Browse Techniques

Japanese curry (kare) — a yoshoku dish that arrived via British Navy sailors who had learned it from Indians during colonial contact, adapted through the Meiji-era Japanese Navy's adoption as a nutritional staple, and ultimately became Japan's most-eaten dish — represents one of food history's most extraordinary transformation stories: an Indian spice tradition filtered through British interpretation, adopted by a Japanese military institution, then commercialised into curry roux blocks (kare ruusu) that reduced weeks of spice sourcing to a single brick dissolved in stock. Japanese curry differs fundamentally from Indian curry: it uses a roux base (fat + flour + spices + fruit) that produces a thick, glossy sauce rather than oil-based Indian curry's looser consistency; it is sweeter (with apple or other fruit in most commercial and home recipes); it has minimal direct spice heat; and it is served over white rice in a specific presentation (curry on the right side, rice on the left) with nothing but optional fukujinzuke (sweet pickled vegetables) as accompaniment. The commercial curry block (primarily S&B's Golden Curry, House Vermont Curry, and Java Curry) was introduced in the early 1960s and transformed Japanese home cooking by making complex spice work accessible to any household. The concept of 'koku' — a Japanese word for a layered, deep flavour complexity difficult to achieve quickly — was built into curry block marketing and remains central to Japanese curry aesthetics: a properly developed curry has koku through slow simmering, caramelised onions, and the integration of the roux's fruit and spice components. Katsu curry (tonkatsu placed on curry rice), curry udon, and soup curry (Hokkaido speciality — a thinner, more broth-like curry with large intact vegetables) are the principal curry variations.

Itameshi — Italian food in Japanese, a portmanteau of 'Italia' and 'meshi' — describes the Japanese interpretation of Italian cuisine that emerged during the economic boom years of the 1980s and produced a distinctly Japanese cooking style that borrowed Italian technique and structure while substituting or augmenting with Japanese ingredients and sensibility. Where yoshoku (Meiji-era Western food) adapted Western food through a 19th-century lens, itameshi engaged with contemporary Italian restaurant culture at the height of Japan's economic confidence — importing actual Italian techniques (pasta-making, sautéing, reduction saucing), Italian ingredients (olive oil, parmesan, prosciutto, San Marzano tomatoes), and Italian dining formats (open kitchens, counter seating, casual elegance). The result was a Japanese Italian cuisine that was neither authentically Italian nor purely Japanese but a genuine creative synthesis. The canonical itameshi dishes that emerged from this period: mentaiko pasta (pasta + cream + mentaiko roe + nori — the most celebrated), uni pasta (sea urchin + butter + pasta + nori), ikura pasta (salmon roe + butter + cream + pasta), wafu pasta (Japanese-style pasta using mushrooms, burdock, soy sauce, butter), peperoncino with shiso and myoga. The common element is Japanese ingredients — seafood, roe, mushrooms, aromatic herbs — meeting Italian technique (pasta cooking, emulsification, fond development). Many contemporary Japanese-Italian restaurants (most famously in Tokyo's Roppongi and Shibuya districts) now represent a mature, distinctive cuisine in their own right.

Kushikatsu (串カツ — skewer cutlet) and kushiyaki (串焼き — skewer grill) represent two distinct Japanese skewered food traditions: kushikatsu is the Osaka tradition of panko-breaded, deep-fried skewers of vegetables and proteins unique to the working-class Shinsekai district; kushiyaki is the broader tradition of grilled skewers ranging from yakitori (chicken) to mixed vegetables, seafood, and meat over charcoal. Osaka kushikatsu has a specific social culture built around it: skewers are ordered individually, each in their own small portion; the communal dipping sauce (tonkatsu-style dark sauce) is poured into a shared container from which each diner dips their skewer — the sacred rule of kushikatsu culture is NO DOUBLE DIPPING (niduke kinshi), a hygienic norm so important that it appears on signs in every Shinsekai establishment. The bread coating: fine panko (Japanese breadcrumbs — dryer and coarser than Western breadcrumbs) is applied after egg and flour, producing a crust that is lighter and crispier than Western breading. The oil for kushikatsu frying must be clean and hot (180-190°C) — the rapid frying seals the crust before significant oil absorption. The variety of kushikatsu ingredients is broad: pork belly, beef, chicken, shrimp, lotus root, asparagus, shiitake, naganegi, quail egg, cheese, mochi — almost any ingredient that can be threaded on a bamboo skewer and fried. Kushikatsu in Shinsekai is eaten standing at narrow bars (tachigui — standing eating), with beer and the communal dipping sauce as the essential accompaniments.

