The B-Class Gourmet Effect

Every restaurant in Japan wants to be recognized by B-Class Gourmets. All it takes is one good review and out of nowhere comes a flock of B-Class Gourmets. Soon there is a long line wrapped around the building and the small, previously unnoticed restaurant is suddenly the talk of the town. Restaurant owners love this.

If the good reviews keep coming, the restaurant will continue to stay busy like this. Very few actually become so popular that they remain trendy for years to come, but they still enjoy the spike in business. Many of these B-Class Gourmet hot spots quickly fizzle out and the restaurant goes back to its previous amount of patrons.

Restaurants are a multi-trillion yen industry that is super competitive. Every cheap restaurant in Japan wants to be the next B-Class Gourmet sensation, but very few will actually enjoy long term B-Class success.

I just don’t get why they stand in that line, man.

Foreigners, however, rarely understand this phenomenon. Some even remark that Japanese people seem to actually enjoy waiting in line. Very often you’ll see two ramen shops right next to each other, one with a line wrapped around the building, and the other with no customers at all.

It’s not surprising that foreigners would not understand this. I’m sure it sucks pretty hard for the unpopular shops around the B-Class sensation as well. Locals and B-Class Gourmets say that if you truly appreciate the B-Class foods then you’ll know that it’s all worth the wait.

Japan is known for a lot of foods, but not all of them really qualify as the stuff of a B-Class legend. However, many of these should be relatively familiar to you, and a good restaurant that serves them is definitely worth the hunt.

Ramen

Everybody knows ramen. Not everyone loves ramen. I really like ramen, but unfortunately I couldn’t tell a huge difference in quality by getting ramen at a supposedly “nice place” in Japan. These nice places will make their own noodles and broth, which is certainly a step up from instant ramen. I’m sure if I had more ramen, I’d develop my palette and be able to appreciate it more like a B-Class Gourmet would.

And for those B-Class Gourmet’s in training, Hashi here has written the definitive Ramen Survival Guide which will be indispensable in your quest for ramen enlightenment. Give it a read.

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki… It’s good!

Ah, okonomiyaki. This is more like it. I love okonomiyaki. This is the kind of food I would be more willing to go on a quest for. While good okonomiyaki wasn’t all that difficult for me to find in Japan, it was a bit more difficult to find over here in America. I did find a good spot for it (see above), but it wasn’t quite as cheap as I would have liked it to be. Too bad for me.

And since I’m quite confident all of you will love okonomiyaki just as much as I do, you should probably check out my full post on okonomiyaki and why it’s so awesome. Then you can go on your very own B-Class Gourmet quest for it.

Yakisoba

Yakisoba is another one of my favorite B-Class Gourmet foods. The dish itself is kind of similar to chow mein. Yakisoba is flavored with a sort of Worcestershire sauce and despite the name, yakisoba noodles are more akin to ramen than soba. Yakisoba is a popular festival food, and while I did have some at a festival, I wouldn’t say it was the best I had.

Embarrassingly, the best yakisoba I had was a kind of instant yakisoba. It came with a packet of some variety of horseradish sauce, and I’m a sucker for horseradish. Therefore, that was my favorite yakisoba. Now all I need to do is go to a restaurant that has good yakisoba and some horseradish sauce and I’ll be all set.

Gyoza

Gyoza are ground meat and/or vegetable dumplings that are pretty much always served fried. They’re extremely popular in Japan and for good reason too. Gyoza are super tasty. I love them. One of my greatest joys in Japan was finding fresh gyoza at the local market in Kobe. Just thinking about them now is making me hungry.

Gyoza, like ramen, is another Chinese food that made it into Japan and was adapted to the Japanese tastes. I’m glad it was, because I like Japanese dumplings way more than Chinese ones. Sorry China!

Curry

And who could forget about curry? Fiona even wrote a full post about curry not too long ago. While I’m not so sure I would call it better than ramen, curry still is pretty darn tasty.

I live not too far away from the largest Japanese market in the state, and they have a Japanese restaurant attached to it that serves up some mighty tasty curry. I haven’t been there in a while, but now I kinda want to go. I shouldn’t be writing this post on an empty stomach.

Sushi

Like you weren’t expecting sushi to be on this list – c’mon, everybody knows sushi, and if you don’t love it then I feel bad for you. Sushi is great, comes in so many different varieties, and can either be super cheap, or way too expensive. I prefer the super cheap variety, but that’s just me.

Unfortunately, America has all but ruined sushi. My favorite kinds of sushi are the simpler varieties though. I just really love tuna. And wasabi. And ginger. Give me some plain tuna rolls with soy sauce, wasabi, and a pile of ginger, and I’ll be a happy boy.

