An International Flavor in the Land of the Rising Sun

When Wolfgang Puck opened Spago at the Beverly Hills Square in Roppongi, a chic and flourishing district in Tokyo, he had good reason to do so. Pizza has established a strong culinary foothold in the land of the rising sun.

The Hard Rock Cafe, Tony Roma’s and Victoria Station did not seem to make a mistake, either. Neither did McDonald’s and Wendy’s . . . nor even Dunkin Donuts.

Just as sushi makes waves in America, ribs, onion rings, hamburgers, French fries and doughnuts are becoming popular with the Japanese.

Also finding a satisfied audience are the French bistros, patisseries and Italian trattorias now scattered all over town. The Japanese definitely have an ongoing affair with European cuisines.

With Italian fare accepted with gusto, there’s an overwhelming picture of not just pizza but pasta, pasta, pasta. One almost wonders whether cannelloni, spaghetti and lasagna are pushing out the somen (fine white wheat noodles), soba (buckwheat noodles) and ramen in this cosmopolitan city.

While comfortably absorbing Western cuisines, Eastern chefs are actually Japanizing (as the Japanese term it) many of these dishes. Particularly popular are pastas and risottos mixed with almost every type of fresh seafood.

Although faced with stiff competition from these other cuisines, traditional Japanese foods such as tempura, sushi, sukiyaki, mochi and rice crackers are still the greatest draw. With about 500,000 restaurants in Tokyo alone, not including the great number of mobile food stalls (yatai) and small underground shops that feed the constant throng of shoppers and commuters in subway and railway stations, there is ample room for all cuisines. (The second-largest city in the world, next to Shanghai, overcrowded Tokyo has a population of about 11 million.)

Nocturnal Dining

A recent visit to Tokyo began with a search for a place to dine at 11 p.m. one evening. We settled for the Almond Confectionery and Restaurant, a spot near our hotel. Well patronized by a young crowd, it featured Japanized Italian-American food. The tastiest dish was a Japanese pilaf, which had thin slices of mushrooms, chopped green onions and some diced vegetables and meat. Like many gohan (rice) dishes, most of these pilafs offer a lot of taste because the raw rice granules are cooked in stock (dashi) flavored with some sake, mirin and soy sauce as well as whatever mushroom or vegetable is used. The spaghetti vongole (with clams in the shell) was far more interesting than the meat-sauce version. Most dishes on the menu were less than $5, a relief from the dreaded thought that we would find everything in this country expensive.

Like many other patisseries we saw, from the plush ones like the Fugetsudo at the Ginza to small shops in subways and department store basements, the Almond bakery glass case displayed a dazzling array of tortes glazed with various fruit-flavored gels plus fine-textured brandy cakes and boxed cookies in all sizes and shapes.

From that first meal on we followed the Japanese pattern, doing as they do daily . . . grazing from place to place on a variety of international as well as local dishes and snacks. The Japanese flair for beauty, color harmony and pristine presentation is impressive. Every confection is perfectly designed. No crumbs are allowed around baked goods. Every fruit and whipped cream garnish must look exquisite and fresh. Often it was difficult to tell whether the confections were real or wax models as the imitation displays realistically simulate the original.

Westerners normally judge pastries by taste, but to the average Japanese consumer, a beautiful appearance is almost as important. The finer bake shops had more to offer where taste was concerned.

Grazing on fresh fruits in Tokyo was expensive, but a most gratifying experience. At a little market near the Ueno Station, a fruit vendor cutting pineapple offered the juiciest, sweetest chunks. He and his fellow vendors took great pride in the neatly stacked cantaloupes and honeydews, oranges, avocados, Japanese pears, strawberries and apples.

Most impressive were the oversize--and luscious--apples, at about $1.70 apiece. They were as big as grapefruit. Smaller ones were around $2.50 a pound. Pink-tinged with no sign of shiny paraffin, the apple skins were as crisp and fragrant as the fruits’ flesh was sweet and juicy. A glimpse at a supermarket showed us oversize leeks, daikon , enormous garlic and healthy-looking mushrooms and eggplants.

Coffee houses, some with European ambiance, and quaint Japanese tea shops, called chamise, were everywhere. Popular among women as a place to relax and talk as they drink ocha (green tea), the tea shops offer an assortment of ohagi mochi (pounded rice cake) treats and kanten (seaweed jelly).

One Sunday, along Ginza Street, the aroma of roasting seaweed lured us into sampling two types of mochi delicacies from a mochi wagon. The isobemaki were mochi balls that were flattened and cooked on a grill, wrapped in nori (seaweed sheet) and then briefly heated over coals. Green kusa-mochi were filled with sweetened azuki - an or red bean jam.

