'Cause it's never touched a frying pan

[venta]

As some of you know, I'm a huge fan of Japanese cuisine and will happily eat my own body weight in sashimi. Last night saw us experimentally trying out a new restaurant off Baker Street (called Nambu-tei), which turned out to be rather nice. It has an overwhelmingly large menu, which leads to confusion as by the time you've decided on three things to eat you've forgotten the first two. By the time you've remembered them, you've lost the third item and can't remember its name.

By misunderstanding a question early on, and then placing a slightly peculiar order (yes, I did want two kinds of soup), I managed to convince one of the waitresses that I was an idiot - or at least that I had no real clue what I was ordering.

I did have some clue - but the trouble is that Japanese food, and its serving, is just complicated.

One member of staff happened by our table occasionally to check we could actually work out what to do with the dishes we'd ordered. Did I know how to eat my tuna-natto ? (I did [*]). Did we know what the "small mountain" served with our sweet potato tempura was for ? (We didn't [**]). The seafood dumplings weren't complicated, but I was surprised to discover that the sauce they were served with - which looked exactly like mustard - was mustard.

However, there are a number of minor etiquette points that I'd quite like clearing up. I eat in Japanese restaurants quite often, and no one's yet thrown me out for ill manners. However, I'm curious as to what (if anything) is considered correct. At least then I choose to ignore it rather than acting out of ignorance. (Yes, I have in the past tried asking restaurant staff; they're always keen to assure me that it doesn't matter. Which is nice, but doesn't help my curiosity.)

I'm used to drinking misoshiru (a thin soup) straight out of the bowl. However, I've noticed a couple of times that more upmarket restaurants offer you a spoon with it. Is this a concession to Westerners, or is it just that I'm used to hanging out in cheap sushi dives [***]? Is picking my bowl up the equivalent of eating my chips with my fingers - perfectly fine in McDonald's, but not quite the done thing in a posh restaurant ?

My noodle dish yesterday was described as a Japanese hotpot, and arrived in a thing that looked like a balti. It was thin soup, full of the thickest udon noodles I've seen, chopped cabbage, a carved mushroom, some unidentifiable stuff and a poached egg. It was topped with a giant tempura prawn thing. Ordinarily, I'm used to a bowl of ramen coming with a big, flat spoon and you eat it straight out the bowl. My hotpot arrived with an empty bowl and spoon, and no clear indication of why I might want this extra bowl. I lifted things like the tempura and egg into it so they didn't go too soggy/cooked respectively. But I'd like to know exactly what it's intended for.

Actually, I'd like to know what the unidentified stuff was, too. It turns up quite often in ramen, usually hanging out with seafood. It's whitish, usually cut into flat half-circles, and often has a pink tinge around the curved edge. It has a slightly spongey texture, and generally appears to be something really quite inorganic and unnatural.

I don't order sushi all that much - I'm more of a sashimi and a bowl of rice kind of person - but I've noted in several different places that advice is, when dipping sushi into soy, to dip the fish not the rice. The obvious problem is, of course, that the fish is on the top. Even if you pick it up with chopsticks top-and-bottom rather than side-to-side, turning it over will have your fish flopping about in the soy. How does one achieve this with grace ?

I've heard it said (though admittedly only by one person) that in the really top-notch sushi restaurants you eat with your fingers, not with chopsticks. This sounds a little unlikely to me, can anyone confirm or deny it ?

[*] Tuna-natto is a dish with chopped, raw tuna on one side and fermented soy beans (natto) on the other. You pour soy sauce on it, and stir the tuna and natto up vigorously together to make a peculiar, sticky, slimey porridge. The first time I ever tried to order it in a restaurant, the waitress tried to discourage me on the grounds I wouldn't like it. She was wrong.

[**] It was, apparently, a moulded cone of grated radish and grated ginger. You're supposed to drop it into the thin dipping sauce served with the tempura, and stir to create a thicker, grainy sauce. It did improve the dish quite a lot, actually.

[***] In particular, Taro on Brewer Street, which I would highly recommend as an excellent place for a quick, inexpensive meal in London. Not for nothing do the people I go to gigs with refer to Taro as "the usual".

Comments

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

You like natto? Bit too hardcore for me. Could the mystery substance be surimi?

[venta.livejournal.com]

You like natto?

Yup. I was surprised the first time I ate it that it was worth warning people off. It's a little odd, but not that odd in my mind.

Could the mystery substance be surimi?

Er, I dunno...

<wikipedia>

Yup, I think it probably could.

[pm215]

Cheap natto is worse than decent restaurant natto, maybe?

[pm215]

Well, I always eat miso soup with chopsticks, but I don't tend to go to posh restaurants either.

I know the unidentified thing you mean, but didn't know the name either. Wikipedia to the rescue -- apparently it's kamaboko. Points to that article for the phrase "typically sold in semicylindrical, Quonset hut-shaped loaves"...

My guess about the extra bowl for your hotpot is that it's actually supposed to be a dish for multiple people (in its original form) -- in which case obviously everybody has their own bowl and they take stuff from the shared bowl and then eat out of their own bowl.

As for sushi, this video might be helpful, or at least entertaining :-)

(I didn't know you could get cheap sushi in London...)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I always eat miso soup with chopsticks

Now that is a challenge :) (I know what you mean, but it does read oddly.)

I think you're spot on with Kamaboko. I was about to say that I think it's more Nissen-hut shaped myself, but it seems that the Quonset was based on the Nissen.

