Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family's Journey Through the Belly of Japan

by Michael Booth Narrated by Ralph Lister

Overview

Japan is arguably the preeminent food nation on earth, a Mecca for the world's greatest chefs, with more Michelin stars than any other country. The Japanese go to extraordinary lengths and expense to eat food that is marked both by its exquisite preparation and exotic content. Their creativity, dedication, and courage in the face of dishes such as cod sperm and octopus ice cream is only now beginning to be fully appreciated in the sushi and ramen-saturated West.

Food and travel writer Michael Booth takes the culinary pulse of contemporary Japan, learning fascinating tips and recipes that few westerners have been privy to before. Accompanied by two fussy eaters under the age of six, he and his wife travel the length of the country, from bear-infested, beer-loving Hokkaido to snake-infested, seaweed-loving Okinawa. Along the way, they dine with¿and score a surprising victory over¿sumo wrestlers; share a seaside lunch with free-diving, female abalone hunters; and meet the greatest chefs working in Japan today. Less happily, they witness a mass fugu slaughter, are traumatized by an encounter with giant crabs, and attempt a calamitous cooking demonstration for the lunching ladies of Kyoto.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Liesl Schillinger

Super Sushi Ramen Express…establishes Booth…as the next Bill Bryson…Those who write about Japan sometimes seem unhinged in their adulation, but Booth begins with refreshing skepticism.

Publishers Weekly

06/13/2016
In this entertaining read, Booth, the Copenhagen correspondent for Monocle magazine, makes it delectably clear that Japanese food is a whole lot more than sushi. Informed by a Japanese colleague that he has never tasted real Japanese food, Booth sets forth with his family to eat his way through the Land of the Rising Sun. With only three months to digest an ancient tradition, Booth heroically chows down from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Crowning his pilgrimage is a final supper at an exclusive restaurant that embodies the subtle dining pleasures and philosophies of a cuisine shaped by scarcity, seasonal change, and the fruits of the sea. As a narrator, Booth is both genial and informed, deploying his two sons as comic foils while he performs his “innocent abroad” character with aplomb. There’s more to Booth than meets the eye, and his access to Japanese celebrities makes him an unlikely everyman; at times, this persona comes across as a shtick. But Booth redeems even the most pro forma moments with smooth prose, assiduous research, and tireless fieldwork. A chapter on diet and aging seems misplaced. Otherwise, Booth’s immersion in a remarkable cuisine is both engaging and convincing. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Super Sushi Ramen Express establishes Michael Booth—already memorable for his teasing Rorschach of Scandinavia, The Almost Nearly Perfect People—as the next Bill Bryson.”—Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review

"In funny, anecdotal chapters, many of which focus on a single type of food, Booth, a Denmark-based travel writer sinks his teeth into the sort of unvarnished cultural-culinary reporting that made Calvin Trillin a star three decades ago...From a discussion of what makes one soy sauce better than another to a visit to a wasabi farm (that’s right…it doesn’t start out as a tube of green paste!), Booth whistle-stops his way through Japan making toothsome observations all the way."—Passport Magazine

“There’s some of both Bill Bryson and Anthony Bourdain in Booth’s cheerful, game, often irreverent, and, perhaps most importantly, hungry approach to discovering a new place.”—Booklist

“Get on board.”—The Sacramento Bee

“Booth is one of the sharpest food writers around, and this is essential fare for foodies.”—Mail on Sunday (London)

“Booth’s style is hugely enjoyable…an entertaining guide to the food you should try on a trip to the area.” —Timeout (London)

“Booth’s descriptions of food made my mouth water. This book is a must for all lovers of Japanese cuisine.”—The Guardian (London)

"Whether or not Super Sushi Ramen Express is readers' first encounter with Japanese cuisine and culture, it is worth savoring…. Food writer and humorist Michael Booth sets his sights on Japanese cuisine, with delightful and delicious results.”—Shelf Awareness

“[Super Sushi Ramen Express] is a treat for readers, even if they never taste a single morsel.”—Library Journal

“Entertaining...Booth’s immersion in a remarkable cuisine is both engaging and convincing.”—Publishers Weekly

“A British food and travel writer takes his wife, two young sons, and bubbly brand of humor to Japan in hopes of examining the food culture...he covers the current state of Japanese cuisine with humor and intelligence.”—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

