Tempting sushi cakes, a soft drink adapted to drink alongside a specific noodle dish, (deliberately) damaged cookies and pay attention to this: potato croquette and meat that will come to you three and a half decades after you ordered it. Japan, the land of the craziest culinary inventions, never ceases to surprise, and we provide you with an up-to-date glimpse, and without a vow, a taste.
Thank you for the invitation, you will get it in 35 years
Booking a place for a highly sought-after restaurant is no big deal, even if the next table becomes available only in a few months. Even with aged meat we can handle, as long as the investment is worth it. But what will you say about a dish that will reach you no less than 35 years after you ordered it? (No, that's not a mistake. We really meant 35 years—which is about 12,775 days.) Ready to spend more than a third of your life waiting nerve-racking?
If so, meet the ultimate Kobe beef croquette from the Japanese Asahiya butcher's shop - a kind of meat and potato pancakes. If you order a pack of five units today for only 2,700 yen (about 68 shekels, about 13.5 shekels each), it will reach you (or your children and even your grandchildren) around 2058, due to the unimaginable waiting list.
Potato croquette and meat, photo: PR
Each 110-gram croquette is handcrafted by Sisyphean, giving the potatoes a silky-smooth texture. To the potatoes are added three cubes of Kobe beef, originating in Japan. This meat is considered the most refined, prestigious and high-quality meat in the world. Due to this also for the wanted and very rare.
And what is the meaning of the crazy waiting period? Well, Asahia uses only female Kobe meat rated A5 (the highest) grown in Hyogo Prefecture (whose capital is the city of Kobe) and underwent a meticulous three-year aging process. The potatoes also grow leisurely and undisturbed on a local farm and are considered of high quality. In fact, the Cuban cows themselves feed on the leftover potatoes. In other words: inventory is limited. Add to that the fact that over the years the Internet has done its job, and croquettes have slowly but surely become a status symbol and a particularly desirable gift, which a person sometimes orders for future generations.
The meat in the special dish, photo: PR
In fact, only last year the estimated waiting time for the delivery of the dish was 30 years, while in 2016 we had to wait only 14 years for the long-awaited croquette to make its way to us. "We stopped selling them in 2016 because the waiting time was more than 14 years, but we got a lot of requests from people asking us to continue offering them," Shigeru Nita, the current owner of Asahia, told CNN. Nita is the third generation of a hardworking butcher family that produces about 200 croquettes a day alongside other meat products.
"We were told we needed to hire more people so we could make more croquettes, but I don't know a business owner who hires workers and produces more goods at a loss (since Kobe meat prices are only soaring). I'm sorry that customers have to wait, I really want to send them the croquettes as soon as possible, but if I do, I'll go bankrupt," Nita claims, adding casually that usually those who invest in his future croquettes also buy other products from him (which hopefully come faster), so the business ultimately pays off. We already fantasize about the table that will one day open in the nursing home.
Just don't call them second-class cookies
A cracked, broken or crumbled cookie may be less aesthetically pleasing than a whole cookie, but it tastes no better. There is nothing we can do, sometimes cookies are damaged on the production line and therefore cannot be packaged and marketed to consumers - or are they? Japanese candy maker Morinaga will begin marketing special packages of Moonlight cookies this week (simple, crunchy cookies with a "rich egg flavor" that resemble a moon), but with a twist: the packages will also contain – but not only – damaged cookies.
Broken cookies, photo: PR
In this way, society contributes its part to the fight against food waste, and from now on even the broken and less perfect cookies, which in any other bleak reality would have been thrown away, will have the opportunity to fulfill their destiny and find their way into the mouth of a hungry person. So that there are no misunderstandings, the new packages will be proudly marked as containing damaged cookies. This is in addition to the reassuring assurance that the broken "moonlight cookies" taste the same as the original. Worth a crumbled cookie? Even two.
Have a drink with your noodles?
Pairing wine with your main course is all well and good, but how about a dedicated bottle of Pepsi? The Japanese branch of the soft drinks giant, which over the years has launched rather strange editions (such as Pepsi Cucumber, for example), is taking the trend one sip further. The company recently introduced a limited-edition Pepsi flavor adapted to drink with yakisoba - a popular Japanese street dish made of stir-fried wheat noodles with vegetables, bits of meat and a thick, dark sauce. This is Pepsi Zero (the Japanese equivalent of Pepsi Max), a refined and refreshing mint-flavored drink that, according to research conducted by the company, is perfect for drinking alongside Yakisova. Although we haven't tried the new pharmacy yet, it seems that the trend is enjoying great success in the Land of the Rising Sun, as last year Pepsi launched a special flavor adapted to Caraga - Japanese-style fried chicken - and it was quickly snatched from the shelves. So what, next year Pepsi Shakshuka?
Pepsi adapted to noodles, photo: PR
There is none, there is none, there is no celebration - without: sushi cake
And for dessert: sushi cake. A new pastry shop that recently opened in Tokyo's upscale Ginza neighborhood turns out, well, not as a pastry shop, but as a sushi shop offering rice dishes and raw fish. Except that the dishes look like tempting personal cakes and desserts. Onigashima is billed as "Tokyo's first sushi cake shop." It's designed like a fancy café, but when you look closely at the menu, you'll find that the dough, fruits, sweet creams and chocolate are replaced by vegetables and fish.
Sushi cake, photo: PR
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