About food in Japan

Starbucks coffee at convenience shops

The international coffee shop chain collaborated with a Japanese major beverage company for the brand's first canned coffee. The new products, called "STARBUCKS DOUBLE SHOT" are available at major convenience stores in Tokyo and surrounding regions.

This is the second attempt of collaboration between Starbucks and Suntry for develpping "ready to drink" coffee available not at the coffee shops but at other retail stores, after the first work on cupped coffee. Canned coffee is quite popular especially among Japanese businessmen and is often taken as breakfast or in office. It is much less expensive than a cup of coffee available at Starbucks stores but the quality also matches with the price. I believe that is the opinions of majority.

STARBUCKS DOUBLE SHOT costs Yen170 for 140g. It is much expensive compared with other canned coffee(average price Yen100-Yen120 for around 200ml) but much cheaper than normal Starbucks coffee(starts from around Yen300).

It offers two kinds of taste, Expresso Doppio and Expresso Con Panna.
As per the press release, like ones at the coffee shops, high quality coffee beans "Expresso roast" are used for the production. I tried both taste and felt that they are stronger coffee than other brands canned coffee and that they succeeded in produce something brought the Starbucks's brand image appropriately. The size is small like an expresso cup and it does not take long to finish a can. It is good to have it just for a short time of refreshment.

When you do not have time to drop by a Starbucks shop and cannot wait for a cup of coffee prepaired or when you do not have enough coins...the canned Starbucks at convenience shop could be an alternative option.

Related Website(Japanese version only):
http://www.starbucks.co.jp/doubleshot/

 

Amazon started selling food on its website

From 15th October 2008, Japanese version of the online book store, Amazon.co.jp started selling fresh food and grocery products on the website. This is the first attempt of the online giant to launch food store, after they did in the home country, United States.

As per the press release, it lines up over 20,000 food products at the store, from pet bottled drinks(which they have had even before) to seasonal fresh fruites or crabs, frozen food.
Seeing the website, following companies are suppling products to the Amazon.co.jp food store.

Oisix - A major online supermarket focucing on organic vegetables, other safe food products
Takashimaya - A major department store, selling dry sweets there
Seijo Ishii - An upscale supermarket chain in Tokyo, directly importing good quality wine etc
Joel Robuchon - A well-known French Michelin star winning restaurant group

Like other goods sold on Amazon.co.jp, deliverly cost is free, when an order value exceeds YEN1500(around USD15).

I believe that its success depends on whether the site is able to bring variety of attractive products at reasonable cost.
Well, let's shop around a bottle of nice wine there!

Website:

http//www.amazon.co.jp

Moon cake? No, "Moon burger"(Tsukimi burger, 月見バーガー)!

Today is the day of enjoying full moon in the sky. (tsukimi, 月見, moon-watching)
Chinese people have moon cakes as their local speciality of the season on the day.
In Japan, the American hamburger chain, McDonald's provides "Moon burger"(tsukimi burger) at their units across Japan.

A round-shaped fried egg, which implies the full moon, and a slice of bacon are on top of a piece of hamburg as fillings. This year the hamburger chain offers three types of tsukimi burger; normal, cheese and double burger.

If you feel that it is exactly what is called "bacon egg burger" in all other parts of the world or at other hamburger shops. Yes it could be so.
But never mind! Anyway, enjoy the full moon !!

Tsukimi burger is available at McDonald's in Japan until 2nd October 2008.

Festival of sanma(さんま、秋刀魚、saury)

Sanma(saury) is a seasonal icon of Autumn. In Japanese, the name is expressed as "秋刀魚", fish of autumn sword, from the linear shape.
The best way of enjoying the seasonal delicacy is simply to grill and put salt and juice of sudachi(a kind of green citrus in Japan).

The festival of sanma is taken place on September in Meguro-ku Tokyo every year since 1996.
A traditional comedy story of Rakugo tells about a shogun(General) in Edo era who was fascinated by grilled sanma in Meguro. Just remind you, Meguro is 30km away from the sea and there is no port in the area. So the fish was caught somewhere elese obviously. The fact makes the story funny and interesting. The festival of sanma in Meguro come from the famous comedy story.

Today it is one of the festival dates. Thousands of sanma were grilled by local people and served to visitors at free. So the festival receives a lot of visitors who filled the main road of Meguro. They have to make a long que for getting a plate of sanma.
To get the best seasonal dish is not always easy!