Sushi is another area where I feel my palette isn’t developed enough to appreciate higher end stuff. I mean, I can tell when sushi is bad, but I don’t think my mouth really notices much difference between medium grade and high grade sushi. Oh well, I’m fine with my relatively cheap tuna rolls.

Soba

Soba are Japanese buckwheat noodles. They’re served hot in a light broth or cold with a dipping sauce. As with ramen, restaurants often make their own noodles from scratch. Unfortunately for me, I’ve never really cared for soba all that much. I’ve always held ramen noodles as the superior Japanese noodle. All the other noodles seem inferior in comparison.

But regardless of what I think, soba are still a very popular B-Class Gourmet food. Lots of people love soba. Just not me.

Yakitori

Yakitori is grilled skewers of chicken and vegetables. They’re great. Some of the best ones I had were at a fair in Osaka, just from one of the little food stands. It wasn’t a restaurant, but they were super fresh and super tasty. If you like grilled chicken, yakitori is definitely the way to go.

Hanbaagu

No, hanbaagu is not the same as hamburger. At least not in the way you’d expect. When I first heard the phrase, I thought it was a hamburger. Actually, hanbaagu is served without the bun that you’d expect and is most often served with rice and plain sides with light seasoning. The main focus is on the hanbaagu, which can be topped with anything from egg to pineapple to Mark Zuckerberg himself.

We actually had hanbaagu quite a few times in Kobe at a place called Bikkuri Donkey which here translates to “Amazing Donkey”. Hilarious name. It’s the only place I’ve ever had hanbaagu, but I think it was pretty good there.

Udon

Udon is thick Japanese wheat-flour noodles. While I’m not really a big fan of these heavier thick noodles, Koichi absolutely loves udon. And bukkake.

I much prefer ramen to udon, but hey, that’s me. If you’d rather have bukkake sliding down your throat and into your stomach, then whatever – more power to you. It’s just not my thing.

Those are just some of the most popular B-Class Gourmet foods though, there are many others. The above ones are definitely the most popular however. If I had to pick one standout favorite, I think I’d have to go with okonomiyaki. It just can’t be beat.

And if you do decide to go on your very own B-Class Gourmet excursion in your home country, or any country that isn’t Japan, make sure you’re going to the right places. How do I know the right place from the wrong place you ask? Well, just check out Koichi’s post on The 7 Immutable Laws Of Identifying A “Real” Japanese Restaurant and you’ll be all set. I guarantee it.

So tell me, what’s your favorite B-Class Gourmet food from Japan? Have any spectacular restaurants to recommend to the gang when they make it over to Japan next month? Let us know in the comments!

But Japanese food is much more globalized than most people realize. One of the most obviously foreign influences on Japanese food is mayonnaise.

Japanese people put mayonnaise on a huge amount of foods. It’s not just foreign foods that typically have mayonnaise in them, like sandwiches or potato salads; even traditionally Japanese foods aren’t spared.

Mayonnaise is definitely a familiar ingredient to most people, but its use in Japanese cuisine is a little different than you might be used to.

How is Japanese Mayonnaise Different?

The difference between Japanese mayonnaise and mayonnaise from, say, the USA, is subtle, but noticable.

A lot of people say that Japanese mayonnaise is thinner and sweeter than US mayonnaise, and that’s because it’s prepared a little differently. Japanese mayonnaise tends to use different types of vinegars (like rice and apple cider) instead of distilled vinegar, and sometimes only uses egg yolks instead of the whole egg.

Plus, since Japanese people don’t have the same kind of aversion towards MSG that Americans do, Japanese mayonnaise has MSG and more of that yummy umami flavor.

Instead of coming in the squat, glass jars most Americans are used to Japan’s most successful brand, Kewpie, comes in a very distinctive, taller, squeeze bottle with a Kewpie doll on the front.

What Food Do the Japanese Put Mayonnaise On?

The short answer: damn near everything.

The long answer is that there are a lot of Japanese foods that commonly use mayonnaise as a condiment.

Almost anything with “yaki” in the name can benefit from mayonnaise, including okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and other fried goodies.

A lot of pizza uses mayonnaise as a topping. Major pizza restaurants like Pizza-La and Domino’s commonly have pizza with mayonnaise on it, and currently Pizza Hut offers a pie called the “MayoQ.” It’s hard to think of many other dishes that feature mayonnaise so prominently as the main ingredient. Maybe one day, Iron Chef will do a mayonnaise battle.

A while back, What Japan Thinks posted a survey asking Japanese people what unusual food they liked to garnish with mayonnaise. Topping the list was fried chicken, continuing on with foods like bread, natto, and sashimi. I’m not sure that mayonnaise will make natto any more appealing.

There are also mayonnaise oddities that lie at the edges of Japan’s culinary world. Tokyo’s Mayonnaise Kitchen puts mayo on everything from cocktails to spaghetti, and was odd enough to be able to make it onto the Colbert Report’s “Craziest F#?king Thing I’ve Ever Heard” segment.

