In truth, there isn’t much else to do in Japan’s second city besides eat and shop. You could visit the Instant Ramen Museum – and I thoroughly recommend you do – but apart from that there is little by way of culture, virtually no parks or open spaces. Even the castle is a recreation; there is nothing, then, to distract you from the quintessentially Osakan practice of ‘kuidaore’, or ‘eating yourself bankrupt’. My kinda town.
It is true that Osaka is famed for its fast foods, so-called B-class stuff like tako yaki and okonomiyaki. As a local once put it to me, ‘The essence of Osakan food is that it is cheap, fast and delicious.’ But this is not just a fast-food paradise. It is also home to some of the most creative and refined restaurants in Japan, as well as the origin of a particular type of restaurant, the ‘kappo’, which in recent years has radically transformed the high-end dining landscape from New York to Paris and London.
You can see the influence of kappos in Joël Robuchon’s L’Atelier chain (first opened on the Left Bank in 2003, and now rolled out globally); or at Momofuku Ko in New York; or, of course, in those now omnipresent chef’s tables. ‘Kappo’ means literally ‘cut and cook’ but it defines a counter-style restaurant where the chef and his assistants work in view of the guests, usually serving a fixed, multi-course menu. Some say the tradition dates back to feudal times when samurais took great pride in demonstrating their culinary skills to their guests while making the food to accompany the tea ceremony, but it is generally acknowledged that the kappo developed in Osaka in the nineteenth century.
While the quasi-spiritual overtones of kaiseki restaurants can be a little intimidating – I recall with a ‘there but for the grace of God …’ sympathy for a confused Australian diner I once saw who mistakenly opted to enter a classic kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto on her knees – kappos are friendly, informal places. The food is still refined and beautiful, but chefs chat with their customers, customers chat with each other, jokes are exchanged, sake cups mutually refilled.
When I last visited Koryu, one of my favourite kappos, in the Kitashinchi night-life district in Osaka, a dozen or so guests sat chatting at the counter as chef Shintaro Matsuo and his assistants rustled up dishes which were somehow simultaneously classic and contemporary, serious and playful, and occasionally challenging – things like wild boar bacon with mustard and shrimp, or poached slivers of monkfish liver, a largely forgotten ingredient in Europe but highly prized in Japan. The meal started with a landscape of sashimi, featuring a china house dusted with fake snow and some astonishingly tender squid. One dish, a small, heavily vinegared, bony fish, served cold, pretty much summed up many people’s worst fears about Japanese food, but as I watched the chefs prepare the next – a clear soup with a spine-tinglingly tangy dashi-based broth – the anticipation soon distracted me.
Afterwards, I emerged into the maze of Kitashinchi’s hostess bars not a little dazed. As per the sashimi plate, it was snowing gently but there was still plenty of life on the streets of what was once Osaka’s geisha district, although I am told only around ten geisha remain here. There were shops selling stockings and gift fruit. Men in dark suits with earpieces loitered on every corner. Occasionally, a door would open releasing a plume of cigarette smoke and smooth jazz. Out would totter a girl in a slinky pink dress on the arm of a short, fat, older man in a suit, and together they would tumble into a glossy black Toyota Century idling outside. An archetypal Osaka scene.
I was looking for a bar called Flute Flute, recommended to me by a local friend. Finally, I spotted the sign and descended the steps to a classic Japanese basement bar like hundreds of others, narrow, low lit, with a few stools and more mellow jazz playing on the sound system. But there was one major difference: instead of bottles of spirits lined up behind the bar, there were over a hundred different types of soy sauce, from olive oil soy, to grape juice soy, smoked soy and even a white soy (which surely defies the laws of physics). The best was a sea urchin soy from the port of Shimonoseki, with an almost-but-not-quite intolerably intense uni flavour. It had to be the most umami-ish substance on earth, almost too much umami for any human to handle.
Why, I asked one of the owners, did they ever think to combine champagne and soy sauce? ‘Simple,’ he smiled. ‘Both are fermented. Very nice marriage.’
Soon after, I returned to Flute Flute in the company of Japan’s answer to David Hasselhoff and a Japanese TV crew. The idea was that Hasselhoff – in reality, boxer-turned-actor Hidekazu Akai – and I would meet ‘by chance’ in the street, like old buddies (although I’d never met him before; actually I had never even heard of him), and then hang out in the city and show each other some of our favourite places. This was for a popular weekly food show called Maki’s Magical Restaurant. I still don’t know who Maki is either.
