Seth's Blog

An earlier post asked for Tokyo recommendations. A kind reader (Andrew Clarke) provided the following recommendations of off-beat restaurants:

One place I always recommend is Andy’s Shinhinomoto, in Yurakucho: http://www.frommers.com/destinations/tokyo/D61101.html. I have never seen a travel show that has covered the place, but it’s a best kept secret within the ex-pat community. Its menu is a standard Japanese Izakaya (pub) menu with some of the freshest sashimi (and fish in general) in Tokyo, and the strangest thing – it’s ran by a long-term British ex-pat, who is so renowned for his ability to pick good ingredients that he selects and delivers fish for several local sushi shops. Upstairs seating is best for atmosphere, but the food is the same downstairs. They have an English menu, and I’d also recommend the fish head and tempura. It’s also not super expensive, somehow I never manage to spend more than 7000Y  with alcohol. (more…)

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Thanks to Dave Lull and Tucker Max.

Last night I went to a beer tasting in San Francisco. I didn’t taste all the beers but of the 15-odd I did taste the best were by Uncommon Brewers — especially their Siamese Twin (“the floral notes of lemongrass and sharper bite of kaffir lime blend with the deep malt”) and Baltic Porter (“whole licorice root and star anise”).

Five or six years ago I went to a sake-tasting event in San Francisco called “The Joy of Sake”. About 140 sakes. In a few hours I became such a sake connoisseur that the sake I could afford  — and used to buy regularly — I now despised. The only sake I now liked was so expensive ($80/bottle) that I never bought another bottle of sake.

My friend Carl Willat sent me this photo with the comment “noticeably worse” — meaning that the new version (on the right) is noticeably worse than the old version (on the left). 365 is the Whole Foods house brand. Years ago,the label of 365 balsamic vinegar said “aged 5 years”. Then one day it didn’t. The younger vinegar (aged 1 year?) tasted noticeably worse. In a side-by-side comparison, it was obvious.

Side-by-side comparisons, I discovered thanks to Carl, are powerful — and I could use that power to improve my life. A long time ago at his apartment I tasted five versions of limoncello (Italian lemon liqueur) side by side. Of course the differences became clearer–that’s obvious. The surprise was that all of a sudden I cared about the differences. Before that tasting, I had had plenty of limoncello. But only at the side-by-side tasting did I develop a liking for the good stuff (more complex flavor) and a dislike for the cheaper stuff (simpler flavor). I stopped buying cheap limoncello and started buying expensive limoncello. I got a lot of pleasure out of it. I still do this. A few weeks ago I bought some rum to flavor my yogurt. I started with the cheapest brand. A week later, to compare, I got a more expensive brand. Side-by-side tasting showed it was clearly better. Now I sort of relish it — the side-by-side comparison made rum drinking more enjoyable. Soon I will get an even more expensive rum, to see how it stacks up.

I’m pretty sure such side-by-side comparisons are how connoisseurs are made. The evolutionary reason for this effect, I believe, is that connoisseurs will pay more than other people for well-made stuff, thus helping skilled artisans — during the Stone Age, the main source of innovation — make a living.

In Carl’s picture the new vinegar looks much cheaper than the old vinegar. The previous change (from aged 5 years to not aged 5 years) wasn’t accompanied by a cheaper-looking label. Maybe Whole Food headquarters had received complaints from manufacturers of other balsamic vinegars: Your house brand is too good. And they replied: Okay, we’ll cheapen it.

I used to like Japanese food because it was less fattening than other foods — I lost weight eating sushi. Now I like it because the Japanese eat so much fermented food: miso, pickles, yogurt, Yakult, umeboshi (pickled plums), natto, vinegar drinks, and alcoholic beverages. A Tokyo food court might have 20 types of pickles, 15 types of miso, and 10 types of umeboshi.

Abundance of fermented food isn’t the only way Japanese food is unusual. I see Japanese food as an outlier on three dimensions:

• Use of fish. More fish-centered than any other major cuisine.
• Beauty. More beautiful than any other cuisine.
• Fermented food. More fermented food than any other cuisine.

As I’ve said, lightning doesn’t strike twice in one place for different reasons. If two rare events could have a common explanation, they probably do. I’ve discussed before why a fish-centered cuisine could lead to better visual design: Because cooks can’t use complex flavorings to show how much they care (it would make all fish taste the same), they take pains with appearance to convey this.

What about fermented foods? Here’s an idea: In the development of Japanese cooking, lack of complex flavoring of main dishes increased desire that other parts of the meal provide complexity, which is what fermented foods do so well. For example, Japanese meals often include pickles. We want a certain amount of complexity in our food, in other words. Most cuisines provide complexity via complex spice mixtures (mole sauce, harissa, curry powder); Japanese cuisine provides it with fermented foods. (I love Japanese curry, but it isn’t common.)

This explanation predicts that desire for complexity is like thirst: It grows over time and can be satisfied. Prediction 1: Eating one complex food will make a second one will taste less pleasant, just as drinking one bottle of water will make a second bottle of water taste less pleasant. Prediction 2: Over time, the pleasure provided by complexity grows. The same complex-flavored food will taste better at Time 2 than Time 1 if you haven’t eaten anything with a complex flavor between the two times.