better, rather than
Sep. 15th, 2007 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdOne of the things I'm still missing pretty severely is the food - really everywhere, not just Yokohama and Tokyo. I expected all the Japanese food to be better, of course, and it was - for example, the cluster of restaurants at the train station had a sushi-train restaurant which served sushi of quality much better than that of cheap-but-good sushi here. It wasn't I ♥, but it was within range given the limited palette, and, of course, that was cheap sushi. Meanwhile, the cooked fish lacked some taste that I really dislike in cooked fish throughout North America, and while it still wasn't my favourite thing in the world, it was something I was perfectly happy to eat.
I didn't really expect the western food also to be better, as a rule. The sandwich and fries I had at Anna Miller? Really good. Good cold cuts, good bread, an unexpected but very good mayonnaise relish that I've no idea how to duplicate that was tasty without being heavy like I usually find mayonnaise to be. It came with french fries. They were solid but light and tasty, despite being deep-fried.
That became a recurring theme, really; a lot of American foods, particularly cheaper American foods, are heavy with fats and grease. While actual meats served in Japan tended to be very fatty cuts - particularly the night I tried 牛どて鍋, which is, hum, a country beef single-pot pie-like dish - you never found much of anything heavy with oil or grease (or, I suppose butter), like all fast foods, most sandwiches, french fries, and so on. I liked that a lot.
Actually, let me just me come out and say it: food was all but uniformly better than here. In a lot of cases, dramatically. Quality of ingredients showed. Everywhere but the first stop when we joined up with the Thundering Hoarde tour already in progress was at least really good. That first lunch with the group was a very western lunch aimed at reassuring a very western group of tourists, and it was mediocre, but even the tour food improved quickly. And more specifically, even the western-oriented tour food - which shrank in proportion as time went on - improved just as quickly.
I don't quite know how to drive this home with clarity. How about this: we stopped at a rest station - a combination rest stop and truck stop - on the highway between tour visits one day. I got a curry from the short-order counter, and it was good. Rest stop curry - actively good.
(Oh, there was another exception: one night we needed Food Now, and Paul and Anna dove in to an egg, italian sausage, rocket, and anchovy pizza, which I avoided for the spaghetti. I chose poorly. Amusingly, I was able to recreate what I think they were going for last night. It came out nice.)
Even things like candy-bar chocolates are better. Counter chocolates are generically of better quality than you get here without going to specialty shops. One of the reasons for the Pocky phenomenon, I rather suspect, is that the chocolate is simply much better than you get in, say, a Snickers bar, and people are reacting to that. Apparently some people think it's dark chocolate - it's not, at least, not in the standard box. But it's got a lot more flavour per volume than people expect, so they think it must be dark. iirc, "Men's Pocky" actually is dark chocolate, if you're curious.
Similarly, soft-serve ice cream - you know, the swirly kind you think of as fun in the summer but not really a good example of the art? It's just good ice cream in Japan. Very good, in fact. I particularly liked the sesame that Mariko introduced to me (so tasty!), but plain vanilla? Also very good. I was pleased to discover today that Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream bars are, in fact, of reasonably comparable quality to the soft serve vanilla - not quite as good, frankly, there's a bit of a hollowness to the taste that I can't figure out, and the chocolate shell isn't everything I'd like it to be, but it's still good. This means I'll have at least some ice creams that I can buy at a counter which aren't a big letdown. Of course, the selection is far less than I had in Japan in, say, in an ordinary ice cream vending machine, but what can you do? At least there's something.
I'm going to have to get serious about learning the art of bento. I can usually stomach airline food, but I seriously and honestly could not eat what United put in front of me on the flight home. It was appalling. But I don't think it was any worse than what I scarfed down on the way there.
Fundamentally, the way that American culture prefers "more" over "good" shows up exquisitely in food. Despite the fact that American food has improved dramatically over the last 50 years, it's still kinda crap. Fatty, sloppy, oversweetened crap, made as cheaply as possible and served by the bucketload, as though to pigs.
This quality emphasis doesn't mean limited choices, by the way. I ran into far more variety there than here. Some of it was scary variety, like HELLO JELLYFISH but! Variety.
Japan is already famous for its vending machines, of course. I don't need to go on about that too much. But in case you're not aware: they are, of course, AWESOME. (Sorry, return of t3h c4pz.) Even in a single smallish drink machine in an alley, you're looking at 20 options - soda, teas, lemon drinks, waters, coffee, vitamin waters, juices, electrolyte waters (like the well-known Pocari Sweat, which I was drinking already before I went over on vacation - it's like Gatorade, sweet, but not sickly sweet, I really like it) - often in two sizes, and the cans have lids you can put back on so you can save some for later. Also, the machines generally seem to come in clusters of three or so, without a lot of repeats.
This is as opposed to a US soda machine, with its four slots filled with Coke or Pepsi, and four other options. Maybe.
