The New Food Capital Of The World

Remarkable attention to detail is typical of Japanese gastronomy at all price levels. Even a $7 bowl of buckwheat noodles (at the century-old Kanda Matsuya soba restaurant) is made by hand, and served in broth freshly prepared each day from a base that's rested for 10 days. At the Tokyo tempura restaurant Miyagawa, where the chef's lunch menu costs just over $20, the head chef usually begins his day by working contacts at Tokyo's legendary Tsukiji fish market. A few weeks ago, he came up with special winter clams, which are fried in batter specially seasoned to bring out their taste. The clams weren't on display anywhere in the market, of course; "you have to know what you're looking for," he says.

Such restaurants make great Japanese food wonderfully accessible. Critic Yokokawa notes that the endless attention to cuisine in the media has helped create an atmosphere in which even ordinary restaurants compete for attention. "One great thing about Japan is that even everyday food has become sophisticated," he notes. He's struck, he says, by the number of Japanese who, when asked about their favorite hobbies, respond with the word tabearuki, meaning "eating and walking"—in other words, roaming around in search of new places to dine. "It's as if the entire population were foodies."

Tokyo restaurant owners aren't looking for only Japanese-style perfection. Tokyo has a certified National Austrian Cooking Master, Shingo Kanda, who is head chef at the marvelous K. und K. It also has a chevalier of the elite French fraternity of cheese experts, the Confrérie du Taste-Fromage—Katsuki Mori, the genius behind a wonderful Italian-Japanese fusion place called Esperia. The one-star Morimoto XEX teppanyaki restaurant offers tofu cheesecake and an appetizer of buffalo mozzarella, octopus carpaccio and Parma ham. Meanwhile, in the august Tokyo neighborhood of Kappabashi, stores sell kitchen equipment from all over the world, and can conjure up plastic replicas of any dish, from tacos to curry with nan.

The cross-pollination works both ways. Japan helped inspire the worldwide haute cuisine trend, which puts a premium on lightness and freshness, with tasting menus featuring many small but perfect creations. Now what some Tokyo food experts call "the Michelin effect" looks likely to extend this influence. In a 2007 Japanese government survey, 71 percent of foreign tourists in Japan cited food as a primary reason for their visit. One wonders why Michelin took so long to make the trip.

Ironically, world recognition comes close on the heels of domestic scandal. Last year brought revelations that a number of reputable Japanese companies had mislabeled food products from sweets to steak—in some cases by falsifying their due dates. Calls followed for a new consumer agency to tighten a lax regime of food inspections. A newspaper poll found that Japanese regarded the food scandal as the second most important story of 2007—behind only the surprise resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Despite the mess, however, Japanese food enthusiasts will find a way to soldier on. For one thing, they know that while Tokyo may now be considered the food capital of the world, it's definitely not the food capital of Japan. Michelin has yet to issue a guide for Kyoto, but that city is the real lodestar of Japanese culinary tradition. "If you apply the same standards there, I would not at all be surprised if Kyoto ended up with 10 to 20 three-star restaurants," says Yokokawa, who rates Tokyo "one rank lower than Kyoto." That, of course, would place it two ranks ahead of Paris.

With Ginny Power in Paris And Sophie Grove in LondonWith in Paris And in London

© 2008