Big in Japan: Tokyo is world’s top food city

by Matthew Firestone on

Are you ready for today’s Big in Japan trivia question?

Q: According to the Michelin Guide, what is the world’s top city for good eating?
A: If you guessed Tokyo and not Paris, you are indeed correct!

Although for years Paris has won the coveted honor from the most highly respected food publication, this year Michelin Guide director Jean-Luc Naret decided to shake things up a bit.

According to Naret, himself a French man, “Tokyo is becoming the global city with the finest cuisine, the city in the world with the most stars.”

So how badly was Paris bested?

Restaurants in Tokyo were awarded a total of 191 stars, nearly twice the amount awarded to Paris and more than three times the amount awarded to New York.

Tokyo’s upstaging of Paris doesn’t stop there.

Eight of Tokyo’s restaurants won the maximum of three stars compared to six of Paris’s restaurants. And, 25 restaurants in Tokyo were awarded two stars while a whopping 117 were awarded one star.

Still don’t believe me that Tokyo has the best food in the world? Keep reading as the home of haute cuisine may no longer reside in France.

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The final nail in the coffin came when Michelin Guide announced that three of the top eight restaurants in Tokyo serve French food.

Boasting a long love affair with French culture dating back over a century, Tokyo can now rest on its laurels as the city in the world offering the finest in French cuisine.

In case you were wondering, three of the other top restaurants in Tokyo serve kaiseki ryōri (懐石料理), which is a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner that is often compared to haute cuisine.

Kaiseki, which directly translates to “stone in the bosom,” is a throwback to an ancient Zen Buddhist practice whereby fasting monks would stave off hunger by putting warm stones in the folds of their robes.

The term was later applied to the light vegetarian meals that were traditionally served after a tea ceremony, and eventually was attributed to the highly refined set-course meal that is today considered to be the pinnacle of the Japanese culinary world.

The other two of the top restaurants in Tokyo are traditional sushi houses, which specialize in the highest possible quality of fish that is selected daily from nearby Tsukiji fish market. Both locales serve up the ocean’s equivalent of Kobe beef, though sushi of this quality and grade doesn’t come cheaply.

Since I’m a starving writer (quite literally!), I’m not in a position to review these restaurants. However, below is the complete list of Michelin three-star restaurants in Tokyo for anyone out there with more yen to burn than me!

Bon appétit! Or should I say – ittadakemasu!

Genyadana Hamadaya
Kaiseki
3-13-5 Nihonbashi Ningyo-cho Chuo-ku
03-3661-5940

Ginza Koju
Kaiseki
8-5-25 Ginza Chuo-ku
03-6215-9544

Joel Robuchon
French
Ebisu Garden Place 1-13-1 Mita Meguro-ku
03-5424-1347

Kanda
Kaiseki
3-6-34 Motoazabu Minato-ku, Tokyo
03-5786-0150

L’osier
French
7-5-5 Ginza Chuo-ku
03-3571-6050

Restaurant Quintessens
French
5-4-7 Shiroganedai Minato-ku

Sukiyabashi Jiro
Sushi
4-2-15 Ginza Chuo-ku

Sushi Mizutani
Sushi
8-2-10 Ginza Chuo-ku

Gettoing hungry? Check out the delicious food gallery below:

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Big in Japan: Eating zero calorie jelly keeps Japanese women skinny

by Matthew Firestone on

Ever wonder why it is that Japanese women are so skinny? Ever wonder how Japanese women manage to keep away the pounds even after having a child or two?

What if I told you that there was a simple and cheap remedy for dropping a few sizes while simultaneously trimming up your waistline.

What if I told you that this remedy costs less than US$10 a day, and can be started at any time no matter how overweight you happen to be.

Although the secret is slowly spreading to the Western World, for years Japanese women have been eating zero calorie jelly as a meal supplement.

Yes. You read that correctly.

Some Japanese women, on occasion, eat calorie-free meals in order to stay skinny.

Seriously. I am not making this up!

(Nor do I condone this as a healthy or safe diet!)

Now, I guess at this point in the post you are probably thinking one of the following:

a) This can’t be healthy, can it?
a) Does it work?
c) What does it taste like?
d) Where can I buy some?
e) Some or all of the above.

Well, keep reading and allow me to explain the powers of zero calorie jelly!

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In Tokyo, you can buy 180g gram packages of zero calorie jelly in a variety of flavors including blueberry and peach for the bargain price of 240 yen or US$2.

And remarkably, you don’t even have to go to a health food store to buy the product.

Instead, just simply walk out of your apartment, head into the first convenience store you see, and give into your vanity for the price of a couple of dollars.

Now, I know that it’s easy to be skeptical about health and beauty products, especially since the next big thing is always being touted on late night infomercials across North America.

Also, we all know that the Japanese have incredibly healthy diets that are based on rice and fish, compared with the North America propensity for fatty foods.

And of course, I don’t want to discount their genetic predisposition, especially considering that the Japanese tend to be much skinnier Western counterparts.

But, you have to admit that tricking your body into thinking it’s had a meal is a great way to stave off cravings and reduce your portion size.