07/01/2016
Globe-trotting Brit Booth (Eating Dangerously) hits the road for Japan, planning to learn the secrets of one of the world's most highly regarded food meccas. To add to the fun, the author's patient wife, Lissen, and two young sons—who predictably most enjoyed the sumo wrestlers but less of the cuisine—joined him. With such compelling chapter titles such as "The Sake Crisis" and "Sumo-Size Me," the text is a treat for readers even if they never taste a single morsel. The author begins by having lunch in a dohyo, where sumo wrestlers eat. Much to everyone's "disappointment," these huge athletes don't bulk up on chocolate but on sweet corn and tofu. Booth's wit is apparent as he learns about tempura from a chef who assures him that "lumps are good." An interesting side note is that contemporary Japanese now prefer beer to sake. Production of sake has dropped from 449 million gallons in 1975 to 185 million gallons today. Despite Booth's quest to learn about Japan's finest foods, he reveals that the now deceased Momofuku Ando, who invented ramen noodles, was a hero and multibillionaire with over 85 billion servings of ramen consumed in the world annually. VERDICT Mainly for foodies interested in Japanese cuisine.—Susan G. Baird, formerly with Oak Lawn P.L., IL

Kirkus Reviews

2016-06-21
A British food and travel writer takes his wife, two young sons, and a bubbly brand of humor to Japan in hopes of examining the food culture and losing a few of the pounds he has picked up living and cooking in Paris.In short, punchy chapters, Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, 2015, etc.) recounts his adventures on "a foodie family road trip lasting just under three months," sticking to the subjects at hand. He may not reach any novel conclusions about Japanese cuisine, but he vividly sums up the sensory experience of bonito flakes, with their "addictive smoky-citric flavor," or dashi, "sweet as spring peas ripe from the pod, yet complex with the tang of ocean." Many of the author's most delightful experiences involved his family. He took them along to a sumo "stable" to see how the wrestlers achieve their vast girth, and one of the "colossal walrus people" allowed Booth's 6-year-old son to pin him. The author also hiked with his family up "a forest road strewn with the corpses of poisonous snakes" to experience nagashi-somen, noodles launched down a mountain river for diners to catch on the fly. More often, Booth toured production facilities on his own, seeking out real wasabi—remarkably hard to find even in Japan—and Kobe beef. He also attempted, with partial success, to make sense of "the two rival culinary camps that divide Japan," one centered in Tokyo and the other in Kyoto and Osaka. Though Booth trained as a chef in Paris, his tastes are delightfully eclectic: he is as apt to indulge in a 10-hour "food crawl" of Osakan fast-food noodle joints as he is to savor the most delicate sushi, and he evokes both experiences with gusto. While some readers may wish for deeper explorations of some of Booth's subjects, he covers the current state of Japanese cuisine with humor and intelligence.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171739133
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Super Sushi Ramen Express

One Family's Journey Through the Belly of Japan

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By Michael Booth

Picador

Copyright © 2016 Michael Booth
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-09980-8

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CHAPTER 1

TOSHI

It had started off as a perfectly temperate discussion about the relative merits of French and Japanese cuisines. I had recently had dinner at the feted French restaurant SaQuaNa, in Honfleur, on the Normandy coast. The chef, Alexandre Bourdas, was a fast-rising culinary star in France, and I had innocently remarked on his lightness of touch and the freshness of his raw ingredients, drawing what turned out to be a rash comparison between his food and Japanese cooking. I knew that Bourdas had worked in Japan for three years, so it didn't seem too outlandish to suggest that his cooking had been influenced by the food he had eaten there.

I ought to have known this would be a red flag to my friend Katsotoshi Kondo.

* * *

"What do you know about Japan food, huh?" Toshi snapped. "Do you think you know anything about Japanese food? Only in Japan! You cannot taste it here in Europe. This man's cuisine is nothing like Japanese food. Where is the tradition? Where are the seasons? Where is the meaning? Tu connais rien de la cuisine Japonaise. Pas du tout!" From experience, I knew that this sudden switching of languages on Toshi's part was a bad sign. He was also pouting now. I had to get my retaliation in before he detonated fully.