I've seen the video before, how do you think I summoned up the courage ever to enter a sushi dive ?

As for cheap sushi... you can get reasonable sushi at Gili Gulu at Seven Dials quite cheaply. It has an all-you-can-eat menu, which is about £14. Taro's sushi is cheaper than many other London places for the quality, though still not what I might call "cheap" as a meal solution - if someone wanted an inexpensive meal, I'd recommend their noodle/rice dishes really. Bear in mind, of course, that I've never been to Japan so you probably have a whole different scale for these things :)

[pm215]

My definition of 'cheap sushi' is 105 yen a plate (about 50p), where a plate is usually two actual bits of sushi. With my appetite that's probably about a fiver for a meal.

That really is cheap conveyor belt sushi, though (and you probably have to hunt to find those prices in Tokyo these days, as opposed to out in the sticks).

[venta.livejournal.com]

You're right, then. You can't get cheap sushi in London :)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

You need to take a pen.

The round thing with pink edges is like crabstick, only bigger and chopped.

Fish --> soy: turn your hand upside down and do it side-to-side, then turn your hand over. fish-->sauce-->mouth.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I will ask my Japanese teacher about the other things.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks. A few people have already offered answers, but it's always interesting to collect opinons.

I suspect that our conception of "foreign" customs might be a bit off, though. There probably isn't a right answer. I reckon if you were to ask any of the posters here (who I think are all genuine UK-ites) about points of manners in the UK you'd probably get several different answers about what is and isn't acceptable.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Bollocks, I forgot. Sorry...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Don't apologise, I think it's well worth asking as many people who are likely to know as possible. That way you can get a kind of best-fit average opinion, and deduce approximately what the norm is.

Another one (please don't feel obliged to badger people with multiple questions on my behalf!) is taking food from a communal plate... when me boyfriend was briefly living in Japan, he was told that you should use the "wrong" end (ie, the end that hasn't been in your mouth) of chopsticks to take food from a commmunal plate. Never heard this anywhere else, though, or seen it done.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I've heard it said (though admittedly only by one person) that in the really top-notch sushi restaurants you eat with your fingers, not with chopsticks. This sounds a little unlikely to me, can anyone confirm or deny it ?

Not first-hand. However, the person I know who is far and away the most expert sushi eater is dracunculus. She mentioned this issue in a post a while ago (which I won't attempt to summarise apart from to note that it's not a total myth).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Since you (quoting her) were my original source, this doesn't count as back up. I will go and have a look at that post, though :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Hehe - small world!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was getting confused about LJ-tags of people I don't know. I think you were originally quoting Nina, but it sounds like the two of them might be in cahoots on this issue anyway :)

I really liked that post, thanks for pointing it out.

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

glad you liked it! As I said in the article, all my sushi "knowledge" boils down to Things I Read On the Internet, so I certainly don't hold myself up as an authoritative source, but for what it's worth Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushi#Etiquette) agrees with me: "Sushi can be eaten either by hands or by chopsticks, although traditionally nigiri is eaten with the fingers because the rice is meant to be packed so loosely that it falls apart in ones mouth (and would disintegrate on chopsticks)." Sashimi is always eaten with chopsticks, though.

I've always heard the white pink-edged thing identified as "fish cake". Now I know the proper term is "kamaboko"! Cool!

I don't know, but I suspect, that the spoon-in-the-miso thing is exactly what you say--a concession to Westerners.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Happy to confirm that one eats sushi with ones fingers. Or at least, that's how my Japanese host father taught me to eat it many, many years ago. If you go into a sushi bar in New York that's frequented by Japanese and eat with your fingers, the only folks who look askance at you are New Yorkers.

Gee... thought I would have told you that. Then again, I normally see you over Thai food.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

The first time I had sushi handrolls (at Edamame in Oxford) I asked the waiter/owner/chap how one east them, meaning could I use my fingers or did I have to wrangle them with chopsticks. He gave me an old-fashioned look, and said "I find a firm chewing motion works for me."

[venta.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered if the expression I'd call and old-fashioned look corresponds with others' use of that phrase. I'll try asking next time I'm in Edamame and get back to you :)

In a nice burger bar off Abbey Road in London a few months back I asked the waiter for advice on how to tackle my burger. It was wonderful and towering and looked completely intractable, and I just couldn't work out how to take it on with either fingers or forks. He advised me to eat with my hands if I wanted to enjoy it.

Irrelevantly, did your short story about the temporally-disadvantaged don reach a publicly-available conclusion ? I wanna know what happened!

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Irrelevantly, did your short story about the temporally-disadvantaged don reach a publicly-available conclusion ?
No, I never finished it, and I think I'm possibly going to take it to pieces and cannibalise some of the useable bits at some point. I'll let you know if I ever do!

[elethiomel.livejournal.com]

Even if you pick it up with chopsticks top-and-bottom rather than side-to-side, turning it over will have your fish flopping about in the soy. How does one achieve this with grace ?

'cos you use your fingers. Trust me. Seen it done by Japanese, in Japan :-)

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

I was taken to Nambu-tei (couldn't remember the name 'til I read your post) by a city-earning friend. Really liked it, but I got a slightly dodgy gut the next day, probably from the dish into which he cracked a raw egg and stirred in to cook in the residual heat.

Teapot soup (apparently their signature dish) was really good, 'though. I find it's a bit at the dear end for me. My London Sushi of choice is Kulu-Kulu, a kaiten bar on Brewer street. Nothing spectacular, but much better value than Yo! sushi.