Tempura Mochiku

It’s a slow Tuesday lunch at Mochiku, a tiny 8-seater, counter-only tempura restaurant somewhere up a nondescript staircase in Ginza. This might sound like a thousand other places in Tokyo, but not all of those other places serve great tempura. I’ve just demolished a glorious tendon: a dozen pieces of hot, crisp, sauce-soused tempura including spring vegetables, but also prawn, whiting, shiso-wrapped tuna, and a whole conger eel for good measure, all served over a bed of rice. Lunch hours are officially over. I’m hanging around to chat to Yuto Nishizawa, who is listening patiently as the customer next to me holds forth on, well, his life, for about twenty minutes.

CB Book Club

Author Zach Mangan, founder of Kettl, a tea and teaware company based in New York City and Fukuoka, Japan, shares the stories of tea producers and craft of tea-making in his new book, Stories of Japanese Tea: The Regions, the Growers, and the Craft (Princeton Architectural Press, 2022). Originally a jazz drummer, Mangan first experienced fresh Japanese tea in Paris while on tour with his band in the mid-2000s. Following a two-year stint at Ito En, one of Japan’s largest tea distributors, he slowly built relationships with Japanese tea growers over several years, and began supplying tea to some of the best chefs in New York City. Kettl was eventually launched in 2015, and now has two locations in NYC.

Chipper’s at BathHaus

For a city of its size and density, Tokyo is disproportionately lacking in great sandwiches. Let us be clear: We’re not talking about ethereal Japanese-style sando, with their soft white bread and fillings like omelet, strawberries and cream or even ridiculously expensive wagyu fillets (although those are a perfectly valid and wonderful form of sandwich). We’re thinking of hearty sandwiches that power you through endless Zoom meetings: baguettes, toasties, wraps, banh mi. Fortunately, there’s the Chipper’s pop-up at BathHaus, where Kohsuke “Chan” Yamaoka turns out simple, well-made sandwiches every Tuesday evening.

Ehōmaki

It’s not every day you see someone’s face peeking out of the belly of a bright blue skipjack bonito (katsuo). You certainly don’t expect them to wear fish-shaped headgear while wrapping dozens of sushi rolls all morning. But this was how Mai Nagamatsu, katsuobushi evangelist and proprietor of breakfast diner Katsuo Shokudo, greeted us on February 3: her head looking like a fish at sea. It was Setsubun, the first day of spring according to the old Japanese lunar calendar, itself based on the traditional Chinese calendar that divides a year into 24 solar terms. (These days, the lunar calendar is more a reminder of cultural practices and traditional markers of seasonal changes than a practical way to keep time.)

Hokkaido Soup Curry

Take a rich chicken bone stock and toss in a handful of whole ground spices and herbs. Add a whole chicken leg, braised until the meat is almost sliding off the bone. Slip in a bouquet of cooked vegetables – the bare minimum being carrot, broccoli, bell peppers, eggplant and potato – and serve alongside rice. This is a classic Hokkaido soup curry, a spicy, vibrant soup-and-rice dish guaranteed to warm even the cold, dead bodies of your enemies. But this isn’t its final form. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 1980s, you can customize almost every aspect of your bowl.

Hatsuzushi at Hinatomaru

It’s noon on the first day of 2022 in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa neighborhood and we find ourselves in Hinatomaru, a casual standing sushi bar. There are few better places to eavesdrop on conversations than in small bars like this one. Outside, thousands of people bundled in winter coats and kimonos throng the main approach to Sensoji, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple. Shepherded by police into a queue spilling out onto the road in front of Kaminarimon Gate, which has been closed off to cars today, they’re here for hatsumōde, the first shrine or temple visit of the new year. We decided to forgo the crowded shrine for our own venerable tradition of hatsuzushi: the first sushi of the year.