"I know enough about it to know how dull it is," I said. "Japanese food is all about appearance. Where's the comfort, the warmth, the hospitality? No fat, no flavor. What have you got? Raw fish, noodles, deep-fried vegetables — and you stole all that from Thailand, the Chinese, the Portuguese. Doesn't matter, though, does it? You just dunk it in soy sauce, and it all tastes the same, right? All you need to make good Japanese food is a sharp knife and a good fishmonger. What else is there? Ooh, don't tell me, cod sperm and whale meat. Mmm, got to get me some of those."

I had met Toshi while training at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris a couple of years earlier. A tall, rather severe-looking, half-Japanese, half-Korean man in his late twenties, he was an enigma wrapped in many layers of inscrutability, but he had a subversive, dry sense of humor lurking behind the gruff Beat Takeshi facade.

While the rest of us would wear our chef's whites for days until we looked like walking Jackson Pollocks, Toshi was always immaculately turned out. His plates were perfect: his food presented just so, with ample white space surrounding it; his knives were always fearsomely sharp. But he had clashed with the French chefs who taught us. They invariably marked him down because he refused to cook fish for more than a few seconds and served vegetables with bite rather than soft all the way through, as they preferred. This seeded in Toshi a lingering resentment toward the French and their cuisine, but still he stayed on in Paris, partly, I suspect, out of a sheer bloody-minded determination to single-handedly educate the locals in the superior ways of Japanese cooking.

After graduating, Toshi went to work in a Japanese restaurant in the sixth arrondissement, the kind of place — virtually invisible from the street but a haven of serenity within — that registered on the radar only of Japanese tourists. We kept in touch and met up from time to time to eat and talk food, our get-togethers usually descending into a childish rally of insults.

But this time, things ended slightly differently. "OK, just shut up, OK?" Toshi said, his head disappearing beneath the table as he fished around in his satchel. "I have something for you."

He handed me a large hardback with a blurry painting of a leaping fish on the cover. Momentarily taken aback, I promised to read it and thanked Toshi. This was embarrassing. He had never given me anything before. It had taken me some time to explain to him the concept of buying a round of drinks, for instance. It was clearly an expensive book, too, and, though it sounds ridiculous given the occasions he had ranted at me, for the first time, as I held the book on my lap on the bus home, I began to understand how keenly he must have felt the slights from me and from our teachers at Le Cordon Bleu.

The book was Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji, a new edition of the original, which was published in 1979. Introductions by Ruth Reichl, the former editor of Gourmet magazine, as well as the late M. F. K. Fisher, served notice that this was no ordinary food book. As I would later discover, it is still the preeminent English-language Japanese food reference source, the bible of Japanese cooking for a generation of Japanophile food lovers throughout the world.

"This is much more than a cookbook," writes Reichl. "It is a philosophical treatise."

There are recipes, of course, over two hundred of them, covering grilling, steaming, simmering, salads, deep-frying, sushi, noodles, and pickling — many of the dishes unfamiliar to me — but along the way Tsuji also covers everything from the spiritual meaning of rice to the role of tableware in Japanese cuisine. "No Japanese, however humble, would think of serving food on just any old plate, relying on flavor alone to please," he writes. Tsuji emphasizes the fundamental importance of the seasons in Japanese food: in Japan, ingredients with a particularly brief seasonal window are often celebrated with quasi-spiritual verve by cooks and diners. I learned, too, that the Japanese employ a number of virtually flavorless ingredients — tofu, burdock, and something called konnyaku, "a dense, gelatinous, dark brown to hazy gray cake" made by peeling, cooking, pounding, and coagulating a root called "devil's tongue" — purely for their texture and mouthfeel. Others, such as "steam-processed bonito fillets, dried to wood-like hardness and shaved into flakes" (referenced in the title of the John Lennon album Shaved Fish, I now realized), or the fearful-sounding fermented soybean breakfast dish of natto, were, to me, mystifying. Indeed, there seemed to be a remarkable array of fermented foodstuffs — from miso to soy to natto, not forgetting fermented sea slug entrails — all of which belied the impression I had of the Japanese as being fussy about "rotten" foods, like cheese and yogurt.

I knew that the Japanese were wary of applying heat to their food, but Tsuji writes breezily about a dish in which "chicken is tinged with pink near the bone" (in fact, it turns out that chicken sashimi — raw chicken — is not uncommon in Japan), and more generally of an overriding obsession with freshness and simplicity in cooking, which explained their aversion to excessive application of heat.

