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April 25, 2013Tokyo Travel Tips & Pretty Good Number One eBook GiveawaySoon after Asian Tofuwas released last year, Matthew Amster-Burton tweeted that he’d used the bookto make fresh yuba tofu skin. He went a couple of rounds with it and then toldme that the DIY yuba experience was good preparation for his trip to Japan. Iwas both flattered and surprised because there are so many wonderful things toeat in Japan and Matthew, a talented writer based in Seattle, was extrakeen on tofu.
As it turned out, Matthew had a purpose. He and his wife, Laurie, and eight-year-old daughter, Iris, spent a month in Tokyo last summer. They renteda one-room apartment about the size of a single-car garage and ventured out on dailyeating adventures.
Matthew recounted their experiences in his new book, Pretty Good Number One, a fast-paced,rollicking work that’s chock full of delicious humor and insights. Reading theebook at bedtime was my way of reliving and deepening my understanding ofTokyo. I’d gone there in 2010 to research tofu and a number of the places Ivisited and food people I know are part of Matthew’s book. I was honored to bethe lead on his tofu chapter.
Matthew’s vivid and spot-on description of Tokyo led me tospend a few hours reviewing photos from my Tokyo trip. They’re part of thecollages on this post. The book was such a terrific read that I had to askMatthew a few questions about his work and of course, what to do and where toeat in Tokyo.
Whet your appetite below and then enter the giveaway. Thereare three (3) copies of the book available!
One of the charming aspects of your books is the relationship thatyou and Iris have built around food adventures. Parents bond with their kidsover many shared interests but is there something different when food isinvolved? Or am I just biased?
I think there is something different, but having written two bookson the topic, I’m also biased. It’s nice to bond with your kids over foodbecause adults and children can enjoy it in the same way, and because foodisn’t optional. If you’re going to be eating with your kid two or three times aday anyway, why not try to find a way to make it fun?
You were in Tokyo for a month but the balanced insights youprovide about the city, its culture, and food make it seem like you were therefor years. Each chapter is jammed packed. What was a typical day like for youwhile you were in Tokyo?
Thanks for the compliment. I’d start most days writing at theStarbucks in our western Tokyo neighborhood, Nakano. I felt a little sillygoing to Starbucks in Tokyo, since we have one or two locations in Seattle, butmost sit-down cafes in Tokyo don’t open before 10 a.m. Then I’d often meet upwith Iris and Laurie at Mister Donut, an amazing doughnut chain whose signaturePon de Ring doughnut is made with mochi. We’d head out into Tokyo by train foran adventure (a museum, shopping, the 634-meter Tokyo Skytree tower) and lunch,and then come back to Nakano for dinner at home or a restaurant.
But there were plenty of atypical days. One day we got up early tohave breakfast at Tsukiji fish market; another day we took the Shinkansen outof town to a small city that boasts hundreds of gyoza (fried dumpling)restaurants, including one that serves 74 different fillings.
We tried hard not to overdo it, and most days we succeeded. Onething I want readers to understand about Tokyo is that there’s much more to thecity than the popular images of neon-lit nightlife and tranquil temple gardens.Walking around in the streets of Tokyo is delightful. The city is exuberantlymodern and celebrates street life, yes, but at the same time you’re never farfrom a place to pause and relax. Because of this, Tokyo was less likely to giveme that wrung-out traveler’s malaise than most other places I’ve been.
There are people who say that Vietnamese food in the U.S. isbetter or just as good as the food in Vietnam. People don’t say that aboutJapanese food. Why is Japanese food so incredibly superior in Japan than it iselsewhere?
Japan has the most fully developed restaurant culture I’ve ever seen.Have you ever been to a food truck pod in Portland, OR, where a dozen or morefood trucks congregate, each focusing on a specific dish? Japan doesn’t havefood trucks, but it was doing tiny specialized restaurants long before Portlandgot hip.
One night, for example, we had dinner at a restaurant famous fornose-to-tail eating. It only serves freshwater eel, mostly grilled on a stick.So we ate eel fillets wrapped around burdock root, eel liver, smoked eel, and(Iris’s favorite) crispy fried eel backbones. Japanese diners expect andappreciate this level of focus: literally everyone in the eel restaurant wasordering and enjoying the all-parts-of-the-eel set meal.
In the U.S., this level of specialization tends to be reserved forAmerican food (e.g., steakhouses) and food trucks. Ethnic restaurants (for lackof a better term), even very good ones, tend to get stuck serving a greatesthits collection from a national cuisine too big to fit on a single menu. AndJapanese cuisine is really big. There’s no such thing as a “Japaneserestaurant” in Tokyo, but there are a hundred different kinds of Japaneserestaurants.
