An Izakaya is a Feeling
How wide is your concept of plate?
Previously Unreleased
After seven years of eating in this city, I have realized that my approach to the izakaya is not an orthodox one. Yes, it is still dinner and drinks, but the average patron does not meet the menu with the kind of fervor that I do. Having a few small bites while throwing back some beers and cocktails is a concept that is largely lost on me. I don’t want a few small bites. I want a lot of bites. I want as much and as many as the kitchen can stand to give me. Freed from the rigidity of the western format of shared appetizers and individual mains, an izakaya menu is not a list of choices; it is a list of opportunities. A menu is not a sign on the side of the road where you figure out where you want to go. A menu is the road itself. But one does not embark on a journey by simply sitting in the car. You need gas in the tank. Music on the radio. And somewhere you want to be. Just as it takes preparation to cook well, it takes preparation to eat well, too.
So first, a drink. A cold beer is the common choice. And from the depths of the cruel broiler that is the Japanese workplace, it is often the most appropriate one. But a problem arises: beer is filling. And we didn’t come here to merely fill our guts with beer. We want substance. You want flavors and tastes. Fats and salts. Perfectly seasoned proteins and adulterated vegetables. What’s needed is a drink that doesn’t get in the way, but will still leave you delightfully drunk. Every bit of space taken up by beer is a space that could have been filled with food, and in my personal religion, you always opt for the food. So order an oolong-hi. The shochu will loosen your appetite, and maybe also your speech. The tea, you can pretend is healthy. Though given the endeavor ahead, this might be little more than pretense.
With the drinks comes the otōshi, the warm up acts. Sometimes they are interesting and sometimes they are just salads. Sometimes you get a choice, and sometimes you get what they want you to have. But there is never a lot. This is, after all, merely the first taste. The first turn on the road. The kiss that preludes the night that does not end at bedtime. As those morsels tease their way across your palate, the lights in this theatre of excess are brought down. With bated breath and stomachs enthralled, the food begins to arrive.
Yes, the food.
Before anything else, there has to be potato salad. It is my barometer for what the kitchen is doing with itself. Are they being creative or are they playing it straight? Are they thinking more about the potato itself or is the potato just a foil for something else? Will it be something homey, set stiff with mayonnaise and studded with ham? Or will it arrive crowned by an egg whose yolk lays ready, waiting for you to nudge it from inhibition to exhibition with the gentle press of a spoon? There are many answers to this question, but if it is just okay, a passing grade, I approach the rest of the meal cautiously. My expectations already ratcheted down. But if it is good, I get excited about what else is to come. If it is superlative, I'll go into overdrive and start plucking more stuff off the menu to try. I'll also order more potato salad.
With the drinks comes the otōshi, the warm up acts. Sometimes they are interesting and sometimes they are just salads. Sometimes you get a choice, and sometimes you get what they want you to have. But there is never a lot. This is, after all, merely the first taste. The first turn on the road. The kiss that preludes the night that does not end at bedtime. As those morsels tease their way across your palate, the lights in this theatre of excess are brought down. With bated breath and stomachs enthralled, the food begins to arrive.
Yes, the food.
Before anything else, there has to be potato salad. It is my barometer for what the kitchen is doing with itself. Are they being creative or are they playing it straight? Are they thinking more about the potato itself or is the potato just a foil for something else? Will it be something homey, set stiff with mayonnaise and studded with ham? Or will it arrive crowned by an egg whose yolk lays ready, waiting for you to nudge it from inhibition to exhibition with the gentle press of a spoon? There are many answers to this question, but if it is just okay, a passing grade, I approach the rest of the meal cautiously. My expectations already ratcheted down. But if it is good, I get excited about what else is to come. If it is superlative, I'll go into overdrive and start plucking more stuff off the menu to try. I'll also order more potato salad.
When the sashimi plate arrives, you will be on the open road. And I say plate only in the most general sense of the word. Sometimes, yes, it is a precious little ceramic studded with fine cuts of fish. It will be a dish. A poem. A sonnet for your pleasure to dance upon. But then you must ask yourself, “How wide is your concept of plate?” Just a dish? A platter? I have been served fish on frozen trays of ice cubes and slats of bamboo. Once, I was given a chilled roof tile stolen from a traditional house. And other times, the word basin is probably more apt than plate. “Oversized crockery” being as cumbersome on the tongue as it is on the table.
At the far end of the metaphor, the idea of a plate is abandoned altogether in favor of the strictly utilitarian bucket. Herein is not simply the best catch. It is the entire catch. A hulking cornucopia piled edge to edge and mounded precariously high, as if the whole aquarium had to die so that you might live. Though if you try to summit this behemoth without enough companions, you might die too.Do you need another drink yet. Another oolong-hi? More beer? A lemon sour? Possibly a high ball or a carafe of nihonshu? From here, the pace will only increase, the tempo quicken. There is no set order for dishes to arrive, and the table can quickly turn into a game of Tetris. This is not a tasting menu that has been timed out to the second. Things come out when they are done.
Will it be a fluffy rolled omelette? Those are always good. Either lightly sweet or delicately salted, depending on where the cook hales from. What about plump slices of katsuo that have been crusted with salt and seared on a bonfire of hay? A korokke—maybe stuffed with cream and crabmeat or perhaps scallops and purple sweet potatoes? A roasted eggplant slathered in miso that tastes more like chocolate than it does a vegetable? An izakaya is not about stricture. An izakaya is about the possible.
