fans of Japanese wine was a proposition my brain found difficult to accept.

The popularity of the Yamanashi Nouveau fair, which started in 1987, has grown over the last few years. According to the Yamanashi Prefecture Wine Maker’s Association, 5300 people turned out for last year’s one-day-only event in Tokyo. This year, the organizers decided to turn the festival into a two-day affair. By the time I left, around 1:30pm, over 5000 people had already entered the venue.

Until recently, serious wine drinkers have regarded Japanese wine as little more than grape juice with a kick. But quality has improved, and wineries producing sophisticated styles are popping up all over the country, from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Rica Miura, a wine advisor with the Japan Sommelier Association, attributes the improvements to the fact that the new generation of winemakers has studied enology and viticulture overseas.

“The standards are changing,” she says. “In Nagano Prefecture, they’ve introduced an ‘A.O.C.’ system (similar to the geographical designation system used in France), and many other prefectures are eager to learn.”

Although the most famous wine-producing areas are Yamanashi, Nagano and Yamagata Prefectures, many experts point to Hokkaido as the most exciting new region. “Producers including Domaine Takahiko quite possibly make the most interesting and complex wines in Japan from Pinot Noir,” says Master of Wine and noted authority Ned Goodwin. “The lack of humidity is hugely beneficial, but finding appropriate sites with sufficient sun exposure is also key to success.”

Bordeaux varietals like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot have been grown since the 80s, but contemporary winemakers have begun to shift their attention to cooler-climate grapes such as Mueller-Thurgau, Pinot Gris, Zweigelt and Pinot Noir.

Japan’s best wines, however, are made with Koshu, a pink-skinned grape cultivated primarily in Yamanashi and used to make dry to off-dry white wines. At the Yamanashi Nouveau event, nearly all of the 36 participating producers presented one Koshu wine. I sought out Alps Wine and Kai Winery, both of which had been recommended by Miura. The Alps Nijiiro Koshu Shinshu offered lively aromas of green apple followed by a sweet finish, while the Kai Kazama Koshu Karakuchi Shinshu was more reserved and subtle, exhibiting the herbaceous and citrus notes characteristic of the Koshu grape. Most of the wines I tasted were pleasant -- if a bit on the sweet side -- and, although I didn’t leave a convert, I’m hopeful about the future of the Japanese wine industry.

Incidentally, you can sample offerings from some of Japan’s leading natural wine producers at the 4^th annual Festivin tasting, which will feature over 300 natural and biodynamic wines from Europe and Japan. It's fun but beware -- spittoons are few and far between.