At times, I detected a note of condescension, albeit wrapped in a tissue of humility: "Many of our foods may seem thin and lacking in substance," he writes in his preface. "But you must learn to look for the subtle, natural aroma and flavor of ingredients." Occasionally, subsequent developments in global food trends had rendered his concern for the squeamish sensibilities of the Western palate a little outdated: "The best-loved food in Japan, sashimi — sliced raw fish — often seems unbearably exotic, almost bordering on the barbaric, and requiring a great sense of gastronomic adventure and fortitude to down!"

More troubling was the lack of desserts. There are literally none in A Simple Art. If this was a reflection of Japanese cuisine in general, it would be cause for more than a few moments of somber reflection. It was like hearing about a people who never laughed. Perhaps Tsuji just didn't have a sweet tooth, I thought to myself, and read on.

Throughout five hundred pages of what Fisher calls the "delicate pageantry" of Japanese cuisine, what struck me above all was how prescient so much of Tsuji's writing seemed. The mantra of local, fresh, seasonal food; a diet featuring little dairy and meat, more vegetables and fruit; all of it prepared with the minimum of meddling from the chef and a deep respect for the ingredients, resonated precisely with contemporary thinking in the West. Though written more than thirty years ago, this was still a thoroughly modern food book with important, perhaps critical, lessons for us all.

Reflecting on the eponymous simplicity of Tsuji's recipes, it seemed to me a colossal oversight that, while it is perfectly normal for us to cook Indian, Thai, Chinese, French, Italian, and even Mexican or Hungarian food at home, we hardly ever try to make Japanese food — and if we do, it will most likely be a poor approximation of sushi. With the recent ramen boom limited to major cities, for most of us, still, Japanese food is synonymous with the inevitable nigiri and maki with the same half dozen toppings. But, according to Tsuji, not only is Japanese food remarkably healthy and delicious but also a cinch to make. It doesn't rely on slow-cooked stocks or tricky sauces, nor does it require extensive preparation. According to Tsuji, you don't even need to mix your tempura batter properly — it is supposed to be lumpy.

Though, of course, I could never admit as much to Toshi, Tsuji's writing had a stirring effect on me. I had heard chefs waffle on about simplicity and "letting the ingredients speak for themselves," about how they cook only seasonal, local food, and so on — they all said the same thing. While conducting interviews for magazines and newspapers, I had spent many a glassy-eyed hour listening to them drone on — but their fussy, complicated food invariably undermined the platitudes. Yet here was a writer, and a national cuisine, who embodied all those sentiments.

There was another reason why A Simple Art fascinated me. Three years of committed eating in Paris had taken its toll. I had perilously high levels of cholesterol — for every Michelin star I had sampled, it seemed as if I had added one of the company's tires to my waist. A flight of stairs left me winded, and I was already beginning to worry about how, in the near future, I would be able to put my socks on in the morning. Toshi had taken to poking me in the belly, then pretending to have lost his finger. He, of course, was whippet slim and fit. His grandmother, he said, had recently turned ninety-seven and still tended her garden. Did I know the Japanese lived longer than any other race on earth? he asked. And did I know why? Diet.

* * *

"You know, maybe if you start eating Japanese food now, you might live to sixty," Toshi goaded. "I will live beyond one hundred because I always eat tofu, fish, soy, miso, vegetables, rice." He was prone to making outlandish health claims for virtually all Japanese foodstuffs: Shiitake mushrooms cured cancer, apparently, and daikon radish could prevent acne. Lotus root reduced cholesterol, he said, and, patting my barren pate, he said I really should start eating more wakame seaweed, as it was guaranteed to cure baldness. According to Toshi, soybeans were a miracle product that reduced cholesterol, prevented cancer, and helped people live forever.

I began reading more about Japanese food. Or, rather, I didn't. Because, astonishingly, even all these years since it was published, as far as serious, authoritative English-language books on Japanese cuisine go, Shizuo Tsuji's is still pretty much the beginning and the end. There are dozens of books on sushi, of course; some writing on the health benefits of the Japanese diet; and a couple on Westernized Japanese cooking, known as yoshoku in Japan; but precious little about the current state of Japanese food, about what they are eating in Japan right now and the direction their cuisine is going in.