Pedestrian’s Paradise occurs every Sunday in the Ginza. Shortly after noon, the street is closed to vehicular traffic so pedestrians can stroll or sit and eat at tables covered with colorful umbrellas. It’s a good time to check out the food wagons in the street scene. We tried a few free samples being handed out, including flavored rice crackers, fried prawn crackers and low-calorie beer, and watched the activities.

The longest lines were at the burger and hot dog fast food chains and soft-serve ice cream stalls catering to the young. Another long line was at a Ginza bakery offering discounted breads on the sidewalk. Here you could find almost every type of yeast bread, but the favorites were the fine-textured, tender and creamy-tasting Japanese breads.

Inside department stores and office buildings, there were many confectionery shops and restaurants. Geared to families, shoppers and employees, most of these were moderately priced.

One pizzeria, the Capri, offered about 50 different types of pizza, including a seafood medley and calzone. An interesting salad bar displayed bowls of crisp greens, shrimp, octopus, squid, varieties of mushrooms and potato salad, which Japanese seem to enjoy.

Waiters at the Capri were running and cooks were hustling to dish up as many as five pastas or pizzas at a time. The spaghetti was cooked differently. After being reheated in butter and oil, the cooked pasta was mixed with the sauce in a skillet, then toppings were folded in.

Going to the Sushi Shops

Grazing in Japan, of course, is incomplete without sampling sushi. Sushi - ya (sushi shops) had conveyor belts for the sushi on different-shape dishes to travel around in front of diners. More modern sushi-ya offered Micom (micro-computer) sushi, wherein a computerized panel with push buttons is provided for each customer to relay orders to the chef. The system also keeps track of the running total of your bill. In moderately priced sushi shops, an average assortment of about a dozen sushi was about $9.

Rather common in the city were tonkatsu-ya , pork cutlet restaurants. A complete meal of cutlets (or other batter-fried foods such as seafood, vegetables and chicken), rice and soup was about $7.

Whether you eat ramen, udon or any other noodle dish at a wagon or in a restaurant, it will be from about $2 to $4 with very little taste difference. However, one never-to-be-forgotten experience was sampling the ramen that we had from a darkly lighted yatai late one cold evening. Our stomachs were full but somehow the delicious aroma of steaming noodle broth enticed us to stop.

Inside the wagon, there was a huge cauldron of gently boiling pork stock in which floated an enormous whole head of garlic, some potatoes and Chinese cabbage. Thin long noodles were dropped into a large serving bowl and topped with a few spinach leaves, naruto (boiled fish paste slices, very tender pieces of pork, a couple of pieces of shiitake mushroom and bamboo shoots). The vendor offered to add some strange-looking sea creature but his offer was declined.

Tokyo is filled with activity at night. The brightly lighted Shinjuku district was noisy and alive as sing-along bars mixed with sounds from video-game arcades. Here you’ll find snack items, from super-size grilled hot dogs served with huge cone bags of catsup to fresh fruit. But what was totally irresistible were the almost addictively fragrant chestnuts that a vendor was roasting in a huge vat on a red wagon.

Dotting street corners were vending machines offering coffee, tea, juice and soda for about 70 cents. The price was about a third of what you would pay at a restaurant. The same was true for the whiskey and beer also available in vending machines at about $1.60 each. One soup and noodle vending machine featured a pay-before-you-order deal. After depositing coins and selecting an order, you pushed a button to open the doors to a small restaurant, where you could sit at a counter to enjoy the meal.

Early Birds at the Fish Market

If you’re an early bird rather than a night owl, don’t miss the Tsukiji Fish Market, Japan’s largest. The auction of ice-crated marine products starts at 5 each morning. As the largest wholesale market in Japan, the market sells about 900,000 tons annually of shellfish and fish such as yellow fish, big-eye tuna, octopus, cuttle fish, salmon, sardine, bonito and mackerel.

What would lure us back to Japan are the wonderfully fresh seafood and the thought of another luscious bite of that unblemished big apple. Then there’s the pineapple that was so refreshingly sweet . . . the sweetest strawberries. . . . These delights are indeed memories to be cherished since, unfortunately, we couldn’t bring any of them home.

With hundreds of Japanese restaurants in the Los Angeles area, a goodly proportion of which serve authentic Japanese food, it’s easy to remind ourselves of some of the wonderful foods we had. And it didn’t take long to find replicas of the pretty pastries and creamy-moist breads at the Ikeda Bakery and Frances Bakery in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo.

As for the pizzas, pastas and risottos Japonica, anyone can concoct them at home. I’d like to make them with fresh shrimp, crab, mussels, squid, fish or clams. If only the Tsukiji Fish Market were but a mile away. . . .