The Exotic Appeal of Japanese Food
Japan is one of the more popular country in Asia. Known for its deep sense of culture and values, Japan is esteemed not just as another regular country but an empire in the East with a long, colourful history of wars and peace.
The appeal of the land’s vibrant history and rich cultural heritage extends to its various artifacts, food among its many globally renowned products.
Japanese restaurants in Singapore offer the typical but authentic Japanese meal staring with the center piece staple, rice which is often served as a bowl of plain, cooked rice often mixed with raw egg and soy sauce or other toppings as the basic element of an authentic Japanese meal. There is also a rice variant, the sushi, a rice meal made of cooked white rice flavored with seasoned vinegar.
Among Japanese restaurants in Singapore, there are emerging costumer favourite like the hand formed sushi (nigirizushi), rolled suchi (makizushi) and sushi rice topped with raw fish (chirashi). Another culturally distinct Japanese variant of the rice meal is the donburi, plain rice bowls with assorted toppings such as are stewed beef (gyudon), tendon (tempura), chicken (oyakodon), raw seafood (kaisendon) and egg.
Regardless of type, Japanese rice is best served with soup and viands. For soup, the typical Japanese soup in Singapore yakitori restaurants are made from miso paste dissolved in fish stock (dashi) often combined with wakame seaweed, small pieces of tofu, or sliced aburaage.
For sidings or viands, Japanese sea food like sashimi, raw fish in soy sauce and Japanese spice (wasabi) and oteh grilled fishes (yakizakana) like mackerel (saba), salmon (sake), mackerel pike (sanma), horse mackerel (aji), Okhotsk atka mackerel (hokke), sea bream (tai) and sweetfish (ayu) are popular choices.
For meat viands, tonkatsu, yakiniku, tempura and chicken teriyaki are commonly served in basic meal sets in authentic Japanese restaurants in Singapore. Tonkatsu are deep fried pork cutlets served with shredded cabbage or as rice topping (katsudon) and yakiniku is grilled bite-size pieces of meat usually beef and pork. The yakitori, chicken skewered in kushi, a bamboo material, and grilled over charcoal is also competing with the teriyaki as a fast becoming favourite Japanese pork product.
In fact there are new yakitori bars and restaurants in Singapore that specializes specifically in yakitori meals and offer as many as 50 assorted yakitori meals tori seseri (chicken neck) and hatsu (chicken heart), buta bara (pork belly with onion), hotate bacon maki (scallop wrapped in bacon) and gindara (cod fish) served with Japanese sweet potatoes.
But aside from variety and unique taste, due primarily to the use of unique blend of spices, perhaps the more appealing element of Japanese food is its cultural underpinnings. The truly astonishing attraction of the Japanese food is in the manner by how it is served, a kind of visual treat that is both intriguing and pleasing.
Visually, Japanese food is served in pleasant arrangements with ornaments that reflect changing seasons. During spring for instance, Japanese food is prepared with seasonal ingredients such as Japanese sweet coltsfoot (fuki) fatsia sprouts, spring cabbage and fresh onions and then arranged with bamboo shoots (takenoko) and rape blossom which are prime crops during spring. During summer, many Japanese restaurants in Singapore arrange their meals to resemble river or waterfalls.