Here’s the catch.

People – think about this product for just a second!

Even if your mind and body thinks it just had a meal, it hasn’t. To be blunt, eating three square meals of zero calorie jelly is the same thing as starvation or anorexia.

Let’s be clear – zero calorie jelly is a great way to prevent yourself from eating a calorie-packed snack, but it’s not a meal substitute. Sadly, too many young girls over here in Japan haven’t gotten this message through their tiny little heads.

If you’re still interested in trying the stuff, I’m fairly certain that you can find it in the States, but again, be responsible with the stuff.

With that said, please chime in if you’ve seen this stuff in a health food store near you, or if you’ve had any experience eating it.

And, in case you’re wondering, it actually tastes like Jello, though I ate the stuff purely for scientific research purposes – anyone who’s ever met me already knows that I’m too skinny!

For foods that actually have nutritional value, check out the gallery below:

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Chris McCandless and a juicy apple

by Jamie Rhein on

My husband and I saw Into the Wild [read review by Roger Ebert] this weekend, the both uplifting and devastating story of Christopher McCandless, the young man who lived in the back country of Alaska near Denali National Park for 113 days or so before he died due to a couple of serious missteps. Both Catherine and Martha wrote about how the bus where Chris died is now a tourist destination.

Although I’ve felt the thrill of being off on my own, my drive to be so self-sufficient, so purist and off the grid has never been particularly strong. Still, I could relate to the movie on a thematic level of striving for authenticity–without so much force. On a small level, I understood one of Chris’s emotions exactly. It was the scene where he was eating an apple.

As he crunched bites of what might have been a Red Delicious or a Rome in bliss, he commented about how good the apple was–his voice making almost in an orgasmic groan. I’ve known such apples. Mine was yellow–not red. It was not so big either, but eating it was divine.

You see, apples don’t grow in The Gambia. And oh, how wonderful an apple tasted whenever I went to Banjul the capital stopping in a grocery store to buy the one apple, at the most, that I bought each month. Apples, imported from France, cost a fortune. I was in my cheap phase with my sights set on a vacation to Mali, so I saved money and coveted apples–holding out for a special occasion. The apple was it. My entertainment for the day.

At times, I’d buy two, taking one back to my village to uplift a difficult day. I would settle into my chair vowing to notice every bite–every bit of juice. I ate slowly and deliberately to make the experience last. Eating an apple became a gift to myself not to be squandered. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I made great vows to not become jaded by apple abundance once back in the U.S. My noble intentions have faded over the years. We currently have a whole bag of apples in our refrigerator in the fruit drawer, and there’s more where they came from–pounds, pounds and more pounds less than a mile away at the grocery store. Apples grow in Ohio. You can’t avoid them.

I do miss those moments when they tasted ever so sweet–like heaven. If I close my eyes and chew slowly, I almost remember.

More precious info on how to bring wine back from abroad

by Grant Martin on

Deep into my experimentation on how to best bring back wine from abroad, I believe that I have made a breakthrough. In a recent return from Barcelona, I decided to try to check a crate of wine (again). This time, my methodology was as follows.

  • Drop each bottle of wine in a (dirty?) sock.
  • Wrap your dick-in-a-box, er, wine-in-a-sock in a plastic bag. Tie the bag shut.
  • Repeat for the other five bottles.
  • Pad the bottom and sides of your crate with a shirt.
  • Pack your six bottles as tight as possible.
  • Pad the top of the case, making sure that the bottles can’t shift laterally in their spaces within the crate.
  • Nail the case shut.
  • Wrap the case with either tape or that saran wrap you can get in most international terminals.
  • Put your wrapped up mess into a duffel bag and pad the heck out of that (this was my critical error last time).

Using this method, I was safely able to get all six bottles from Barcelona, through Amsterdam and Detroit and into Toledo.

Sound like a lot of work to you? Well, it is. Especially when you have to haul your contraption all over the city, through the metro and through the airport. But hey, for the hard drinkers like myself, bringing back a few bottles of wine is kind of a fun souvenir from travels abroad. It’s a fun reminder of the places we’ve been, on the shelf, over dinner and especially in our stomachs.

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Papabubble opens up in NYC

by Grant Martin on

My favorite candy store, Papabubble, just opened up an American branch in the great city of New York. In a way it’s a little bittersweet for me; I used to be able to bring this unique fun candy back from Barcelona whenever I went to share with my friends. Now all I have to do is go to 380 Broome St on my semi-weekly trip into the city. But oh well — I suppose I had to share at some point.

The fun thing about Papabubble is that they formulate, cast and prepare all of their candy in-house, in front of your eyes. It’s fun to watch them roll the huge cylinders of hard candy down to a fine bar, then methodically chop them into shorter pieces. In the end they collect the pieces into jars and bags of various sizes, ripe for sale to the salivating public.

Papabubble has several stores scattered across the world. From their headquarters in Barcelona (pictured above), they have now expanded into Amsterdam, Tokyo and of course, into New York. Give them a try next time you’re in the city.