Stomachs on legs are proud to present

A toasted muesli by any other name would smell as sweet...

In New Zealand and Australia, I became convinced that food down there is suffering a P.R. problem. The problem is that the P.R. department is on overdrive.

At some point in the '80s, it became hip to talk about food poetically, and the more foreign the description, the more artisanal the approach implied, the more moolah people became prepared to pay.

Somehow, good food became a status symbol in the new world, and fine foods emporiums sprang up selling passable sour dough bread for eight dollars a loaf, and bags of gnocchi imported all the way from Italy for 14 whole dollars.

When did gluggy lumps of potato begin to triple in value when prefixed with the adjective 'Italian'? Is nobody in the southern hemisphere able to make a decent batch of gnocchi?

This is not just a question of food snobbery. The absurd part is when people pay top dollar for something that's not even close to wonderful. Antipodeans need to say no to false advertising.

Stopping through Sydney a couple of weeks ago, I became a bit depressed at how rarely foods lived up to their descriptions. Browsing in a nice-looking deli-style store, we bought wild honey spice muesli, roasted carrot and tomato soup, sour dough loaf baked in the Californian tradition, and yoghurt with bush honey.

Yum, right? That's what we hoped, but in the end only the yoghurt could be described as delicious. The rest would have been more honestly described as toasted oats with cinnamon, a pretty average loaf of bread that was still better than any of the other bread we ate down under, and soup that could've come from a supermarket. A bit watery. Hardly any discernible carrot flavour.

Guess those descriptions wouldn't have looked so good on the label.

In NZ the situation can be just as semantically obfuscated.

We had lunch at a restaurant somewhere near the Kapiti coast. The menu talked about crusted this and reduction of that. I was a bit disappointed when my roasted potato turned out to be an oily hash brown.

Studies at the University of Illinois last year showed that when food is described in evocative terms, people are more apt to find it delicious
, but surely this ruse can only be taken so far?

It's not like you can't get delicious prepared food down under. There's much more on offer than the lovely fresh figs, jewel-sized plums and batonga pineapples, don't get me wrong - but the wordsmiths need to chill out a little.

People shouldn't pay through the nose when a spade is not called a spade, but instead called an 18th century wrought-iron jersey potato forager.

Fuji is a Thai-owned chain restaurant serving Japanese food in Thailand.

It's supposed to be the archetype of the Japanese food as Thais like it.

I had a grilled mackerel set meal sometime last year, and it left me with no impression, so I didn't go back,,,, until recently.

In between my trips to the mountains recently, I just had one night stay in the city.

After rushing through running errands, I ended up in a shopping mall, and it was a dinner time. I was too tired to be creative. So, I just went into Fuji and ordered a tendon set and hot green tea.

It was, actually, pretty good.


Nicely trimmed shrimp tails, not so instant-tasting miso soup with enoki mushrooms and tofu, no sugar in green tea, and nice onion tempura.

But of course, I had been eating the country Thai food for a week right before I went to Fuji, so it might have factored in that my pickiness for Japanese food was very low, in favor of Fuji.

One funky thing was it came with kimchi, which is spicy Korean pickle, not Japanese style tsukemono. I guess ready-made kimchi in jars are much easier than maintaining Japanese nukazuke, which is a particular pickle usually accompanies tempura in Japan. That's okay, ready-made kimchi is probably much better than bad nukazuke. Fast-fermented fake tuskemono's are one of those things not worthy of eating.

Another funkiness: travel thermo mug used as a hot green tea server.

Of course those mugs are not made to pour the content out, so you make a little mess on the table. I like it that it keeps the tea warm though.


With the upgraded impression of Fuji, I went there again at a later date.

This time, I ordered a Fuji bento set with tempura and chawan-mushi.

Not as good as tendon. I think it was too meaty overall for me.

Good: shrimp tempura, grated daikon raddish in tempura dipping sauce (important details), ginkgo nuts in chawan-mushi, inari-zushi, ito-konnyaku, enoki mushroom and tofu miso soup.

Not so good: imitation fake crab in sushi rolls (why can't they just use cucumbers if the cost is the issue?), bread crumb fried mackerel, cold chicken teriyaki, salmon tempura, Thai-style overly sweet "salad cream", artificially colored kamaboko in chawan-mushi.

Thai style: takoyaki was an odd addition to bento... it's like squeezing in a mini hot dog into a dinner plate.


They have a New Year gift promotion which goes: "this coming year of oxen, we are presenting the Neko (cat) set," for those spending more than 1,000 baht until January 5.

Yes it's kind of cute...and Akemashite Omedetou (A Happy New Year, in Japanese) is spelt correct... but... why a Neko set for a year of oxen??

It might make my hobby to go to Fuji from time to time to find a little oddness here and there.

Have a Happy New Year of oxen, 2009!

In Thailand, there are lots of Japanese restaurants, from high to low end.

The high-end Japanese restaurants, especially those in Bangkok, have survived many critical Japanese expats having business meals on their corporate bill and their stay-home-but-eat-out-wives.

They have very high quality dishes, at a price that is almost equal or slightly less than you get in Japan.

Like this grilled mackerel lunch my friend ordered at Aoi in Bangkok:


and miso-nikomi udon I ordered (udon noodles cooked in Nagoya-style miso broth... not miso soup, though!):


Or this lovely dinner set at Kitchen Hush in Chiang Mai:


Since most of those high-end places are beyond reach, at least on every day basis, of locally-salaried people, there are lower-end places where things start to get interesting.

For instance, this saba-misoni (mackerel cooked with miso paste and ginger) set was a complete disaster:

... I wonder what triggered them to put the crushed tofu on top of fish.

Like typical cheap Japanese restaurants in Thailand, they'd open a 10 baht tube of tofu, use some in miso soup, and use the rest in something else.

The menu listed the dinner set would come with a "special side dish of the day", which in this case was a pan-fried piece of pork. Surprise! How would I expect to have a big piece of pork as a side dish of a fish dinner? Sorry, I tried, but couldn't finish.

I do not like it when they give you the fake crab as sashimi:


It's not only typical at cheap Japanese restaurants in Thailand, but happens often in the U.S., even at relatively good restaurants, too.

Those fake crab is reconstituted fish which contains lots of starch and MSGs, not to mention artificial coloring. It's sooooooo different from the real crab.


Q: What's wrong with this?


A: .....soy sauce is not necessary for onigiri (rice balls). Onigiri is not sushi!!! At least they didn't give me wasabi.