A Non-Traditionalist Japanese Chef does New Year's

Tojo's Great Pacific Roll

 Blog posts have a life of their own. You write them, forget about them, and then a day, week, a year later, there's a response. The process can be like sending out a message in a bottle, having it circumnavigate the globe and return to your shore with an answer.  Last New Year,  I  blogged about this article on Japanese osechi ryori,  which I wrote for Edible Manhattan.

I happened to be in Vancouver at the time, so I wondered where I might be able to find osechi in that Pacific city, home to lots of Japanese ex-pats and with great access to both freshly caught seafood and Japanese ingredients.

Then just recently, my bottle returned when I received this comment from Hopstepka, who I assume is a Vancouver blogger: "Just found your query. The best osechi ryori we've found is sold by Seto Sushi in Richmond. After that, there's Fujiya."

Thanks, Hopstepka! Seto's menu includes the delicious-sounding matsutake dobin mushi (translated as mushroom tea pot soup with seasonal pine mushroom) and an intriguing BBQ tako cake (BBQ octopus fish cake).

I got to wondering what my favorite sushi chef in Vancouver, Hidekazu Tojo, does to ring in the New Year at his eponymous West Broadway restaurant. Although he trained in a traditional Osaka ryotei, or high-end Japanese restaurant, Tojo says "I never really liked osechi. Everything is too salty, because the idea was that you put the food in a box that would last three or four days so you wouldn't have to cook during the holiday.

More of Tojo's sushi, fresh, fresh, fresh.

"Today, young people don't like overly salty cooking, and the people who come here are very health-oriented, they don't like foods that are to sweet, salty, or deep-fried. So I cook 'new traditional food.'"

For New Year's Tojo makes his usual omakase, or chef's choice menu, a series of small plates that progress from a sunomono, or vinegared vegetables, on to various steamed, fried and seared dishes as well as raw fish and sushi plates. He includes "new wave rolls" like his Pacific Northwest Roll of dungeness crab, avocado, scallop and fish roe, or his Northern Light Roll of wild prawn tempura, avocado and seasonal fruit rolled in a cucumber crepe.

During New Year's week, the chef will highlight traditional Japanese foods, where he updates osechi ingredients such as lotus root and black bean. He might lightly saute the lotus, and simmer the black beans in a less sugary-sweet syrup than the traditional style.

From the omakase menu, BC salmon with Asian vegetables, western-style sauce.

Referring to the somewhat westernized sauces and preparations that have crept into his food over 40 years in Vancouver, Tojo adds, "Even in Japan now, European, Chinese, Japanese food, all of it's mixed." In Canada, he believes, "The best way is to little by little introduce traditional Japanese foods."

Some osechi traditions die hard, though. Even an avowed healthy modernist like Tojo adheres to some of the symbolism that is an essential part of osechi. The colors red and white, he notes, are most important, symbolizing respect for ancestors, good health, and purity. They'll be represented on his plates in the form of the traditional kohaku namasu, a red and white vinegared daikon and carrot salad.  He'll also serve red shrimp, and a little bit of white dried fish.

So the traditional New Year's feast will be present at Tojo's, but in small bits and bites, slipped in between plates of some of the most pristine raw fish preparations you'll find on the West Coast.

Sounds great. The only problem: I won't be in Vancouver for this year's celebration.

New Year's Feasting, Japanese Style

It was a full year ago when I reported this November-December 2011 Edible Manhattan article on osechi-ryori, the traditional Japanese New Year's foods that evoke memories of family, home and tradition for those who grew up in Japan or in an osechi-observant household.

Here's the gorgeous three-tiered box that chef Hideki Yasuoka of the Nippon Club in Manhattan prepared for the lucky members who pre-ordered boxes last year. The smaller ayu, or sweetfish, in the box at the fore are simmered for four hours in a soy and saké mixture until they will practically dissolve in your mouth, and each component contains symbolic meaning, usually pertaining to longevity, good fortune, fertility--all the things peoples' wish upon each other for the New Year.

Since I grew up eating these foods, I love them and wish I could eat them every New Year. Yet many Japanese have no real interest in these traditional foods. One year, I searched for the best osechi boxes in New York City to serve to two young relatives who were visiting from Japan. They turned up their noses at the boxes, and were much more interested in steaks and burgers.

My reporting took me to Katagiri, the Manhattan Japanese grocery store, where I talked to shoppers stocking up for their New Year's celebrations.

  

These New Year's decorations of plastic rice cakes and good luck Daruma dolls would be the equivalent of putting a fake Christmas tree up in your home. 

Thanks to the site Discover Nikkei, which re-posted my article here  and discussed it on Facebook, I've received some interesting feedback on the story. Nina Kahori Fallenbaum, food editor at Hyphen , introduced me to this amazing-looking place in San Francisco, Peko-Peko, which is offering this luxury osechi bento. 

I'm in Vancouver, B.C., now, where a quick search for osechi didn't turn up anything. If any of you know where I can find a good osechi box hereabouts, let me know!

Hunting for traditional Japanese osechi foods at New Year



Nippon Club Chef Hideki Yasuoka's osechi box



For a fun assignment, I spent part of last week on the hunt for Japanese New Year’s osechi box sets. Osechi refers to the various traditional Japanese New Year dishes that expats pine for when the end of the year rolls around. There’s always konbu-maki (seaweed rolls tied with strips of gourd), kamaboko (fish cakes), and soy-simmered tazukuri (anchovies), among many other dishes. Way back when, Japanese women spent days preparing these dishes, to be eaten by the family and guests who dropped by during the three-day celebration of the New Year. In order not to have to cook during this festive period, and to ensure the food stayed fresh (these were pre-refrigeration days), dishes were highly salted, and usually quite sweet as well.

Today, many young people would rather not eat the traditional foods, preferring freshly made sushi, sashimi or western food instead. Since supermarkets, department stores and restaurants all make and sell osechi boxes, the number of home cooks who prepare the whole feast from A to Z has diminished as well.There are still plenty of people who crave osechi, it seems, even if they don't want to go through the laborious process of making the dishes themselves. I saw this House of Japan item reporting strong sales in high-end osechi boxes in Tokyo this year, ranging in price from 30,000 to 205,000 yen (about $370 to $2,500).

Here in Manhattan, I discovered that several restaurants and Japanese grocery stores, including East, Restaurant Nippon and Katagiri (the oldest Japanese grocery store in the U.S.),sell osechi boxes to go. Hakubai restaurant in the Kitano Hotel serves a New Year osechi meal to customers in its dining room.

Plastic versions of New Year's kagami mochi (rice cakes) for sale at Katagiri

One treat was viewing and sampling the artistic osechi boxes created by chef Hideki Yasuoka of the members-only Nippon Club. I’ll let my picture of Chef Yasuoka's delicious masterpiece (above) do the talking for now. If you want to read the full account, you’ll have to wait a year, when my Edible Manhattan story on osechi appears, with much better photos by Max Flatow.