 

Bento(弁当）- launched for G8 Summit celebration

Bento(弁当） represents "a box meal" in Japanese.
This type of food serving way has long history in Japan.  It has been our custom for over hundreds years to bring a box meal for traveling, watching entertainment programmes (for example Sumo wrestling, Kabuki play) or just enjoying fresh air of outside.
Nowaday,  Bento is still one of the most popular lunch time choices for Japanese business people. It would be their mother or wife who prepare a nice hand-made lunch box. Otherwise selections of Bento are available at convenience stores, supermarkets, department store food corners and small corners or stands specialized in Bento.

Today, a national round-the-clock convenience shop chain, Lawson launched a new Bento menu at their units in central districts of Tokyos for celebrating G8 Summit hosted by Japan next month.
According to the press release by the convenience shop giant, the company honors to be a cater for staff serving and guarding the important event.
The menu is almost same with what these staff have at or around the meeting venue.
Hokkaido region, where the global event will be taken place is the most north part of the country and is known for the vast land with rich nature and also for the harvest of high quality foods. Some of them, such as salmon, chicken, seaweed, are in the Bento as the feature of the product.

This is what I had as today's lunch, the Summit Bento by Lawson: salmon flake and sramble egg on top of rice, checken steak, fried chiken, potato salad, spaghetti with tomato source, pickels (all are typical Bento menu.)

A different type is on sale as the Summit Bento by Lawson.

It has a slice of grilled salmon, a piece of chicken, pan fried vegetable with seaweed and what can't be missed is a egg cake in the shape of "Hokkaido"!

How can we make this yellow cake so well

As you could recognize, it is not easy to put all food in a small square(or sometime round) box in a good presentation way. An excellent person in making Bento must consider the balance of nutrition as well as the combination of colors in box.

The more demanding work for Bento it is, will it make an eater the happier!

Note: Summit Bento is on sale at Lawson stores located within 23 central districts of Tokyo until 9th July 2008, the last date of Hokkaido Toyako Summit

Zagat Survey issued America's Top Japanese Restaurant Guide

The American restaurant guide, Zagat Survey issued "America's Top Japanese Restaurant Guide". The guide was created with the partner, JRO(the Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad) and covers best Japanese restaurants in wide location of United States.

According to the press release, Japanese restaurants in many American cities scored high rates for overall food rating on its regular survey. Nowaday, not only sushi and sake but also more varieties of Japanese food are commonly known to American people; shabushabu(beef pot), shochu(traditional spirit alcohol), soba(noodle) etc.

The guide is not for retail sale but is available on the website, ZAGAT.com as a special promotion and at the winning restaurants upon request at free of charge.

Link:

ZAGAT.com - http://www.zagat.com

Zagat Survey press release - http://www.zagat.com/About/Index.aspx?menu=PR110

JRO(the Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad)
- http://jronet.org/eng_index.html

STARBUCKS new style shop opened

STARBUCKS Japan opened a new style unit in Tokyo.

Majority of total 27 seats are cozy sofa or arm chairs. The concept image is a relaxing space like a lounge in hotels or airports.
The shop is located next to the taxi hall of Roppongi Hills, a newly developped complex building. Unlike other commercial area of the building, the floor is very quiet and not so many people are walking around. Without asking a staff on the floor, I could not have found the store.

It is a hideaway in Roppongi Hills! (To be honest, I did not want to tell to anybody...)

The uniqueness of the new STARBUCKS is not only the seating.
The shop can offer coffee by a pressing pot.
As per STARBUCKS, the serving way extracts full flavor of coffee beans.
Coffee by a pressing pot is available at  some of other STARBUCKS units.
But time available and beans for the serving way are limited.
Here you can choose one from a wide selection list at any time.

After several minutes from my order at the counter, my coffee was brought to my seat by a pressing pot with a cream pot, sugar pot and a sand clock on a tray.  It requires four minutes to wait after a boild water is poured in the pot.
The sand clock tells us when the coffee is ready.
The smaller cup with the logo mark is another offer from the shop. A sample menu dripped in normal STARBUCKS way. Then I could compare how different these two coffee tasts were.
The longer I had to wait to get a cup of coffee but the better one I could get.

