For Alex Dutson's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that, generally speaking, English meals are bad." So begins Nozomu Hayashi's best-selling 1991 treatise on British food, "Igirisu wa Oishi" ("England is Delicious"). As comments go, this one is relatively mild. After all, it has long been fashionable in ...
Remember that rumor about “Mama” Cass Elliot from the Mamas and Papas? The one about how she died in bed while munching on a sandwich? I heard that as a child and for years I took it as a cautionary tale about bedtime snacking, or ...
The seaside town of San Sebastian, in Spain's Basque Country, is well known as a crucible of culinary experimentation. It's a town where bars offering pinchos (small snacks) groan under the weight of vast spreads of braised beef cheek, hake throats laced with shouty ...
Each year, approximately 20 Japanese tourists are struck down by a rare and mysterious disorder. At least 19 of them will be idealistic young women in their early 30s. They will suffer acute, gnawing anxiety, breathlessness, and then deep depression. They will be stretchered to ...
Some Swedish delicacies, such as lutefisk (dried cod treated with lye), attract comments that are less than flattering. And when I say less than flattering, I mean downright slanderous. "Reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog, or the world's largest chunk of phlegm," is ...
It's Friday night and I'm staring death in the face. The face in question happens to belong to a red snapper, and it's peeking out from the dark depths of powerful tamarind broth shimmering with crimson chili oil. As it fixes me with its upturned ...
Sitting in the wood-clad, dimly lit dining room of the Miraflores restaurant, I begin to feel like I'm planning a year volunteering abroad. A glance at the Peruvian flag on the wall, the figurines on the bar counter and the map plastered across the ...
The mercury has dropped and the nights are getting longer. As the temperature plummets so does the need for culinary sophistication. Filigree garnishes, amusingly carved vegetables and light bonito broths frankly no longer cut it. To put it another way: December is less about ...
Jamie Paquin is a man who likes a challenge. Three years ago, the 42-year-old Ontario native opened Heavenly Vines, the world's very first all-Canadian wine store, in the leafy backstreets of Ebisu. Day in day out, he's a tireless champion for what Matt Kramer ...
With pizza, as with many things in life, simple is often the best. And it doesn't get any more minimal than a true pizza Napoletana. A handful of blitzed San Marzano tomatoes, a well-tossed sourdough base, slices of mozzarella, three or four basil leaves; a ...
