Quality Foods? Japan...
Accolades are being garnered by Japanese restaurants through the discriminating tastes and subjective-objective discernment of qualified food specialists writing the Michelin guides. Paris, always topmost in peoples' minds when considering the existence of elite eating establishments, has been given second-place standing to Tokyo, with its countless eateries, serving both home fare; traditional Japanese cooking, and international menus.Tokyo, after all, is a city of some 14-million people. Japanese are discriminating consumers and fastidious foodists. There are restaurants wherever one looks in the sprawling, lively city. They range from dress-code establishments, to Japanese-catered versions of McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, to Indian tandooris, or tiny tent-covered temporary soba shops set up on busy night-time streets.
Vendors of street fare such as roasted yams roam through residential streets, calling out their wares to home-owners who rush out to get their steaming hot products. Fish vendors exist on every street in every neighbourhood, and never does one breathe in a whiff of offensive odours from these stalls; they're washed down completely of offal each and every night.
Japanese are serious about their food. Everything must be fresh and uncontaminated by chemicals. Fruit and vegetable vendors are set up daily in neighbourhood stalls, and people do their food shopping on a daily basis. Never will you taste fresher, sweeter, more flavourful food than in Tokyo; its residents are utterly unyielding in their demand for quality.
Some fortunate city dwellers in ownership of rare small plots of land surrounding their modest homes grow fruit trees. It is not uncommon to glimpse trees in fruit with each individual fruit pendulous on its branches carefully wrapped within a paper bag to ensure that no pestiferous insects infect the fruit and blight its perfect condition.
There is an estimated 160,000 restaurants across the city. The Michelin Guide has identified no fewer than 191 deserving of stars, in contrast to 97 for Paris and 54 for New York. Cooking is a serious art for serious food lovers. The designated 3-star restaurants in Tokyo represent Japanese cuisine, and also French cuisine. All food constituents must be of premium quality, all preparations are seen to in excruciating detail, including presentation.
In Japan, presentation is of crucial importance, appealing to every aesthetic; visually, olfactorily; the tastebuds must be fully engaged in appreciation of a work of culinary and artistic art. The beauty of the porcelain used, flower arrangements, calligraphic work in rice paper wall hangings or menu production, and the general interior ambiance all contribute to a senses-infused experience of dining.
And then there's the experience of shopping for food in Japan, unlike any other. Going to Ueno Market on week-ends and strolling among the endless aisles of food-laden stalls, with proprietors calling out the superiority of their offerings. Most particularly the fish vendors. There, large slabs of tuna are laid out, along with crabs, lobsters, prawns and sea cucumbers, some downright ambulatory.
Prospective shoppers are demanding and the stall owners eager to serve their demands, even to encouraging shoppers to trying out samples of what's on offer. To observe an appreciative shopper as he daintily lifts a tiny prawn to his mouth, sniffs, then swallows it whole, and finally expressing approval, is quite the experience.
Labels: That's Life, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 20, 2007
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