The Land of the Rising Sun is one of the most exotic and mysterious in the mind of a Russian traveler. The language here is completely unfamiliar, instead of letters there are hieroglyphs, and in a kitchen that is not too understandable, even cutlery that is familiar to the eye is not used. In fact, it turns out that all these rolls, sushi and sashimi have long been familiar to Europeans, but only restaurants in Japan cook them for real.
Three whales and hundreds of fish
The main three products, without which Japanese cuisine is impossible, are fish, rice and seaweed. Hundreds of other ingredients are added to the base ingredients - from mushrooms to lotus roots and from bamboo shoots to fern stalks. But in order for the dish to turn out to be truly Japanese, you will have to apply many secrets of oriental cooking, the main one of which is the preparation of food just before serving. Almost all restaurants in Japan have a place to sit and watch the chefs conjure up your order.
The agony of choice
In the Land of the Rising Sun, all catering establishments are divided into two conditional groups. The former offer a wide range of dishes, while the latter specialize in one thing. The first type of restaurants in Japan are family cafes, where you can taste not only local, but also Chinese cuisine, and establishments with set meals, and snack bars, which simultaneously offer a huge list of dishes in small portions.
Specialty restaurants in Japan are divided into several main groups:
- Sushi-wa, where all kinds of sushi are prepared. You can sit either at a separate table or at the counter where the sushi chef works.
- Kaiten-sushi - with the same assortment, but with a conveyor belt, from where guests take their favorite masterpieces. At the end of the meal, the number of dishes eaten is counted, the price of each of which is determined by the color of the plate where the food was located. The average bill is roughly the price of a child's haircut at a typical Tokyo barbershop.
- Okonomiyaki-wa - restaurants in Japan, where braziers are mounted on the tables, on which guests fry their own tortillas with a variety of ingredients of their choice. This dish is called Japanese pizza and is considered fast food.
- Fugu restaurants serve deadly fish, which eats at least ten thousand tons annually in the country. The local chefs can be trusted: with such a turnover of poison, they "manage" to poison only a couple of visitors a year.