For the same show I had already spent the previous day visiting four restaurants in Kyoto – a ‘hidden’ ramen bar with no name located in a basement and decorated like a Zen garden; a casual wagyu beef yakiniku place (where you cook the meat over a gas grill on the table); a roll-your-own temaki zushi (sushi roll) restaurant with ridiculously photogenic yet doll-like tiny servings designed purely, I suspected, to look good on Instagram; and a contemporary kaiseki restaurant. That day, my celebrity dates had been Hiroshi Nishidai, a roly-poly comedian in a pork-pie hat, and a well-known actress, Misako Yasuda.
Attempting humour while filming during both of these days was risky. I would essay a Wildean witticism, then have to wait for the young, clean-cut male host – who, with his suit and clipboard looked more like a market researcher – to translate it for the others, then wait even longer for them to decode the humour, and eventually, sometimes, be rewarded with exaggerated laughter.
Akai the boxer lumbered through our day’s filming on autopilot, communicating mainly via shrugs and barks, but he seemed to be pretty clued up when it came to the food and had a neat technique for getting his sake glass refilled (which I have now adopted): he would ostentatiously lift the glass up to pretend to see where it was made, thus demonstrating to everyone how empty it was. Nishidai, the stout comedian, turned out to have genuine funny bones, which was obvious despite our language problems, while Yasuda the actress, though stick-thin and prone to covering her mouth coyly when either laughing or eating as all women seem obliged to do on Japanese TV, ate like a stevedore. That woman finished everything, and did not spill so much as a drop on her flowing, cream-coloured frock.
During our day together, Akai the boxer took me to an ambitious, upmarket kushikatsu place in Hyogo where we tried some elaborate deep-fried, breaded skewers (aubergine wrapped in minced pork and a perilla leaf was exceptional) and then visited my favourite okonomiyaki place, Onomichi Murakami, in Kita-ku (speciality: mochi and cheese topping), before I led him to Flute Flute.
While filming there, Tsutomu Otsuchihashi, one of the Flute Flute owners, suggested the best way to sample their soy sauces was in donburi – a bowl of steamed rice with toppings. Why didn’t I design a special donburi for Akai, suggested the director? Before I could protest, I found myself being shadowed by the camera crew to a nearby grocery story where, on the spot, I had to come up with the perfect combination of ingredients to appeal to the boxer. Whatever I made would not only be subjected to the scrutiny of the Flute Flute chefs and Akai, but then would be shown to the entire nation on television.
In the store, I grabbed some green beans, cherry tomatoes and myoga (a relative of ginger, but sweeter and milder) for a Japanese ‘accent’, then, just as I was heading for the checkout, I saw some sausages, not a common Japanese grocery item. I plucked them from the shelf of the fridge and returned to Flute Flute to try to create something that might impress Japanese TV viewers. Standing behind the bar with an expectant Akai before me I issued instructions to the Flute Flute kitchen to blanch the green beans as I quartered the tomatoes. I had in mind a dish that would summon the umami powers of Italian food to create something the likes of which the world had never tasted. But it soon became obvio
us that I had far too many toppings. Unless I toned down my ambition I would end up with an unforgivably cluttered bowl of food. Out went the sausages and the myoga. In the end, I passed a reasonably presentable donburi bowl across the counter to Akai which he ate with almost plausible enthusiasm in the true spirit of Osakan ‘kuidaore’.
With my time in Osaka drawing to a close, yet again I was about to leave this amazing city with a lingering regret at the food experiences I knew I had missed. There is just so much good stuff to eat here. I haven’t mentioned Kuromon market, for instance, or the Korean quarter, where I go if I am in need of a dose of kimchi. But Osaka’s finest restaurant lies far from the city centre in a seemingly random residential suburb north of the Yodogawa River. One evening I took a trip there and spent my customary half-hour or so wandering lost amid the grids of grey houses until finally spotting the entrance to a small Zen garden.
Spiritually, Kashiwaya’s private tatami rooms and season-specific, multi-course kaiseki menu place it thirty miles away in Kyoto. ‘Yes, we have often thought about moving to Kyoto,’ chef Hideaki Matsuo admitted when I brought up the subject of his restaurant’s incongruous location. ‘Actually, now we have many regulars from Kyoto. We are famous for our location.’
