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Beautiful models and actresses delivering boxed lunches in Tokyo with new bento service

Casey Baseel
Nov 7, 2014
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Bento, Japan’s multi-dish boxed lunches, come in a variety of styles. While it’s most common to make your own or pick one up at a cheap takeout joint, there’s also a whole sub-industry of high-class bento delivery services that cater business conferences and other high-rolling events.

Of course, rich and powerful clients tend to have demands as high as their positions on the corporate ladder. They expect the food to be delicious, the service to be impeccable, and now, with Platinum Lunch, they can expect their bento to be delivered by beautiful models and actresses.

We try roasted salamander so you don’t have to

Jessica
Nov 6, 2014

Part of the excitement of traveling is trying foods that you have never seen, heard of, or even contemplated before. So when our lodging in the wilds of Nikko offered roasted salamander for dinner, I had to give it a try. Not just to satisfy my curiosity and my pride, but to report back to you, dear reader, about what amphibi-lizard on a stick tastes like.

【TBT】From My Neighbor Totoro to Ninja Turtles: Anime food in real life!

ロケットニュース24
Nov 6, 2014

Few things could delight kids (and big kids!) more than mimicking their favourite TV shows, movies and videogames, and sitting down to the exact same meal that their heroes enjoy.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles always had the most mouth-watering pizza; Ponyo and Sousuke had home-made ramen noodles; Pop-eye had canned spinach… OK, so maybe not every cartoon meal is the greatest, but putting together food that looks exactly as it did in our favourite shows is sure to inspire even the most kitchen-shy of us to have a go, not to mention encourage fussy eaters to try something new.

If it’s anime-inspired food you’re looking for, cooking website Bistro Animeshi (a combination of “anime” and “meshi”, meaning rice or food) has everything from the fish pie delivered by Kiki herself in Kiki’s Delivery Service to Naruto’s favourite ramen noodles. As well as providing step-by-step recipes for each dish, the food blog makes every effort to match the original dishes as much as possible. We’re sure that you’ll be blown away by what they have to offer.

Plenty of tantalising food photos after the jump!

Slow News Day Special: Save your snacks in style with this moderately clever “lifehack”

Mike
Nov 6, 2014

The idea of the “lifehack” – at least as far as the Internet knows it – has been around long enough that we’ve long since progressed from wide-eyed, childlike wonderment at the simple genius of saving a bagel in a CD spindle, to dubiousness and bafflement at the increasingly complex and hit-or-miss lifehacks folks are tossing out these days.

So, forgive us for still being on the fence about how we feel towards this next lifehack: Behold, the “Baby Wipe Lid Chip Saver.”

Enjoy latte art at home in seconds with the amazingly easy-to-use Deco Latte strips

Casey Baseel
Nov 6, 2014

We like latte art, and its frothy 3-D variant, as much as the next group of visually stimulated coffee sippers. But as nice as it is to have a trained barista decorate your drink with a kitty or smiley face, most of us don’t have the time, equipment, or manual dexterity to add illustrations to drinks we make for ourselves.

But now those artistic flourishes don’t have to be something you can only have when you go out and pay five bucks for a cup of coffee, with new products that’ll let you enjoy latte art at home for about as much effort as tossing a cube of sugar into your mug.

No offense, Russia, but some of your food-art can be pretty terrible

Mike
Nov 4, 2014

Okay, so first off, I just want to start by saying I promise to avoid any “In Mother Russia, xxxx eat you!” jokes in this article, as tempting (and as easy) as it may be to do so.

But, that said: come on, Russia! You’re jockeying with China for worst food-art fails of all time here. While Japan has been busy cranking out new and innovative ways to create beautiful and sometimes seemingly impossible food-art masterpieces, other regions are definitely falling behind with, at best hilarious fails and, at worst, nightmare-inducing food abominations.