Cafe name: STARBUCKS Roppongi Hills WEST WALK Lounge

Address: 1st floor, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo

58% of food service companies plan price raise in 2008

Nikkei, a Japanese major financial newspaper conducted a survey on food-service companies. According to replies from 328 companies, 58% of them are planning to raise their price for whole menu (13%) or for a part of them (45%) in 2008. Those who are considering price increase are mainly fast-food or table service upscale restaurants, while the ratio of companies planning price raise is minority among family restaurant chains, go-around sushi(kaiten sushi) chains.

In 2007, 53% of food service companies had increased their price and two major reasons of their advance were increase in food cost and labor cost.

The newspaper pointed out that the difference in corporate actions by food service category reflects different pricing strategy but both in order to attract more customers.

The survey was fully reported on Nikkei MJ, dated on 14th May 2008.

UNIQLO - COMPANY COLLABO T-shirt OXO

Japanese casual ware producer and store chain, UNIQLO launched new design T-shirt, collabolating with American kitchen took producer OXO.

OXO'ｓ symbolic sic kitchen tools are depicted in front.

                              

And the company logo and website address are on top of the back side.   

Size: for women only

Price: YEN1500
About the OXO T-shirt on UNIQLO official website:
http://ut.uniqlo.com/#/id:05200409/

Izakaya Top10 by British newspaper

Izakaya is a category of the food service industry in Japan.

It is a type of restaruant but in between a restaurant and a bar.
It is a place where we can enjoy eating and drinking at the same time.
Izakaya has casual atmosphere like "pub" in England but it has not only wide selections of alcohol drinks but also variety in food. 

It is where ordinary people  are likely to go with their colleagues  after  a long day of work to  chill out. Welcome or farewell party for peers in office are likely to held in Izakaya.
Another occasion at Izakaya is relaxing time with an intimate partner.

It is everywhere in Japan, particulaly in live downtown area. It is not hard to find one around a terminal station.
There are some chains of Izakaya, while some independent Izakayas try to differenciate themselves from the biggers by offering innovative original dishes.
The reasonable ones charges around YEN2000 per person. On the other hand, others could charge four to five times as much  in turn of high quality food, nice presentation of dishes, rare cups of Sake and their attentive services.

A writer of a newspaper in UK picked up his Top 10 Izakaya in Tokyo.
The list called attention of Japanese people in the food service industry and it is regarded as a discerning choice and good observation by local specialists.

Here are full list of Top 10.
Just to remind you, I have never visited either. I hope that I can go to some of them and report the experience on this blog...

1. Teyandei (てやん亭） in Nishiazabu - Horse meat is one of its speciality.
http://www.teyandei.com (site Japanese only)

2. Buri in Ebisu - The most casual style! "cup SAKE at standing bar"
http://www.takewaka.co.jp/buri/   (site Japanese only)

3. Aburiya Fu-do(炙家　風土） in Aoyama - Selected fresh ingredients are carefully roasted
http://www.wid.co.jp/tenpo/fudo-aoyama/

4. Bistrot 35 steps（三十五段屋） in Shibuya - To be in the bustle space, has to down 34 steps from ground then go one step up.

No official website found.

5. Yui-an （結庵） in Shinjuku - Enjoy breathtaking night illumination  from the 52th floor
http://r.gnavi.co.jp/fl/en/g002213/

6. Ikkon (いっこん） in Akasaka - Traditional Japanese in modern Japanese interior

http://r.gnavi.co.jp/fl/en/g079202/

7. Tsuki no shizuku(月の雫）  in  Ginza - Tofu is its speciality, a major chain Izakaya
http://www.tsukino-shizuku.com/tsuki_shop02.html  (site Japanese only)

8. Seigetsu (霽月) in Kagurazaka - Typical cozy Izakaya in warm folk wooden decoration
http://www.teshigotoya.net/seigetsu/index.html

9. Gonpachi (権八） in Nishi-Asabu - Well-known for casual dinner for which President Clinton was invited by Mr. Koizumi, Japanese Prime Minister at that time
http://www.gonpachi.jp/en/nishi_azabu/home/location

10. Galali (がらり） in Omotesando - Modern Izakaya in former folk dwelling
http://www.gala-e.com/galali.html

The original article : http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/feb/26/tokyo.food