Troublingly, in the late seventies, Tsuji was already observing the decline of traditional Japanese cuisine: "I am sorry to say our own cuisine is no longer authentic. It has been polluted with frozen foods," he writes, later adding that foreign influence had also had an insidious effect on the palates of the Japanese. In particular, he bemoans their newfound taste for frozen tuna, which, he says, is "ruining the tradition of Japan's cuisine."

How had things developed since he wrote those words? I wondered. Was there anything left of the authentic Japanese cooking Tsuji describes, or had his countrymen surrendered to the tyrannical allure of KFC and McDonald's with the rest of us?

Shortly after finishing the book, the same day Toshi gave it to me, I made a rash, impulsive, and, it would turn out, life-changing decision. I decided I had no other choice but to go and see, and taste, for myself; to travel to Japan and investigate the state of Japanese food today, to learn as much as I could about their techniques and ingredients and find out whether or not Tsuji's dire predictions had come true. Was there still much we could learn from the Japanese about cooking, or was A Simple Art now nothing more than an elegy for a lost culinary tradition? Were Toshi's claims about the longevity of the Japanese and the amazing health benefits of their diet true, and if so, would it be possible to introduce any of them into a Western lifestyle? Was Japanese cooking at all compatible with Western living? And did they really use sock glue instead of garters, as Toshi claimed?

A plan began to form. I would travel to Japan, and slowly, methodically, greedily work my way from the northernmost island of Hokkaido, south to Tokyo, then on to Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka, and the islands of Okinawa, eating, interviewing, learning, and exploring along the way. I wanted to sample the indigenous ingredients, learn about the philosophy, the techniques, and, of course, the health benefits of Japanese food. I badly needed to lose some weight, too, of course, and to start eating more healthfully, but had found that the options for that in the West — low-fat this, gluten-free that — held little appeal. Tsuji's book, on the other hand, had revealed a world of beautiful, healthful, simple food that I could easily envisage eating, if I could only learn to make it for myself.

Tentatively, I raised the idea with my wife, Lissen, that evening.

"God, that's a brilliant idea," she said. "I would love to go to Japan. Can you imagine how great it would be to travel there with the kids? It would be something they would remember for the rest of their lives. Imagine!"

"Wait, no. Erm. I didn't really mean ... you know, I don't really think ... research ... interviews and things like that ..." I said.

But it was too late. She was already there, and that was absolutely fine by me. Like a lot of modern fathers, I suffer from a constant nagging guilt about the amount of time I spend — or rather don't spend — with my children. I don't have a proper job, which means I never really have proper holidays either. I hadn't taken such a thing for over five years. But the idea of a poolside fortnight in some rented villa, or, worse, a trip to Disneyland, made me feel itchy and depressed. Here, though, was a way I could combine work and family, a way for me to share a passion for food with my children and perhaps plant a spore of curiosity that might grow within them and bond us over the years to come. In truth, it was a selfish decision in so many ways, which is why it feels fraudulent to dress it up as some kind of noble parenting sacrifice. I was burning to spend time in Japan, but I crumble if I don't see my family for more than a few days.

* * *

That early-August night, I booked four open tickets to Japan, instead of one, and began to map out a workable route through what Toshi had assured me were the pulse points of Japan's culinary culture.

We would take a foodie family road trip lasting just under three months. We were going to fly to Tokyo, where we would spend three weeks gently acclimatizing before hitting the roads and rails. Tokyo was, Toshi told me, the restaurant capital of Japan, with more, and more diverse, restaurants than anywhere else in the country. This was where we would find the best sushi, as well as the best tempura restaurants in Japan, along with numerous other surprises (he offered this last bit of information with a knowing smirk).

From there we would fly north to the island of Hokkaido, which would offer a contrast to the urban intensity of Tokyo, with its wide-open spaces and more relaxed vibe, not to mention stunning seafood. We would be based in its capital, Sapporo, for around ten days.

Then we would head back to the island of Honshu, where Tokyo is, but this time go farther south to Kyoto, the former royal capital and still the spiritual and cultural heart of Japan. This, Toshi said, was the home of kaiseki — the elaborate, multicourse formal dinner, Japan's answer to haute cuisine, yet more refined, more complex, and, according to him, leagues better. I should be sure to try the tofu there, too, which was the finest and freshest in the world.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Super Sushi Ramen Express by Michael Booth. Copyright © 2016 Michael Booth. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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