There are so many wonderful things to eat in Tokyo. How did yousettle on the ones for the book? For example, I was flattered to be included inthe tofu chapter but at the same time I also wondered, why tofu?
Tokyo is always topping “World’s Most Expensive City” lists, buthaving spent a month living and eating there, I can’t figure out why. You canget any number of amazing meals for under $10—especially noodles, but alsotakoyaki (octopus balls), bento, yakitori, rice balls, and so on. Once Irealized how well I could eat for $10, it was hard to get too excited about oneof those $300 sushi meals food writers are always gushing about.
So I decided the book would focus on the everyday food of Tokyo,and tofu is an important part of that. Even so, one of the most expensive mealsI ate was at Ukai Tofu-ya, the same fancy tofu restaurant you visited in AsianTofu, and I describe in the book how they served me one of the best thingsI’ve ever tasted (fresh tofu made from plump, Hokkaido-grown soybeans) and oneof the most challenging (a mucilaginous green called junsai). These wereserved together in the same bowl. I love the idea of a high-end tofurestaurant, and the meal was delicious, beautifully presented, and sometimesway outside my comfort zone. That’s a good thing, right?
There were a few dishes I wanted to cover in the book and just ranout of time, like Japanese curry and somen noodles, and others that I need torevisit in more detail, like soba, sushi, and ramen. And, of course, there aresome great winter dishes, like tofu hot pot (yudofu) and fish cake stew(oden) that we didn’t try because we were in Tokyo duringthe sticky furnace of July. Is it too early to hint that this oversight will beremedied?
If a first-time visitor to Tokyo wanted a true experience with aminimum of “vacation head”, what do you advise them to do in say, 2 or 3 days?
Vacation Head is a disease introduced to me by my friend BeckySelengut, author of the cookbook Good Fish. You come down with it whenyou go on vacation to a new place and, because your brain is addled by jetlagand the sudden lifting of all your usual responsibilities, you decide thatyou’ve landed in paradise. The food! The people! The scenery! It’s all perfect!Japan is notorious for causing bad cases of Vacation Head, and that’s notnecessarily a bad thing; it’s only bad when someone else gets it and you haveto sit through their holiday slideshow.Tokyo is the world’s biggest city, and you can’t see all of it ina few days, a month, a year, or a lifetime. So you’ll have to prioritize.Here’s what I think no food-loving visitor should miss:
A visit to a depachika. Every department store in Tokyo has a food hallin the basement, and they offer the most outrageous high-end food shopping youcan possibly imagine. A typical depachika has dozens of stalls staffed byvendors selling sashimi, bento boxes, pickles, tea, rice dishes, Japanesesweets, salumi, French pastry (including big names like Pierre Hermé). Ifyou’ve been to Harrods or Fauchon, you’ve experienced just the barest hint of adepachika. The best I visited were at Isetan in Shinjuku and Takashimaya inNihonbashi.Shibuya Crossing. This is the famously busy pedestrian crossingseen in countless photos and movies set in Tokyo. Seeing a photo is nothingcompared to getting caught up in the crush yourself, especially on a rainy daywhen you’ll be lost in a sea of umbrellas. And Shibuya is a bustlingneighborhood home to plenty of great restaurants and shopping once you gettired of crossing the street.An izakaya meal. An izakaya is a Japanese pub, the kind oflively drinking and eating place where people hang out with coworkers andfriends after work, often for hours. Izakaya food is simple, diverse, andusually salty and tangy to go well with beer, sake, or shochu. Think sashimi,salt-broiled fish, stir-fried beef with tofu, mountain vegetable salad withmiso, and, in summer, a simple sliced ripe tomato. Nothing about the izakayaexperience travels well outside of Japan, so enjoy it while you’re there. Ifyou can go with a local, do so, but if not, go anyway and order by pointing andshrugging. (Some chain izakayas have picture menus, and chain restaurants inJapan are often great.)Tempura cooked to order. One of the Tokyo dining experiences I miss mostis sitting at the counter in a neighborhood restaurant while a chef cooks uspieces of perfectly fried tempura. We’d order onion, kabocha squash, and lotusroot, watch him cook, and pause to drink and enjoy the vegetables. Then we’dorder again: shrimp, whitebait, and a whole freshwater eel, slaughtered andfilleted before our eyes. We’d banter with the chef and fellow customers asmuch as our limited common language allowed, and keep ordering food until wecouldn’t manage any more. Why aren’t American cities full of tempura bars?