Pleasantly, I've found I can get C.C. Lemon at Uwajimaya. I got hooked on that stuff in Yokohama, and it's everywhere. Also, mmmm, tasty. This is particularly good because I tried a lemon drink at QFC a couple of days ago - an all-organic "alternative" kind of drink - and like all kinds of other things now, it mostly tasted like sugar water. I could taste lemon in it, but it was kind of drowned out by the sugar rush. So I poured it out. (They didn't have any Limonata or I'd have tried that. I still plan to try it again. Hopefully that's still good.)
So anyway. Food in Japan: overwhelmingly better. Not universally, but overwhelmingly; Japanese food, western foods, whatever. Better.
But then, on the other hand, they do also have things like this:
Admiral Cheesehead's Orange Fleet Opens Namjatown
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spazzkat's picture)
Nobody's perfect. -_^
I didn't really expect the western food also to be better, as a rule. The sandwich and fries I had at Anna Miller? Really good. Good cold cuts, good bread, an unexpected but very good mayonnaise relish that I've no idea how to duplicate that was tasty without being heavy like I usually find mayonnaise to be. It came with french fries. They were solid but light and tasty, despite being deep-fried.
That became a recurring theme, really; a lot of American foods, particularly cheaper American foods, are heavy with fats and grease. While actual meats served in Japan tended to be very fatty cuts - particularly the night I tried 牛どて鍋, which is, hum, a country beef single-pot pie-like dish - you never found much of anything heavy with oil or grease (or, I suppose butter), like all fast foods, most sandwiches, french fries, and so on. I liked that a lot.
Actually, let me just me come out and say it: food was all but uniformly better than here. In a lot of cases, dramatically. Quality of ingredients showed. Everywhere but the first stop when we joined up with the Thundering Hoarde tour already in progress was at least really good. That first lunch with the group was a very western lunch aimed at reassuring a very western group of tourists, and it was mediocre, but even the tour food improved quickly. And more specifically, even the western-oriented tour food - which shrank in proportion as time went on - improved just as quickly.
I don't quite know how to drive this home with clarity. How about this: we stopped at a rest station - a combination rest stop and truck stop - on the highway between tour visits one day. I got a curry from the short-order counter, and it was good. Rest stop curry - actively good.
(Oh, there was another exception: one night we needed Food Now, and Paul and Anna dove in to an egg, italian sausage, rocket, and anchovy pizza, which I avoided for the spaghetti. I chose poorly. Amusingly, I was able to recreate what I think they were going for last night. It came out nice.)
Even things like candy-bar chocolates are better. Counter chocolates are generically of better quality than you get here without going to specialty shops. One of the reasons for the Pocky phenomenon, I rather suspect, is that the chocolate is simply much better than you get in, say, a Snickers bar, and people are reacting to that. Apparently some people think it's dark chocolate - it's not, at least, not in the standard box. But it's got a lot more flavour per volume than people expect, so they think it must be dark. iirc, "Men's Pocky" actually is dark chocolate, if you're curious.
Similarly, soft-serve ice cream - you know, the swirly kind you think of as fun in the summer but not really a good example of the art? It's just good ice cream in Japan. Very good, in fact. I particularly liked the sesame that Mariko introduced to me (so tasty!), but plain vanilla? Also very good. I was pleased to discover today that Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream bars are, in fact, of reasonably comparable quality to the soft serve vanilla - not quite as good, frankly, there's a bit of a hollowness to the taste that I can't figure out, and the chocolate shell isn't everything I'd like it to be, but it's still good. This means I'll have at least some ice creams that I can buy at a counter which aren't a big letdown. Of course, the selection is far less than I had in Japan in, say, in an ordinary ice cream vending machine, but what can you do? At least there's something.
I'm going to have to get serious about learning the art of bento. I can usually stomach airline food, but I seriously and honestly could not eat what United put in front of me on the flight home. It was appalling. But I don't think it was any worse than what I scarfed down on the way there.
Fundamentally, the way that American culture prefers "more" over "good" shows up exquisitely in food. Despite the fact that American food has improved dramatically over the last 50 years, it's still kinda crap. Fatty, sloppy, oversweetened crap, made as cheaply as possible and served by the bucketload, as though to pigs.
This quality emphasis doesn't mean limited choices, by the way. I ran into far more variety there than here. Some of it was scary variety, like HELLO JELLYFISH but! Variety.
Japan is already famous for its vending machines, of course. I don't need to go on about that too much. But in case you're not aware: they are, of course, AWESOME. (Sorry, return of t3h c4pz.) Even in a single smallish drink machine in an alley, you're looking at 20 options - soda, teas, lemon drinks, waters, coffee, vitamin waters, juices, electrolyte waters (like the well-known Pocari Sweat, which I was drinking already before I went over on vacation - it's like Gatorade, sweet, but not sickly sweet, I really like it) - often in two sizes, and the cans have lids you can put back on so you can save some for later. Also, the machines generally seem to come in clusters of three or so, without a lot of repeats.
This is as opposed to a US soda machine, with its four slots filled with Coke or Pepsi, and four other options. Maybe.
