Japan's Yoshoku

About this book

Napolitan is not from Naples, omurice is not French, and doria was never baked in Italy — yet all three are classics of one of the world's great vernacular cuisines: yoshoku, the Western food Japan translated, over a century and a half, into something entirely its own. This guide covers the whole canon in 200 entries: how it arrived, from the Portuguese century and the Dutch window to the emperor's beef of 1872 and the first restaurants of Ginza; the fried canon of korokke, tonkatsu and ebi fry and the fryer's craft behind them; the sauce-and-rice plates built on demi-glace and white sauce — omurice, doria, hayashi rice; the pasta and bread that rebuilt the menu, from boiled-ahead Napolitan to mentaiko spaghetti; the grills and pans of the hamburg steak; the houses that keep the canon — the town yoshoku-ya, the grand hotel dining room, the highway drive-in; yoshoku at home, in roux blocks, canned demi-glace and a mother's korokke; and the map of regions, borders and revivals, from Nagasaki's Turkish rice to Tokyo's shitamachi fry counters. Every entry follows the same four fields — the dish and its ground, the making and the craft, the taste and the table, and where you meet it today closing with the one official check to make — so any two plates can be compared in seconds. This book claims no health effects, ranks no restaurant, and repeats no origin legend as fact; it documents the dishes, the techniques, the houses and the culture exactly. Written and produced in Japan by a Japanese author and publisher.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.