Turning Japanese

This was lunch today at Omakase, our neighborhood Japanese joint with budget-friendly prices that the children and I simply adore: Barbarian roll (raw salmon, unagi tempura, and takwan strips wrapped in nori and rolled, then sprinkled with arare outside); Dynamite roll (unagi rolled in nori and topped with baby bay scallops and sprinkled with ebiko); tofu furai with tonkatsu sauce. Yummmmm!

I took a Japanese friend over once and she said, "It seems to me that they add too many other things to jazz up the food in order to mask the lack of freshness in the ingredients, just like America. California roll came from the Americans. That was the start..." she then stuffed a whole piece of uni sushi in her mouth.

"Start of what?" I asked. "The Americanization of Japanese food!" she replied. "It's not really Japanese food anymore because our food is all about freshness, simplicity, and purity. Rice, seafood and nori--that's what sushi should be." In my mind, I thought whatevaaah! and promptly buried a slab of jazzed up, mayonnaise drowned, raw fish and rice in my mouth.

I was a bit miffed because, personally, I don't believe in critiquing food while at the table, well into the process of eating. When we eat, we should try to enjoy the food and the company--that's sacred to me. We can critique the meal all we want afterwards, but not during, unless, one is a food critic by profession, then he must earn his keep..

After we parted ways, I thought some more of what she had said. You know what? She was right. Filipino palates are quite jaded. Ours is a sawsawan culture; we douse our food with spice and sauce, be it patis, toyo, calamansi, suka, bagoong, bawang, and siling labuyo. Plus, almost all of our dishes have sugar in it. Why do you think Jollibee is such a hit? It's the sweetness that tickles the Pinoys' palate. Even our white bread is sweet, for heaven's sake. A Lyonnaise chef once said, "Everything in the Philippines tastes like dessert." He may not be far from the truth. Compared to the French, who have very delicate palates and who labor endlessly to get the seasoning of their dishes right on the money, we are the complete opposite. We are Baroque, even gaudy in our taste for food--we want the flavors overwhelming.

But so what? Kare kare without bagoong? Unthinkable! Lumpia without suka and crushed, raw garlic? Pathetic! Pancit without calamansi and toyo? Forget it!