Let’s take a look at a few food-art fails from Russia:

Amateur ramen chef wins first place in cooking contest, refuses to accept cash prize

Evie Nyan
Nov 4, 2014

Salty, delicious, and easy to customize to specific tastes – everyone loves ramen. Perhaps that’s why the Tokyo Ramen Show 2014 attracted so many visitors, who flocked to watch up-and-coming ramen chefs battling it out for the title of “Best Newcomer.” The eventual winner was Mr. Takeo Kanda, with his special “Sea Chicken Ramen”. But Mr. Kanda isn’t even a ramen chef – he’s just an ordinary salaryman. And in a shocking move, he refused to accept his cash prize of 500,000 yen (US$4,500).

An American in Paradise: Shabu-shabu and sushi buffet in Yokohama

Hayashi 'Fang' Hougi
Nov 4, 2014

As the weather gets chillier, shabu-shabu becomes an ideal dinner. Think delicately thin slices of meat cooked to your liking in a bubbling broth, then dipped in your favorite sauce and delivered direct to your tummy. What could possibly be better than a satisfying meal of all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu, you might wonder? Well, we hit jackpot when we found this restaurant in Yokohama which serves all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu and sushi, all for a low, low price of 1,799 yen (US$16).

In the spirit of gourmet discovery, we wasted no time in bringing along our Japanese-food-loving American friend Ike for some face-stuffing.

Can we have a parfait? Pretty please, with fried shrimp on top?

Casey Baseel
Nov 1, 2014

Let’s say you’re designing a menu for a restaurant, and you want to serve parfaits. More precisely, you want to serve as many different kinds of parfaits as you can think up. How far do you think you could make it towards that goal before things got completely crazy?

Apparently the tipping point to culinary weirdness is about 195 varieties. How did we calculate that? Well, on a recent visit to Kyoto, we found a café that has about 200 different types of parfaits, including five that’re topped with things like corn dogs and deep-fried prawns.

Ghibli food brought to life for one week of amazing lunches at elementary school in Japan

Michelle Lynn Dinh
Oct 31, 2014

Recreating food from our favorite movies and anime is nothing new. We’ve already seen ramen straight out of Naruto and herring and pumpkin pot pie a la Kiki’s Delivery Service. But what is unusual is that this time it’s not die-hard anime fans breathing life into 2-D delicacies, but a cafeteria at one school in Japan. You won’t believe this special school menu featuring a week of delicious looking dishes from some of Hayao Miyazaki’s most famous works.

Butter Crisis ’14: Supermarkets nationwide apologize for empty shelves, cakes threatened

Master Blaster
Oct 31, 2014

For months now a crisis has been brewing in the dairy industries of Japan. However, like the gooey sweetness of a melting pat of butter penetrating the crevices of a piece of toast, the effects have only recently begun to seep into the general population. We’re still only in the early stages though and things are bound to get worse before they get better.

Some readers who live in Japan may have noticed that the cost of butter has been significantly higher in recent months. In other cases shelves have gone empty and purchases are limited to one per person.

Now the writing is smeared on the wall: Japan is running out of butter… and fast.

600-yen Chinese buffet opens in Tokyo, Americans rejoice

Mike
Oct 31, 2014

Although slightly paradoxical, there’s kind of nothing more American than the good ol’ Chinese buffet.

The Chinese buffet is an American fixture that takes an imported cuisine (basically the only thing America really has) and twists it to suit American tastes. Over the years, it’s become a classic staple of the American diet, fortune cookies and all. Also there’s probably something to be said about the American dream – “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” and all that – beneath all the MSG and faux duck meat. Whatever.

So American expats, nostalgic for their weekly family fix of spicy staples like General Tso’s chicken and other incongruous Asian fusion dishes, must be rejoicing at the news that there’s now a Chinese buffet in Tokyo serving all-you-can-eat Chinese classics for a measly 600 yen (US$5.50).

Super-cheap yakiniku restaurant sells meat by the mouthful to give you exactly what you want

Casey Baseel
Oct 31, 2014

As tasty as yakiniku is, there’s a bit of a problem with going out to eat the delicious strips of grilled meat. Restaurants normally offer a variety of different cuts, but each order comes with several pieces of the same thing. Going by yourself means not being able to eat much of a variety, and eating with friends and sharing forces you to negotiate and compromise on what to order.

