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gourmet

We try a $10 Japanese grape from a bunch that retails for over $400 【Taste Test】

Japan is known for its crazily expensive fruit, but is the Ruby Roman really worth the exorbitant price tag?

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Mr. Sato shows us what happens when you try to cook rice with only eggs 【SoraKitchen】

It seems like a good idea in theory, but how will it play out?

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Hungry and on the go? Top 10 ranking of ekiben at Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station

A definitive ranking of the 10 best-selling bento boxes at one of Tokyo’s major travel hubs.

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“Top 20 Best Breakfast Hotels in Japan 2019” ranking has our mouths watering in anticipation

With the exception of the #1 spot, one Japanese prefecture is clearly dominating the breakfast game. 

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We visit “Bonchi,” a super-size gourmet restaurant in Yamanashi Prefecture

This restaurant will challenge even the most massive of appetites.

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Japanese website ranks the top 10 most delicious-looking Pokémon… with a very unexpected #1

The question we’ve all wondered, finally answered.

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Jun of “Rachel & Jun” prepares gourmet food experiment for his lucky cat【Video】

Here’s another case of a cat that’s eating better than us hoomans.

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Calbee teams with gourmet French chain for uni and dried roe potato chip flavor

Calbee and the casual-gourmet French chain Ore no French will release an “Uni and Dried Roe Kyokujo Cream Sauce” potato chip flavor on March 21.

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See, hear and taste at the L’art de Rosanjin exhibit, where projection mapping meets fine cuisine

If you have an interest in modern Japanese art, you may be familiar with the name Kitaoji Rosanjin (1883 – 1959). As it happens, the versatile Japanese artist is currently the subject of a an innovative and unique exhibit being held at the Nihonbashi Mitsui Hall in the Coredo Muromachi shopping, dining and entertainment complex.

Rosanjin, who was known not only as an artist, but as a very discerning food connoisseur and a man well ahead of his time, is considered to have had a huge influence on modern Japanese art and cuisine. He has even been the inspiration behind one of the central characters in the popular gourmet comic Oishinbo, so when we heard that the exhibit combined digital technology with elements of both his art and love of food, we knew we had to go and experience it ourselves. And from what we’d already heard,  this was going to be an exhibit that you not only see, but hear and taste as well!

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“A Taste of Japan”: Mouth-watering video of one man’s incredible gourmet trip 【Video】

A filmmaker based in Los Cabos, Mexico, is attracting attention online in Japan with his stunningly beautiful food video. Entitled “A Taste of Japan”, Mike Arce’s video features the food he fell in love with on a trip to the Land of the Rising Sun. In an impressively expansive gourmet tour, Arce sampled everything from Kyoto speciality tofu cuisine to delicious hot-plate favourites like okonomiyaki and sukiyaki, even squeezing in a trip to Sukiyabashi Jiro in Roppongi for some high-class sushi, too.

If you didn’t already want to go to Japan really, really badly, you will after you watch this!

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Easy peasy lemon squeezy: Our writer attempts to make salted lemon

Did you know that salty things have gotten really popular in Japan in recent years? The Japanese word for salt is shio, and these days you can find shio yakisoba (buckwheat noodles), shiokouji (a kind of condiment), shio nabe (hotpot), and the new fad shio tomato. And now it’s even extending into the world of sweets with shio vanilla ice cream and shio chocolate. I’ve had sea salt chocolate before, and I can tell you it’s actually much better than it sounds! The latest addition to the ranks of salty goodness is shio lemon, which you can make at home yourself with just two basic and obvious ingredients.

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Is British food really that bad? Our Japanese writer tries her hand at some UK dishes

Japanese people seem to love telling me that British food is terrible, and the only good thing we have going for us is fish and chips. No one can believe that I actually get a bit tired of Japanese food and pine for my favourite dishes from home! Perhaps to try and change this perception, the British Embassy has been undertaking a campaign called ‘Food is GREAT!’ (for Great Britain, geddit?), and our Japanese writer decided to put some of their recipes to the test.

