Fast Food Nation Japan and other Michelin Thoughts

Ikuhiro Fukuda, a professor at Waseda University, also had some interesting things to say with regard to Michelin in the Yomiuri a couple of weeks ago. He notes that the Michelin restaurant guides for France also list (relatively) inexpensive unrated restaurants but the Tokyo version is limited to rated restaurants. Further on, he points out that in choosing Japanese restaurants, Michelin has essentially turned a blind eye to decor and service, something unthinkable in France. Specifically, he points out that the three-star sushi place is basically a twelve-seat bar that shares a toilet with the other establishments in the building. More important, in his own words:

This owes its origins to the distinct history that does not see the like in Europe, namely that sushi and other Japanese cuisine featured in Michelin such as soba and eel had their origins in the food stalls of the Edo Era, that is, fast food in contemporary terms. “Fast and tasty”, something that is quite normal for us Japanese, are concepts that hard to reconcile in Europe.

Note that I had merely noticed the fast-food origins of Japanese cuisine, where Fukuda traces them to the Edo Era. More broadly, hasn’t much of Japanese culture has historically been driven by the urban middle class, culinary culture being no exception?

---

Speaking of Michelin, I mentioned the other day that there were no Chinese restaurants in New York Times top ten list of new restaurants in New York. I also noted previously that Michelin Tokyo 2008 had one two-star Chinese restaurant and four one-star Chinese restaurants. Yesterday, NYT profiled the first Chinese restaurant to earn three stars. It’s in the first Michelin Hong Kong edition, launched on 2008 December 2 (my birthday; and for those of you who didn’t know, it’s never too late…).

Two Japanese Restaurants in NYT Top Ten New Restaurants List…So What of It?

The New York Times food critic weighs in on the top ten new restaurants in New York—he probably means Manhattan—and a sushi restaurant tops the list. There’s an Asian-Japanese-sushi restaurant (what, tuna roll shabu-shabu dipped in tom yum goong soup?)—in sixth place. There are four French restaurants (including one French-New American), two New American (one of them the French-American), and three Italian. No Chinese, no Indian, no Russian, no Arabic, and nothing from the rest of Europe. Is Japanese cuisine one of the Big Three as far as gustatory civilization is concerned? Or is it that you can simply charge more for Japanese food? I would love to have Frank Bruni’s expense account—I mean, see it.

As if to prove my point, NYT’s list of “some of the best inexpensive places reviewed in the Dining section [last] year” includes Spanish, Mexican, Druse, and even a couple of American restaurants without the obscurant adjective New, although Japanese fast food—a couple of soba shops and even a ramen diner—also made the list. And yes, four out of the fourteen listed in the report are located in Brooklyn.

Note though, that the Japanese menu is heavily weighted towards sushi and soba (read the individual listings and it’ll be even more obvious) two fast food genres (yes, sushi is essentially an expensive fast food) that vie with a myriad of likeminded competitors for our attention in Japan. Moreover, although there are regional differences, the udon, originally a Chinese import (but then, what isn’t?) has a larger national following than the soba, and the ramen noodle (a more recent variation on Chinese cuisine) easily eclipses both in the popular mind and media attention. Japanese food has been branded as health food, and America—Manhattan at least—has chosen accordingly.

Chinese Authorities Have a Cow with Japanese Beef

Actually, I wrote this post only because I couldn't pass up the title. I’ve also used a footnote to get rid of something that has been festering in my brain for a long time.

The five teppanyaki restaurants and two steakhouses in the new Tokyo Michelin serve as a good reminder that, for the gaijin foodie, Japan is the MBL of beef*. And it’s no different for the nouveau richein China.

Unfortunately, in one of the greatest of ironies**, Japanese beef has been banned in China since 2001, after Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy was discovered in Japan. So Chinese Customs are frequently catching smugglers posing as tourists trying to smuggle in large amounts of Japanese beef, according to this Sankei report.

* I understand that Kobe beef is quite popular at expensive weddings and bar mitzvahs in the U.S. Which raises the question: Where do they find kosher Kobe beef? And yes, that’s where Kobe Bryant’s name comes from. Only a quirk of fate saved him from being named Fugu Bryant, or Matsutake Mushroom Bryant. Which in turn raises yet another question: Could Torii Hunter just as easily have been named Minaret Hunter?

** In fact, this is a double irony. Can you spot them both?

Tokyo Michelin Revisited

Talk about synchronicity; YH has been kind enough to email what looks like digital images of the handout sheets at the Michelin announcement. Here’s a breakdown by genre:

Three stars: 3 Japanese, 2 Japanese sushi, 2 French contemporary, 1 French.