Spring was nudging nature awake when I visited, the first green shoots were appearing, things were un-hibernating. Matsuo-san explained that he had designed the menu that night to lead diners towards the new season, with soft, pillowy, fresh fugu milt dumplings and mustard greens, plum blossom and a dish of tiny, baby conger eel, the latter a visual riff on noodles. There was my favourite Japanese food, yuba – or tofu skin – and plenty of other luxury turns, such as abalone, crab and Matsuo-san’s favourite, local shrimp.
‘I am trying to make something that satisfies beyond money,’ Matsuo said as we sipped green tea after what had been a staggering meal. Kaiseki was a way of telling stories, he added. Every plate had a meaning, but fewer and fewer people either understood what it was, or were interested in learning.
‘My regulars understand, but recently people don’t seem to care. I have to explain more and more, to try to keep them entertained.’ He pointed to the double-ended chopsticks on the table. Did I realise they symbolised that I had shared my meal with God, for instance? ‘It takes time to understand this kind of food,’ he continued. ‘You learn a little each time you visit, but now people come almost by coincidence, or to tick the restaurant off some list.’ He said this not with any bitterness or accusingly, more a wistful resignation.
Kashiwaya presented the meal as a Zen meditation on the seasons, culture and the arts. With only the hum of the air conditioning to accompany my sighs of pleasure, the focus was entirely on the food before me, which was transportingly delicious, otherworldly.
My final night in Osaka called for something rather different: Osaka Ryori Asai (formerly Kigawa Asai), another of my favourite kappo restaurants. Here I sat wreathed in my neighbour’s rather nostalgic cigarette smoke at the long, black-lacquered counter, enthralled by a set menu which featured crunchy fugu skin, angler fish liver, bracken starch dumplings and fermented sea cucumber entrails (wonderfully briny-slimy), all the while watching the flock of chefs in their white coats dip and dive like swallows behind the counter.
At the end of my meal I turned to the businessman sitting next to me who was sharing a bottle of Mersault with his young lady friend.
‘Quite a meal,’ I said, puffing out my cheeks.
‘Welcome to Osaka!’ he replied, raising his glass.
SHIKOKU
Chapter 17
Yuzu
It is rare that a fruit can induce crime but I have routinely committed felonies in the name of the yuzu. I smuggle a dozen in my suitcase back to Europe every time I visit Japan. I swaddle them like precious porcelain, put on my best poker face and stride brazenly through customs, once safely home opening my suitcase to release a fragrance unlike any other. I use their juice to make ponzu, or sorbet, but best of all is yuzu zest infused in cream for the ultimate flavouring for chocolate ganache.
Japan has perhaps the most dazzling range of citrus fruit of any country, many of them unknown beyond its borders. The clementine-ish mikan; the dai dai (a bitter orange); the banpeiyu (a kind of pomelo); and an infinite variety of mandarin-type things. According to Helena Attlee’s fantastic book The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit, all citrus originally derive from China, but many Japanese citrus have been cultivated here only in the last few decades while others, like the Sakura-jima komikan which grows on the volcanic island we visited in Kagoshima Bay, evolved here centuries ago. There are komikan trees which are two hundred years old still growing on the slopes of volcanic Sakura-jima. Presumably they are made of asbestos.
All of these fruit are fantastic but the yuzu is The One: I think of it as lemon that has gone to a Swiss finishing school, with a sweeter, more rounded, approachable flavour, more tart than a tangerine, not as bitter as a grapefruit. The closest Europe equivalent is probably the bergamot but that’s not really the same at all. When you slice a yuzu in half it is packed with pips; the best part, the heady, floral oils, resides in its zest.
The yuzu has long been familiar to chefs in the West, mostly pastry chefs who use it to give an exotic note to desserts. Joël Robuchon does a stunning yuzu soufflé, for instance. It has recently moved into the food industry mainstream, with yuzu flavourings appearing in everything from Häagen-Dazs ice cream to beer and chewing gum. I even spotted a yuzu-flavoured liquorice pastil on sale in my local supermarket in Denmark the other day – and the Danes haven’t a clue what a yuzu is. The Japanese don’t just use yuzu in desserts, though, they add its frisky zest to soups, to seafood, or red meat, and they even put it in the bath.