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Kimchi cocktail offers a taste of Korea that no Korean would actually endorse

You’ve probably heard of a Bloody Mary, a popular cocktail with a base of vodka and tomato juice, plus a host of other weird and wonderful flavourings such as Worcestershire or Tabasco sauce, horseradish, celery, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and so on. It may not sound appetizing but it has plenty of devotees, although that may be more to do with its reputation as a ‘hair of the dog’ hangover cure rather than its taste. But if you’re feeling adventurous, why not try the even more exotic flavours of a spicy Korean kimchi version?

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Bon appétit! We try conveyor-belt French food in Paris

Kaiten-zushi, or conveyor-belt sushi, has got to be one of the most fun styles of restaurant anywhere in the world. Who doesn’t love watching delectable, bite-size portions of sushi that are all yours for the taking spin around right in front of their eyes? Many tourists make it a point to stop by a kaiten-zushi place when they visit Japan. The fact that you can fill up on delicious sushi without breaking your wallet makes the experience even better.

While these kinds of restaurants can be found outside of their original home, the quality of Japan’s kaiten-zushi is so good that, whether right or wrong, many foreigners claim that any place outside of Japan is a fake. However, what if you took the concept of the conveyor-belt serving style and applied it to a different national cuisine? Well, that’s just what one restaurant in France decided to do. Now you can enjoy quality conveyor-belt French cuisine at a restaurant in Paris!

We were so intrigued that we recently send one of our Japanese reporters to check it out. 

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Japan’s very own Braziltown offers great food and shopping for a great price

The World Cup is now less than half a year away! Don’t you wish you could go to Brazil to cheer on your national team? For those of you living in Japan who can’t quite scrape together the funds for that ticket, we bet you didn’t know that you can visit Japan’s very own ‘Braziltown’ right outside of Tokyo! While the world’s most widely viewed sporting event won’t be coming to the area anytime soon, you can still get a taste of the atmosphere by visiting authentic Brazilian restaurants and import stores. And the best part of going? This Braziltown is located within two hours of Tokyo and only costs 1,000 yen (US$9.77) to get there. Not bad considering airfares these days… 

The folks at Another Tokyo, a popular Japanese website dedicated to introducing off-the-beaten track places around Japan, sent a reporter to Braziltown to check it out. Join us for a look at his photos and to hear about his experience.

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We try Häagen-Dazs’ special edition Forêt Noire ice cream found only in convenience stores

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Especially for everyone’s favorite, Häagen-Dazs. Even in the middle of winter, we can find happiness by eating ice cream in a warm room. We were curious what Häagen-Dazs’ new, hard-to-pronounce flavor Forêt Noire tasted like, so we tried it ourselves. Prepare to be tantalized by the following enticing photographs.

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We try traditional Japanese soup stock at a specialty standing bar in Tokyo

There’s plenty of standing ramen bars in Japan, but this may be the first standing dashi bar. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, dashi is a soup stock that makes up the base of many delicious Japanese dishes such as miso soup and ramen. Typically made of shaved katsuo bushi (preserved bonito fish), dashi is the lifeblood of traditional Japanese food, adding plenty of umami to even the humblest of dishes. Let’s take a closer look at Nihonbashi Dashi Bar, a shop that specializes in serving hot dashi by the cupful. Read More

Freaky gourmet: Mango yogurt noodles, anyone!?

During the height of summer, we’ve been known to plonk ourselves down in front our home-made air conditioner with a pile of sliced watermelon or even chilled soba noodles and mentsuyu dipping sauce as a way of keeping cool while engaging in our favourite pastime of filling our faces. But we never imagined for a second that someone would put noodles, yoghurt and fruit together in one dish.

Tokyo and Osaka-based noodle chain Tsurutontan, specialists in udon wheat-flour noodle dishes, is currently offering patrons something rather tropical with its Mango Yogurt Udon. The very thought of eating a cold, sweet version of one of our favourite kinds of noodle at once excited us and made us feel a little bit queasy, so we sent one of our bravest reporters over to try it out. Find out what they thought after the jump.

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We Prove We Are Culinary Wizards by Turning Cup Ramen Ingredients into Delicious Gourmet Meals

Cup Ramen, known to Westerners as “Grade A college student feed,” is perfectly formulated with enough sodium and other preservatives to both fuel late-night study sessions and cure massive hangovers, but nobody’s ever accused it of being a gourmet food.

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