Two stars: 10 Japanese, 3 Japanese sushi, 2 Japanese fugu (poisonous blowfish), 1 Japanese contemporary, 2 French, 4 French contemporary, 1 Italian contemporary, 1 Chinese, 1 Spanish contemporary

One star: 39 Japanese, 10 Japanese sushi, 5 Japanese tempura, 5 Japanese teppanyaki, 3 Japanese soba kaiseki, 2 Japanese fugu, 2 Japanese contemporary, 1 japanese contemporaine, 1 Japanese unagi (Japanese and European eels), 2 steakhouse, 21 French, 14 French contemporary, 5 Italian contemporary, 2 Italian, 4 Chinese , 1 Spanish contemporary

Totals: 52 Japanese, 15 Japanese sushi, 5 Japanese tempura, 5 Japanese teppanyaki, 4 Japanese fugu, 3 Japanese soba kaiseki, 3 Japanese contemporary, 1 Japanese contemporaine, 1 Japanese unagi; 24 French, 20 French contemporary; 2 Italian, 6 Italian contemporary; 5 Chinese; 2 Spanish contemporary; 2 steakhouse

It is predominantly Japanese. Moreover, some of the Japanese cuisine is broken down into 6 subgenres plus the two update versions (no, I don’t know the difference between contemporary and contemporaine; neither does spell-check). The subgenres are all one-trick ponies of one kind or another, like their less-regarded (or less-favored by gaijin tourists) cohorts: the Japanese ramen, Japanese curry, Japanese tonkatsu, soba noodles, udon noodles, etc. It is notable that many, perhaps most, of these subgenres are foreign imports that have been assimilated to one degree or another*.

In the past, the landscape was dotted with diners of varying quality that featured many or most of these items, including, of course, traditional Japanese cuisine, the massive, top-floor diners in department stores sitting at the top of the hierarchy. But most have disappeared, or drastically shrunk in size and menu variety.

Non-European ethnic cuisine is missing completely, unless you put Chinese cuisine into that genre. (In fact, the lack of distinction between the Chinese regional cuisines in the Michelins is distressing. Dalian and Wuhan, say, are at least as different from each other as Athens and Paris. If nothing else, you want to know what you’re getting into when you enter a Szechuan restaurant.) Even the long-familiar, near-ubiquitous Korean cuisine is missing. All this, I assume, as well as inclusion of the teppanyaki, is in keeping with the Michelin readership, that is, mainly Western tourists.

*In the 1960s, a popular phrase enumerating the three things children loved was “Kyojin, Taihō, tamagoyaki”, or “the (Yomiuri) Giants, Taihō, and fried eggs”. It is notable that, only partly by coincidence, all three have foreign connections. Baseball is, of course, an American import. Not only that, the Giants team itself was a highly successful Yomiuri Shinbun attempt to import the professional sports business model to Japanese baseball, which had been dominated by amateur college and middle-school teams (and Asahi and Mainichi Shinbuns). The frying pan, as well as the regular consumption of eggs, is a Western import. And everybody was aware that the majestic Taihō, the legendary sumo grand champion, got much of his exceedingly good looks from his Russian father.

Also notable is the fact that these were actually boys’ favorites. There was no equivalent phrase for girls either. The phrase is also an example of the way we Japanese like to think in threes. Are the Chinese more binary? Discuss.

My Restaurants Are Better than Yours. (Eat That, New York!)

“Stars represent only what is on the plate. They do not take into consideration interior decoration, service quality or table settings.”
- Caveat in all Michelin City Guides



Dear New York:

Did you know that Michelin is launching a Guide to me this Thursday?

I thought so. Then obviously you are not yet aware that I am getting eight three-star restaurants, 25 two-stars, and 117 one-stars. Yes, count them - 150 in all. And you have, let’s see, hmm, three, six, and 33, respectively, for a total of 42. Oh , very nice.

But frankly, for a city that prides itself on its diversity and thrives on the tourist trade, you have a rather narrow view of what’s good for the palate. I mean, your list is dominated by American and contemporary American (what’s the difference, big boy, truffles or non- on your hamburgers?), but don’t look for any Hispanic cuisine, or soul food, right? And the list is supplemented by a lot of French and some Italian restaurants, so it’s very much Europe, white, Romance-language Europe. Though speaking of Europe, there’s one Greek and one (what the…) Austrian. There are no Chinese, Korean, Arab, or Hispanic restaurants. You do have one Indian restaurant (the Asian kind), and three Japanese restaurants (hooray). A closer look, however, reveals your Japanese restaurants to be sushi spots. Now sushi is cool, but that’s the equivalent of listing three steakhouses and nothing else, no?

Sadly, my list does not appear to include any ramen joints, curry shops, or tonkatsu-ya (breaded, deep-fried pork chop restaurants), giving the lie to the claim that Michelin stars “do not take into consideration interior decoration, service quality or table settings”. And true, the three- and two-star restaurants, which are in the pre-publishing news reports, are predominantly Japanese and French. But the two-stars do include one Chinese and one Spanish (bueno!), as well as one Italian, so I’m looking forward to seeing the full list when the Guide comes out on 22 November.

In the meantime, don’t get down on yourself, okay? And if anybody from your neighborhood, so to speak, is coming here, let him/her know that the proprietor of this blog will be happy to show him/her around any of these places. No, he has not been to any single one of them. But that’s not a problem at all, because he can compare them with any number of other places that he has been to. And remember, he’ll “sing for lunch”; imagine what he’d do for a free dinner at any one of these three-star outfits. Even if it’s not a ramen joint.

NeenerBest regards,
Tokyo


ADD: And Paris, c’est la guerre, baby.