The yuzu is thought to have come to Japan from China in around the year 800 where it was originally cultivated as a cross between a mandarin and the hardy, wild ichang lemon. But just you try finding a yuzu in China. I contacted Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop about this and she explained that the Chinese don’t use citrus much in cooking other than a bit of dried tangerine peel perhaps. I also asked Adam Leith Gollner, Canadian author of The Fruit Hunters, another terrific book about fruit, whether he had ever encountered yuzu in China, but he had not. Keiko Nagae, one of Japan’s leading pastry chefs (formerly of Pierre Gagnaire’s eponymous three-starred restaurant in Paris), told me she once asked for a yuzu to use in a cooking demonstration she was giving in China and they brought her a pomelo (it turns out the kanji character is the same for both). So it seems China has forgotten about the yuzu altogether.
Japan hasn’t. The yuzu is growing more and more popular here. Around half of all Japan’s yuzu trees grow on the island of Shikoku, a short trip across the Inland Sea from Osaka, and they are also reputed to be the best, so it is to Shikoku one must go if one is to encounter them in their natural habitat. Plus, I wanted to take my citrus criminal career one step further and not merely smuggle some yuzu home, but grow my own yuzu tree from seed. I thought a visit to a yuzu farmer on Shikoku might furnish me with some useful advice.
So, I went to Shikoku on a yuzu mission (this was on a previous visit to Japan, a few months before the journey with my family), but I did get sidetracked a little. There is so much good food on this island, and so much of it is unique to its rocky shores and steep forested valleys. Shikoku has the best udon noodles in Japan, for instance; dazzling seafood; and one of the rarest types of Japanese beef, Tosa beef, which in contrast to the better known, fatty, spoon-tender wagyu beef, is more like European beef: a little tougher, but more flavourful. And Shikoku is the only place in Japan where I have seen octopus beaks vacuum-packed and on sale in a petrol station store alongside the energy drinks and chewing gum. They are very crunchy. And not in a good way.
There is another reason I lost my yuzu focus once or twice. On Shikoku they have a drinking game: ‘Bekuhai’. I am no longer entirely sure of the rules, or that there actually are any rules to
Bekuhai, but the main objective appears to be getting foreigners as drunk as possible in the shortest amount of time. To achieve this they employ sake cups specially designed for the game featuring various booby traps intended to make you drink more, and faster. Some have holes in their bottoms so that the sake runs out if you put them down; others are shaped like faces with grotesque noses so that you can’t put them down even if you want to. The people of Shikoku, and in particular its Kochi Prefecture, really like a drink. In fact, if you ask other Japanese people to characterise the locals here, you will receive the simple one-word answer: ‘Boozers’.
I first encounter the Bekuhai cups in the smoky chaos of Hirome Ichiba, the main food hall of the island capital, Kochi. On a Saturday lunchtime it was packed with locals intent on having a good time eating the prefecture’s signature dish, katsuo no tataki – bonito grilled over rice straw – an addictive, smoky-charred method of cooking this oily, dark-fleshed fish, a relative of the tuna, its skin blackened by the smoke, the flesh still scarlet and raw. The famed ‘black current’ passes by the coast here carrying with it the bonito along the coast of Japan. Kochi is one of the biggest katsuo ports in Japan, and they eat more of them here than anywhere else in Japan. The katsuo are at their best in the late autumn, and in Kochi they typically eat them with masses of raw garlic and spring onion – unusual in Japan. But the market had much more to offer. There was a stall selling brightly coloured tofu flavoured with tomato, edamame and uni, which I had never seen before; I had never seen Japanese knotweed, that scourge of British gardens, on a menu before either, but its stems have a wonderful crunchy texture and delicate flavour; and, most incongruously of all, there were piles of percebes, or ‘goose barnacles’, those super-rare shellfish which taste like a cross between an oyster and a clam and look like dinosaurs’ toenails. I associate them more with Portugal or Spain, where they cost a small fortune. They are notoriously dangerous to harvest, growing on wave-bashed coastal rocks, but here they were just ¥380 (£2.50) for half a dozen. The highlight for me, though, was Kochi’s traditional seafood platter, Sawachi ryori, an elaborate display of shellfish and sashimi with, at its centre, a prehistoric looking, clawless lobster-type thing, like a Morton Bay Bug.
The Meaning of Rice Page 14