So we were happy when we found a way to enjoy our ideal meal without feeling like a glutton or a jerk , when we discovered a restaurant in Tokyo that lets your order whatever kind of yakiniku you want, one piece at a time.

Would you eat “nuclear soup”? Japanese artists serve broth made with Fukushima-grown vegetables

Philip Kendall
Oct 30, 2014

Would you eat a bowl of soup made mainly with vegetables grown in Fukushima Prefecture? What if the cook swore to you that everything that went into the soup had been tested and was safe for human consumption? Would you be able to push all thoughts of Fukushima Daiichi, contaminated groundwater and Blinky the three-eyed fish out of your mind long enough to risk a spoonful?

A pair of artists from Japan recently gave visitors to the Frieze Art Fair in London just such a decision to make, presenting them with a homemade broth made with Fukushima-grown produce and asking them to give it a try, if they dared.

Fruity wieners spotted in Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture! Available in “lemon” and “strawberry milk” flavors

Master Blaster
Oct 30, 2014

The heartland of Japan is certainly becoming the envy of the nation with their recent offerings of unusual foods. First the crunchy sweet mushrooms of Chubu region turned heads on Twitter. Now out of Tochigi Prefecture, emerges fruit-flavored hotdogs!

What chemical witchcraft went into making these sticks of pork(?) colored and flavored like lemon and strawberry milk is a mystery, but they do look intriguing, and dare I say delicious?

One bag of wasabi potato chips, hold the wasabi

Casey Baseel
Oct 30, 2014

It’s hard to think of a more Japanese condiment than wasabi, but even among diners born and raised in Japan, you can find people who order their sushi wasabi nuki, or without wasabi. We can see why, since not everyone who loves the flavor of raw fish also enjoys the sensation of simultaneously having their sinuses cleared and their tongue set on fire.

What’s a little harder to understand, though, is why the makers of wasabi-beef flavored potato chips have decided to offer a wasabi-free version of their salty snacks.

Rice-flavored ice cream: You knew it had to be in Japan somewhere

Jessica
Oct 29, 2014

You probably know from reading this site that people in Japan love ice cream. And it goes without saying that they love rice! So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to find that rice-flavored ice cream is a thing.

Oh, crepe! We discover a pastry vending machine at the airport

Casey Baseel
Oct 29, 2014

You might think there’s no reason to fly to Fukuoka. After all, the Shinkansen line now stretches all the way to the biggest city on the island of Kyushu, and those spiffy new first-class long-haul bus seats are about ready to make their debut. Why bother taking to the skies when you’ve got two perfectly good terrestrial travel options?

Simple: so you can get a crepe from a vending machine at Fukuoka Airport.

Celebrate Halloween with our recipe for jack-o’-lantern nikuman steamed buns【RocketKitchen】

Casey Baseel
Oct 28, 2014

Growing up, every year as Halloween approached, I could feel a sense of dread creeping up on me. It wasn’t the prospect of being hunted by werewolves or getting lost in a haunted house that frightened me, though.

I was terrified that someone would give me raisins when I went trick-or-treating.

Honestly, I understand that some people don’t approve of eating nothing but candy on Halloween, and there’s a valid point in trying to balance out your diet on All Hallows’ Eve. Do you have to do it with something as soulless as raisins, though, especially when you could use our recipe to whip up some tasty and jack-‘o-lantern steamed buns instead?

Which foods define Fukuoka’s amazing culinary scene? The Internet votes 【Poll】

Scott R Dixon
Oct 27, 2014

If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka, you probably know about its amazing food that has people from all over the country booking trips there just to stuff themselves silly. Between the rich, pork broth and firm noodles of the famous Hakata Ramen and the spicy delight that is mentaiko (marinated cod and pollack roe), Fukuoka is a place visitors leave having to loosen their belt a few notches.

With so many delicious things to come out of the city, an online poll set out to see which dishes people think are the epitome of the Fukuoka food scene. Click below to see the results and vote on what you think is the best food to come out of Fukuoka!