Our neighborhood ramen place was called Aoba. That's a joke. There were actually more than fifty ramen places with in walking distance of our apartment. But this one was our favorite.Aoba makes a wond...
I've long been a fan of Hi-Chew, the Japanese fruit chews, for their resilient texture and uncannily accurate fruit flavors: sour cherry, apple, grape, pickled plum, and especially mango, which is clo...
In Oishinbo: Ramen and Gyōza, Yamaoka and the gang are on an assignment to help a lonely gyōza chef find a new recipe and true love. While investigating, they have lunch at a dumpling restaurant that...
Takoyaki are octopus balls- not, thankfully, in the anatomical sense. They're a spherical cake with a chunk of boiled octopus in the center, cooked on a special griddle with hemispherical indentations...
When you visit Gindaco, spend some time watching the cooks make takoyaki before ordering, because it's an amazing free show. The shop has an industrial-sized takoyaki griddle with dozens of hot cast i...
True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find famil...
Iris's favorite item at Tenta is , sea eel. Unlike its freshwater cousin , anago is neither endangered nor expensive. A whole anago at Tenta is about $7.50. I ordered one, and the chef pulled a live e...
While I struggled with the menu, a handsome middle-aged guy from a nearby table came over to help. You like sashimi? Cooked fish? Sushi? he asked. His English was excellent. He was originally from Oki...
Go out the north exit of Nakano Station and into the Sun Mall shopping arcade. After a few steps, you'll see Gindaco, the (octopus balls) chain. Turn right into Pretty Good #1 Alley. Walk past the de...
We took a short ride on the Oedo line and surfaced near a sashimi-oriented izakaya called Uoshin. The upstairs counter snaked through the room so everyone could have a seat at the bar, and tucked into...
A soup dumpling is a little marvel of engineering. Called in Chinese, in Japanese, and soupies by Iris, soup dumplings consist of silky dough wrapped around a minced pork or crab filling. The fillin...
Japan is obsessed with French pastry. Yes, I know everyone who has access to French pastry is obsessed with it, but in Tokyo they've taken it another level. When a patissier becomes sufficiently famou...
We planned an Utsunomiya gyōza crawl, but when we emerged from the train station into 92-degree weather, we abandoned the idea and just went to the place with (Iris counted) seventy-four types of gyōz...
If you already hate tofu, the term tofu skin is probably an effective emetic. But this stuff is addictive. You start by making fresh soy milk. I'm not going to soft-pedal how much work this is: you ha...
Iris and I will eat at a skeezy yakitori joint and enjoy char-grilled chicken parts on a stick. We'll go to an eel restaurant and eat several courses of eel, my favorite fish. Iris's favorite is macke...
Okonomiyaki, meanwhile, is to American pancakes what Japanese wrestling is to American wrestling. The basic batter contains flour and water, grated nagaimo (that big slimy yam again), eggs, and diced...
Dairy Chiko, in the basement of Nakano Broadway, is a surrealist ice cream shop known for octuple-decker soft-serve cones. You can also order a smaller cone with less than one billion calories, but th...
The meat section is mostly devoted to presliced meats for hot pots and quick-cooked dishes, with a thin steak or chop here and there. In addition to commodity meat, you'll find Wagyu beef and kurobuta...
We ate three tiny, geometrically engineered appetizers, including a perfect cube of kabocha squash-flavored fish cake and an octopus salad consisting of one tiny piece of octopus brushed with a plum d...
A depachika is like nothing else. It is the endless bounty of a hawker's bazaar, but with Japanese civility. It is Japanese food and foreign food, sweet and savory. The best depachika have more than a...
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