Pleasantly, I've found I can get C.C. Lemon at Uwajimaya. I got hooked on that stuff in Yokohama, and it's everywhere. Also, mmmm, tasty. This is particularly good because I tried a lemon drink at QFC a couple of days ago - an all-organic "alternative" kind of drink - and like all kinds of other things now, it mostly tasted like sugar water. I could taste lemon in it, but it was kind of drowned out by the sugar rush. So I poured it out. (They didn't have any Limonata or I'd have tried that. I still plan to try it again. Hopefully that's still good.)
So anyway. Food in Japan: overwhelmingly better. Not universally, but overwhelmingly; Japanese food, western foods, whatever. Better.
But then, on the other hand, they do also have things like this:
Admiral Cheesehead's Orange Fleet Opens Namjatown
(
spazzkat's picture)Nobody's perfect. -_^
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 08:38 am (UTC)It's like... Horatio Hornblower after being stampeded over by Packers fans near a dim sum counter.
I repeat, O_o.
(no subject)
From:wtf cheesehead meets gyozacat
Date: 2007-09-15 09:45 am (UTC)At the building I stayed in there, they had vending machine that sold 1 liter bottles of all kinds of stuff, like Qoo. I lived on Qoo when I was there, I wish they would sell it here someplace. And, uh, chocolate buns with cream inside. And tuna-cheese buns.
Like you said, variety is so huge there. I am jealous.
Re: wtf cheesehead meets gyozacat
From:no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 10:08 am (UTC)Glad someone else likes it too. :3
no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 02:02 pm (UTC)*Sigh...*
I remember when the US had good fast food; in fact, good restaurant food *period* at all but the really bad places. And lunchmeats. I'm told the reason ham has so little flavor today is that hogs are no longer allowed to range free and root around, but are kept in pens and fed processed feed.
When I was a kid we called softserve ice cream "custard." It even looked like custard, the vanilla having a distinct yellow tinge. It probably had eggs in it. The taste was wonderful, as good as dipped but different. You're not allowed to put raw eggs in ice cream these days... My homemade milkshakes would probably be illegal if I attempted to sell them.
We have bland food for a bland culture. (No, pouring pure capsaicin on bland food does not make it flavorful. Only painful.)
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Date: 2007-09-15 02:36 pm (UTC)And now I've got a craving for sushi, even if it's the mediocre kind...
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From:no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 02:37 pm (UTC)As to Asian food, on my rotations into China I eat vastly better (although at some risk from foodborne illness: hygiene is spotty in those kitchens) than I do in North America. I wonder whether it really is the quantity-over-quality choice being made on this side of the ocean?
Perhaps seeing a Sysco truck pull in behind a restaurant is a bad sign?
For Seattle food, since I am down there often enough, I prefer Kalia (an Indian restaurant) on Greenwood north of 85th, on the east side of the street. Give it a try sometime, if you can.
Where's a decent Japanese grocery in Seattle? I already know and enjoy Pal-Do World for Korean shopping up on 99 north of Lynwood.
Maellenkleth the maritime
from the foggy Isla de Quadra y Vancouver
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From:no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 02:40 pm (UTC)I was going to go on a big rant about why American food is so crappy, but you cook enough that you probably know all those reasons anyhow.
I've noticed the same phenomenon with Irish food: If you get Irish food somewhere where they can actually afford good ingredients, it can be amazingly delicious.
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Date: 2007-09-15 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 05:21 pm (UTC)Limonata can be had by the can at several places in Pike Place (the Italian grocery/deli on the SW corner of First and Pike and the chicken vendor in the arcade across from the bakery come to mind)... don't remember right off where to get it in bulk... I don't think you'll be disappointed, it's definitely lemon and not too sweet.
(And if the Murkworks crowd decides it doesn't want to be your Bento victims, I bet we could find a couple of willing guinea pigs over here... :)
(Again, well written. And the pic at the end? Priceless. :)
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From:A late dispatch from Limonataland
From:Re: A late dispatch from Limonataland
From:Re: A late dispatch from Limonataland
From:no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 06:08 pm (UTC)Random train station sandwiches bought while rushing to get on a train?
That were fantastic?
Yeahhhhh.
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Date: 2007-09-15 06:50 pm (UTC)(And I am surprised and pleased to find Namjatown still exists. Yay Namco-owned theme parks (yes, Namjatown is actually owned by Namco, as was a now-defunct park called Wonder Eggs--the latter actually shows up in one of the Tekken games (Tekken 3 or Tekken 4) in Xiaoyu's stage, and the Namjatown kitties show up in Tales of Destiny. :3)
One day I will actually have to go to Japan--if I can ever afford it, that is :P (I am, unfortunately, in a Flyover State (tm) whose only access to actual international airports is via our so-called international (which is international only for UPS), then flying to a hub that is an actual passenger international airport, then hence to Japan. And I'd want to take hubby with me. Meaning that I *hate* to think how much the airfare would be >_<)