How do you categorize your book? Is it a travel memoir or aguidebook or both? How should a reader employ Pretty Good Number One for exploring Tokyo?
It’s definitely a travel memoir, but I’ve been delighted to hear from somereaders that they’re using the book to help plan their own Tokyo trip. The factthat it’s an ebook and can easily live on your phone or e-reader probablyencourages that.
I love reading guidebooks, but they’re often out of date evenbefore they go on sale. The approach I tried to take in Pretty Good NumberOne is to focus on the kind of food experiences you can have in Tokyo evenif all the specific restaurants and shops I mention in the book go out ofbusiness. This is an absurdly egotistical thing to hope for, but if someonewere to read my book 25 years from now, they could say, “Now I want to go to acat cafe, and cook my own okonomiyaki pancakes at a tabletop grill, and shop ata depachika, and eat a bento box while riding the train at 186 mph.” And ofcourse they’ll be able to. This being the future, however, possibly the tempurachefs will be replaced by robots.
The Giveaway Lowdown:
Prize: 3 copies of Pretty Good Number One by Matthew Amster-BurtonWhois eligible to enter: Anyone with an email address and willingness to read adigital bookHowto enter: Simplyleave a comment on this post. What’s your favorite Japanese food? Include youremail address sothat I can contact you directly if you win.Canyou enter more than once? Yes, if you’re a fan of the VWK Facebook page,follow me on Twitter orhave joined me on Pinterest,you can enter an extra time for each of those social media networks. If we’rebuddies on all three, then shoot, you can enter 4 times. If you’re doingmultiple entries, let me know who you are by including something like [FB],[Twitter], or [Pinterest] in your comment.Deadlineto enter: Friday,May 3, 2013, noon (PST)Selection,notification, and claiming the tickets: The three winners will be randomly selected viaRandom.org and notified by email. The winners will be announced on Tuesday, May7. Because the book is available in different ebook formats, the winners willindividually coordinate with Matthew on how to receive the book. If you’d likemore details, read the officialgiveaway rules.Good luck!
Related posts -- Matthew mentions certain dishes in his book that got me thinking about these recipes on VWK:
Japanese Octopus Dumpling (Takoyaki) (on Asian Dumpling Tips)Cold Udon (zaru udon) (great eating in Tokyo's sweltering summer)Udon with Clams and Shiitake Mushroom (a Tokyo-style izakaya dish)Posted in Books, Recipes: All, Recipes: Dumplings, Recipes: Japanese, Recipes: Noodles, Travel | Permalink | |
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Comments Tokyo Travel Tips & Pretty Good Number One eBook GiveawaySoon after Asian Tofuwas released last year, Matthew Amster-Burton tweeted that he’d used the bookto make fresh yuba tofu skin. He went a couple of rounds with it and then toldme that the DIY yuba experience was good preparation for his trip to Japan. Iwas both flattered and surprised because there are so many wonderful things toeat in Japan and Matthew, a talented writer based in Seattle, was extrakeen on tofu.
As it turned out, Matthew had a purpose. He and his wife, Laurie, and eight-year-old daughter, Iris, spent a month in Tokyo last summer. They renteda one-room apartment about the size of a single-car garage and ventured out on dailyeating adventures.
Matthew recounted their experiences in his new book, Pretty Good Number One, a fast-paced,rollicking work that’s chock full of delicious humor and insights. Reading theebook at bedtime was my way of reliving and deepening my understanding ofTokyo. I’d gone there in 2010 to research tofu and a number of the places Ivisited and food people I know are part of Matthew’s book. I was honored to bethe lead on his tofu chapter.
Matthew’s vivid and spot-on description of Tokyo led me tospend a few hours reviewing photos from my Tokyo trip. They’re part of thecollages on this post. The book was such a terrific read that I had to askMatthew a few questions about his work and of course, what to do and where toeat in Tokyo.
Whet your appetite below and then enter the giveaway. Thereare three (3) copies of the book available!
Stay Connected
Asian Tofu in the News"A whole cookbook devoted to tofu? Yes, please."— Kate Williams, Serious Eats 2012 Favorite Cookbooks
"Cooking with Tofu (Are You Serious?!)"
— Michael Rulhman on his tofu conversion
"This book should be a priority for anyone with the slightest interest in Asian cuisines."
— Anne Mendelson, Taste & Travel
"The most gratifying part about cooking from Asian Tofu is that all the recipes work the way they’re written."
— T. Susan Chang, Boston Globe
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