Mentaiko — spicy marinated pollock roe — is one of Fukuoka's most celebrated culinary exports: a Korean-origin product that arrived in Japan through the Japan-Korea trade networks and was transformed into a uniquely Japanese speciality, becoming one of the most popular and widely used flavour condiments in Japanese cuisine. The product begins as mintai (walleye pollock, Gadus chalcogrammus) sacs of roe that are salt-cured and then marinated in a spiced paste containing togarashi (Japanese chilli), sake, soy, mirin, and kombu or bonito for umami depth. The standard product (mentaiko) is moderately spicy; the Fukuoka speciality (karashi mentaiko — chilli mentaiko) is more aggressively seasoned. The individual roe sacs appear as elongated purplish-pink lobes — fresh products are sold whole with the membrane intact; processed versions are broken and sold as paste. Quality indicators include: vibrant colour (deep pink-orange to red depending on the chilli content), intact membrane without breakage, and a fresh marine smell without fishiness. Applications span from traditional (eaten with rice, as filling for onigiri, as accompaniment to ochazuke/rice-in-tea) to contemporary yoshoku-Italian fusion (mentaiko pasta — cream sauce, butter, pasta, mentaiko, nori — one of Japan's most popular pasta preparations). Mentaiko on warm rice is perhaps the most elemental Japanese comfort food: the heat of the rice partially warms and softens the roe, releasing its flavour into the grain with each bite.

Robatayaki — fireside grilling, literally 'around the fire' — is as much a performance format as a cooking technique: the robata counter presents a dramatic spectacle of live coals, long-handled bamboo paddles, and the continuous theatre of grilling, tending, and presenting food directly over a deeply bedded charcoal fire. The technique originates in the communal cooking traditions of Hokkaido and Tohoku fishing villages, where fishermen would gather around an open fire (irori, the sunken hearth) to cook the day's catch, eating communally from the fire's edge. This informal communal origin distinguishes robata from the aristocratic traditions of kaiseki or the precision-craft traditions of sushi — robata is fundamentally social, generous, and connected to a specific kind of rough coastal plenty. The cooking technique uses kishu binchotan charcoal at very high temperatures, with proteins (fish, shellfish, vegetables, beef, chicken) placed on grates at varying heights from the ember bed to control heat intensity. The long-handled bamboo paddle (kai) is used both to position food and to deliver completed items to guests across the counter without the server reaching into the heat zone. Key robata ingredients exploit the high-heat charcoal environment: shrimp and lobster develop a char on the shell while remaining sweet within; miso-marinated fish achieves deep caramelisation without burning (the miso sugars baste and char simultaneously); whole corn chars and sweetens; leeks collapse and caramelise. The flavour of robata is charcoal smoke and caramelised exterior — distinctly different from gas grilling, which lacks the infrared radiation patterns and smoke of live charcoal.

Teppanyaki — iron plate cooking — is a Japanese restaurant format that became one of the most globally recognised (and most globally misunderstood) expressions of Japanese culinary culture: in Japan, it is a refined technique of cooking at high temperature on a smooth iron surface; in the Western imagination (largely via Benihana, founded in New York in 1964 by Hiroaki 'Rocky' Aoki), it became synonymous with knife-juggling performance dining that has very little connection to Japanese teppan culture. The Japanese tradition: Misono restaurant in Osaka (1945) is credited with creating teppanyaki as a restaurant format — initially serving American Occupation troops, then establishing it as a Japanese dining form. The teppan (iron plate) reaches 250-350°C and allows precise control of the Maillard browning reaction on both protein and vegetables. Skilled teppanyaki chefs — called teppan itamae — use spatulas and scrapers (hera) to manipulate ingredients with the precision of a kitchen knife. The theatrical element in the Japanese tradition is the cooking itself: the sound of vegetables hitting the hot plate, the controlled sear of wagyu beef, the deft management of multiple ingredients at different stages — not knife tricks. Japanese teppanyaki establishments serve wagyu beef (often A5 grade), seafood, and vegetables on the iron plate with minimal seasoning — sea salt, soy sauce, ponzu — allowing the Maillard chemistry on the iron surface to develop the primary flavour. The high-fat content of wagyu beef makes teppan cooking particularly effective: the marbling renders onto the hot surface, the rendered fat bastes the cooking meat, and the caramelisation develops in fat rather than water-based sauces.

Yoshoku — Western-style Japanese cooking — represents a distinct culinary category that is neither Western nor purely Japanese but a synthesis developed during the Meiji period when Japan's forced opening to Western trade brought new ingredients, cooking methods, and cultural reference points. Unlike washoku (traditional Japanese cooking) or chuka (Chinese-influenced cooking), yoshoku openly embraces its foreign origins while completely transforming the source material through Japanese sensibility. The canonical yoshoku dishes — omuraisu (omelette rice), hambagu (Japanese hamburger steak), hayashi raisu (hashed beef rice), korokke (croquettes), menbou (cream stew) — share several characteristics: they are served on Western plates rather than Japanese ceramics; they use ketchup or demi-glace rather than soy or miso as primary saucing; they prioritise comfort and richness over the restrained elegance of washoku; and they occupy a nostalgic register in Japanese food culture that connects to home cooking, family diners (shokudo), and the Western-facing restaurants (yōshoku-ya) that served as bridges between Meiji modernisation and everyday eating. Omuraisu — fried rice wrapped in a thin omelette, finished with ketchup or demi-glace — represents yoshoku's most iconic expression. The Taimeiken version (Tokyo) with a runny omelette cut to reveal liquid egg interior has become the benchmark for contemporary omuraisu. Hambagu differs from Western hamburger patties by using a mixture of beef and pork, breadcrumbs soaked in milk (creating tenderness), and a sauce of demi-glace or Japanese tomato ketchup with Worcestershire — the result is softer, sweeter, and more umami-rich than a Western patty.