Hide the California Rolls! Here Comes Japan’s ‘Sushi Police’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 11.27.06 | 9:10 AM ET
Japan has a problem with the proliferation of Japanese restaurants around the world: Too often, Japanese government officials say, they give Japanese food a bad name. “A fast-growing list of gastronomic indignities—from sham sake in Paris to shoddy sashimi in Bangkok—has prompted Japanese authorities to launch a counterattack in defense of this nation’s celebrated food culture,” writes Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post. “With restaurants around the globe describing themselves as Japanese while actually serving food that is Asian fusion, or just plain bad, the government [in Tokyo] announced a plan this month to offer official seals of approval to overseas eateries deemed to be ‘pure Japanese.’”
“What people need to understand is that real Japanese food is a highly developed art. It involves all the senses; it should be beautifully presented, use genuine ingredients and be made by a trained chef,” Japan’s agriculture minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka told Faiola. “What we are seeing now are restaurants that pretend to offer Japanese cooking but are really Korean, Chinese or Filipino. We must protect our food culture.”
So no more seaweed rolls stuffed with smoked salmon and cream cheese. No more tempura-battered onion rings. No more salmon sushi with a little yakitori on the side. Rather, restaurants may still serve those dishes, but they won’t get the official approval—a seal emblazoned with cherry blossoms—of the Japanese government.
To earn the seal, Faiola writes, the government “has appointed an advisory board of food luminaries and intellectuals to develop a workable method for the project ahead of its full launch in April. Matsuoka said the most likely scenario would be the creation of government-sanctioned food commissions in major countries to evaluate a restaurant’s ‘Japanese-ness’ based on authentic ingredients, chef training, aesthetics and other criteria.”
Fine move, I say. It’s like the great pizza place I go to here in D.C. Its Neapolitan pizza has been given Denominazione di Origine Controllata status by the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association, and every time I eat it I know exactly what I’m getting—something made in accordance with Italian traditions.
If the Japanese program can help identify authentic Japanese dining experiences, I welcome it. Still, it won’t stop me from trying tempura-battered onion rings.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
