NOT ONLY SUSHI Chapter 5 (Pietro)

Just like all other big cities, Tokyo has an infinite variety of bars and restaurants offering an International cuisine. Chinese and Korean cuisine are particularly well-known, but Indian and South-East Asian restaurants are also very easy to find. Of course you can also easily find European, American and African cuisine. In the West many people say that Japanese like to copy. It is partially true: in fact, not only do they copy foreign cuisine, technology, fashion, music and so on, but they also rethink them and make something new out of them

The first example that comes to my mind is the burger. In Japan, as all over the world, the main fast food chains can be found in almost every street and they offer burgers, hot dogs and similar food (the Americans in Japan, though, can find particularly shocking to see “small” and “mini” portions in Japan’s McDonald’s). But there is also another kind of shops that sell burgers and cheeseburgers in Japan: fast food restaurants with a Disneyan furnishing and flowers on the tables. They belong to the “kawaii”, cute, ideal –so dominant in Japan. In this kind of places you can find customers that you would not expect to find in a place that sells three layer burgers: middle-aged women, couples, grandfathers and grandchildren. Places like these, but also their counterparts for coffee, donuts and so on, are always crowded of a very broad clientele, looking for a break: in a city where living spaces are small, flats are narrow and streets overcrowded it is not surprising that having a burger actually means taking a break from your day and finding some time to relax by reading, studying, sleeping (a universally tolerated activity in Japan), listening to music, chatting.

Europe –and Italy in particular- is very much loved by Japanese people and the European cuisine means elegance e refined taste to Japanese people. Japanese do things with care: bread is no traditional food in Japan and it is still seen as somewhat exotic. But bakeries are a lot on the streets of Japan, for the clientele who likes this food from overseas. In many bakeries you can find the baker’s diploma earned in Paris hanging on the wall. I have been to many bakeries in Japan and what I found was always of high quality. Excellent bread and sweets in a surprising variety: if you are looking for a pain-au-chocolat or a laugenbrezel you will definitely find some good ones.

The same cannot be said for many European restaurants. Pizza is a continuous disappointment. Very high prices for a ridiculously small (and sometimes deep-frozen!) pizza. There are a few places that make an exception and can actually make a rather good pizza, but more like the American way than the Italian one –which means bizarre ingredients like ananas, corn, mayonese, marshmallow. If you are looking for something more refined than pizza you might also be disappointed and the bill might make you feel dizzy. I worked in an Italian restaurant and saw chefs who learned how to cook in Italy make extremely overcooked spaghetti with a meat sauce that looked more like a ramen soup. I saw them garnishing a carbonara with dried seaweeds or accompanying a bollito with a cappuccino. Just like almost every Japanese restaurant abroad knows that it cannot serve real Japanese food to their foreign customers who would not have the time to get used and appreciate the very different tastes, Italian restaurants in Japan tend to adapt their dishes to the local taste, with some rather odd results for us –sometimes bordering madness.

Better go for Japanese cuisine: you will need some time to get to know it but, once you get used to it, you will find out how good and healthy it can be.