Mayonnaise cocktail, anybody?

If you’re not used to Japan’s gratuitous usage of mayonnaise, it might seem a bit gross at first; and at least with the mayonnaise cocktail, I wouldn’t blame you for getting a bit queasy.

But in other applications, like on okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and other foods, you might want to give it a try before you completely dismiss it. Be careful when it comes to beverages, though.

What is an Okonomiyaki, Anyway?

Okonomiyaki can best be described as a kind of savory pancake. Often translated as an “as you like it pancake,” okonomiyaki can contain a wide variety of ingredients. Okonomiyaki is mainly associated with Hiroshima and the Kansai region of Japan, and there’s often much debate between okonomiyaki aficionados as to which style is superior (it’s Kansai style, in case you were wondering).

Toppings and batters tend to vary according to region but most commonly include any combination of cabbage, meat, seafood, corn, bean sprouts, okonomiyaki sauce (which is kind of similar to steak sauce), mayonnaise, dried bonito flakes, green onion, pickled red ginger, dried seaweed powder, and tempura crumbs. It’s awesome.

Basically, you take some batter with cabbage tossed in, add some savory items from above, cook on a hot surface/pan/whatever, then top with fixings and sauces. There’s a lot of customization here, but they’re all super tasty.

Unfortunately, there’s not really a definitive history on the dish since it’s not really specific as to what makes one up, but it’s speculated that these types of savory pancake thingies have been around in Japan since the 16th century or so. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t even tried one until after I visited Japan. I’d been missing out on so much!

The turn to okonomiyaki as we know it today seems to have started in the early 1900s. In Japan, Western food was considered anything made from wheat flour, and street vendors wanted to capitalize on this fad of Western food in Japan. Therefore, they would whip up a simple batter and make thin pancakes on an open air griddle and fill it with savory ingredients, kind of like a burrito.

Competition was fierce though and vendors were always trying to outdo each other. Developed first in Tokyo, it soon evolved to include Worcestershire sauce (another import from the West) and cabbage among other things to give it more body. Its popularity quickly spread and eventually morphed into what we know as okonomiyaki today.

Kansai Style vs Hiroshima Style

The Kansai style is easily the most predominant (and best) variant of the dish and is found most widely throughout Japan. All the ingredients are mixed together as above, and it’s cooked much like you would prepare a normal pancake.

In Hiroshima, however, they do things totally wacky. First of all, the ingredients are layered rather than mixed which is ludicrous. The layers are usually batter, cabbage, pork, and optional items such as squid, octopus, and cheese. Noodles are also used as a base and/or topping with fried egg and a generous amount of okonomiyaki sauce. I’d be okay if it was just the egg or the excessive sauce, but noodles is taking it too far, Hiroshima – too far!

The amount of cabbage used is also about three to four times the amount used in Kansai style. Obviously, this is three to four times too much as the Kansai style’s amount of cabbage is perfect. The cabbage found in the inferior Hiroshima version is piled very high atop the okonomiyaki and then squashed down with a spatula. A heathen’s pancake, to be sure.

The Preparation

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn_vvp4Uj0Q&feature=g-upl']

Some restaurants will prepare the okonomiyaki for you, while others will leave you in charge of its preparation – they just supply the materials and the means. The latter is definitely more fun, especially if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t, well then you’re in trouble (see video above*). Better to let someone else take care of it for you.

These type of “do it yourself” restaurants aren’t all that uncommon in Japan (some even have you catching your own fish!), and while it may seem like a lazy way to get the patrons to do most of the work themselves, it is nice to have your meal cooked and prepared exactly to your own specifications. Again, assuming you know what you’re doing.

Okonomiyaki in America

Quite sadly, okonomiyaki does not seem to be very popular in America at all. I can’t comment on other countries outside of Japan, but in America at least, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on the menu in Japanese restaurants (at least not in Ohio, anyway). If it were, I’d be eating it all the time.

Do not despair though! It is still possible to make your own okonomiyaki (if you’re brave). It’s not something I’ve yet attempted myself, but since writing this post and reinvigorating my love for the almighty okonomiyaki, I think I’ll have to give it a go sometime soon. For those brave souls interested, you can attempt to craft your own okonomiyaki by following a recipe online, such as this one from Okonomiyaki World.

If you can find a place that serves these in America, or if you are in Japan, please do yourself a favor and try some okonomiyaki. You won’t regret it.

So tell me, have you ever had okonomiyaki before? Do you love it? What’s your favorite style? Ever tried to make it yourself? Let us know in the comments!

*The drama from the video in this post is Kekkon Dekinai Otoko, one of my all-time favorite J-dramas. Check it out!