At the far end of the metaphor, the idea of a plate is abandoned altogether in favor of the strictly utilitarian bucket. Herein is not simply the best catch. It is the entire catch. A hulking cornucopia piled edge to edge and mounded precariously high, as if the whole aquarium had to die so that you might live. Though if you try to summit this behemoth without enough companions, you might die too.Do you need another drink yet. Another oolong-hi? More beer? A lemon sour? Possibly a high ball or a carafe of nihonshu? From here, the pace will only increase, the tempo quicken. There is no set order for dishes to arrive, and the table can quickly turn into a game of Tetris. This is not a tasting menu that has been timed out to the second. Things come out when they are done.
Will it be a fluffy rolled omelette? Those are always good. Either lightly sweet or delicately salted, depending on where the cook hales from. What about plump slices of katsuo that have been crusted with salt and seared on a bonfire of hay? A korokke—maybe stuffed with cream and crabmeat or perhaps scallops and purple sweet potatoes? A roasted eggplant slathered in miso that tastes more like chocolate than it does a vegetable? An izakaya is not about stricture. An izakaya is about the possible.
You could be eating anything. Macaroni salad. Green salad. Cilantro salad. Niku-dofu. Fresh tomatoes. Marinated tomatoes. Cucumbers with miso. Cucumbers dressed in umeboshi paste. Ginger sprouts. Deep fried corn. Roasted baby corn. Rare Hokkaido white corn. Horse sashimi. Chicken sashimi. Ham katsu. Menchi katsu. Maguro yukke. Chicken wings. Fried fish. Fried shrimp. Spring rolls. Roasted duck. Raw duck. Chicken nanban. Gyoza. Shumai. Whipped tofu. Yuba tofu. Abura-age. Tofu with honey and crackers. Or just a quivering block of some of the freshly made stuff. Braised fish heads and salt roasted ones, too. Enoki mushrooms drowned with hot fat. Sautéed nameko mushrooms. Rolling cauldrons of oden. Edamame tossed in a wok with chili and garlic. Big, fat fava beans grilled in their husks. Mozuku seaweed. Hijiki seaweed. And fried nori that looks like clumps of weed. There are tuna collars the size of beef ribs and tuna heads bigger than your needs. Pork belly of all shapes, sizes, and iterations. Ebi mayo, which is the the Japanese answer to a New Orleans remoulade. There are bowls of braised beef guts and even gut sashimi. Miniature hot pots and whole boats of karaage. Monkfish liver that has been stewed until it is more velvety than foie gras. I've eaten piles of raw cabbage leaves and tiny bowls of meatballs and spaghetti. Even a humble sweet potato given no more adornment than a knob of butter. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to have an eel grilled with such finesse that the outside will shatter like crème brûlée and the inside will be an idea, a dream of what an eel can be. In the long middle of the meal, there is no wrong way to go. There are only things you haven't eaten yet. And in all seriousness, go ahead and order the french fries.
However, after all that eating and all that drinking, an end must be made. In Japanese, this is called shi-me. It literally means to tie off, to close, or to conclude. But in the context of eating, this means it is time for the carbs. Either rice or noodles. It could be as simple as an onigiri or as absurd as a giant bowl of communal noodles. Fried rice and yakisoba are often around. Rice cooked in an earthen crock has always been de riguer. Sometimes cooked with seasonal vegetables and other times with a whole family reunion of uni. Some people just want white rice, and if you like to have breakfast at night, you can have a raw egg to whip inside your hot grains. Everywhere will have something, and if you can't quite decide, just be ridiculous and order all of them. I refer to this as the double (or triple) shi-me, though exactly no one else probably does. Get what you want. Get what you can fit.
However, after all that eating and all that drinking, an end must be made. In Japanese, this is called shi-me. It literally means to tie off, to close, or to conclude. But in the context of eating, this means it is time for the carbs. Either rice or noodles. It could be as simple as an onigiri or as absurd as a giant bowl of communal noodles. Fried rice and yakisoba are often around. Rice cooked in an earthen crock has always been de riguer. Sometimes cooked with seasonal vegetables and other times with a whole family reunion of uni. Some people just want white rice, and if you like to have breakfast at night, you can have a raw egg to whip inside your hot grains. Everywhere will have something, and if you can't quite decide, just be ridiculous and order all of them. I refer to this as the double (or triple) shi-me, though exactly no one else probably does. Get what you want. Get what you can fit.
The important thing is that you ate well and that you drank enough. There will be people who then wander off to karaoke afterwards, and others will go to a bar. A number of people will just stumble to the train and begin the long, drunken slog towards home. The few, the proud will continue the night somewhere else. A second round. A third. There will be more eating, more drinking. More laughing and more carousing. Because the truth of the matter is, that as important as the food is at an izakaya, it is really just a vehicle for the experience. You see people. You talk to people. It is not the kind of place you go to be ponderous and alone. You are there to fill up much more than your stomach. It is a banquet laid out on an intimate scale. It is a coming together. An izakaya is not just a place. An izakaya is a feeling.
