Category: fermented food

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Seth Roberts5 Comments

Thanks to Hal Pashler and Anne Weiss.

Tokyo Restaurant Recommendations — and Why They Might Be A Bad Idea

Seth Roberts9 Comments

An earlier post asked for Tokyo recommendations. A kind reader (Andrew Clarke) provided the following recommendations of off-beat restaurants:

One place I always recommend is Andy’s Shinhinomoto, in Yurakucho: https://www.frommers.com/destinations/tokyo/D61101.html. I have never seen a travel show that has covered the place, but it’s a best kept secret within the ex-pat community. Its menu is a standard Japanese Izakaya (pub) menu with some of the freshest sashimi (and fish in general) in Tokyo, and the strangest thing – it’s ran by a long-term British ex-pat, who is so renowned for his ability to pick good ingredients that he selects and delivers fish for several local sushi shops. Upstairs seating is best for atmosphere, but the food is the same downstairs. They have an English menu, and I’d also recommend the fish head and tempura. It’s also not super expensive, somehow I never manage to spend more than 7000Y with alcohol.

Teyandei is another one that I would generally recommend: https://www.bento.com/rev/2133.html. You’ll be lucky if you manage to find this one, most taxi drivers I have ever asked couldn’t find it even with GPS, it’s located in a residential area of the back of Roppongi. Great atmosphere, and again Izakaya style but not fish oriented, and not strictly traditional. The most memorable dish I had was a french baguette, vanilla ice cream and maple syrup slider – which was very good, but to be enjoyed occasionally. Outside of that they have many great dishes, with more of a meaty or stuff on sticks vibe.

Last general recommendation is for sushi: https://tokyofood.blog128.fc2.com/blog-entry-52.html. I used to live in Tsukiji town and this place is a friendly joint that attracts many locals in the evening. Probably because it’s not super-expensive, but great quality and I particularly recommend the Uni if that is your thing. Their ‘aburi (blow torched)’ dishes are great too, and the Aji (mackerel) and the tsuki maguro (marinated tuna).

[follow-up:] The Moroccan place, I’m not sure why I didn’t include this the first time, as it is possibly the most strange and off-the-beaten-path: https://www.dalia58.com/d_map.html. Google Maps. The owner is a Japanese lady who spent 1 year in Morocco on a home stay. She loved the home cooked food and fastidiously learned to replicate them the way only Japanese people can. I learned about from a Moroccan co-worker who swears it’s the most authentic Moroccan food he has had out side his homeland. You definitely need to book ahead, there are only maybe 12 seats in the place and only 4 of those are not on the ground. The menu is fairly small and changes every once in a while as the owner travels back to Morocco regularly, but usually I have the meatball tagine (best), fish tagine, freshly baked wheat bread and vegetable couscous. I have never been there alone, you’d need at least two people to eat all that.

Alexandra Harney, author of The China Price, who has spent years in Tokyo, recommended:

My favorite watering hole: Asahi Shokudo in Nogizaka, near Tokyo Midtown. Unless you speak Japanese, the best thing to do is probably to have someone call ahead, make a reservation (a very good idea) and fax you a map. Their tel: 03-3402-6797. GREAT food, very good atmosphere, sake good too. It’s not fancy, but authentic and creative.

Tyler Cowen’s forthcoming book (An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules For Everyday Foodies) says a lot about Japanese food and restaurants. In an email he said “Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo was the best meal I’ve ever had…that is expensive, though.”

I am in Tokyo now. Last night I took a long walk around my hotel (Hotel Changtee), which is in Ikebukuro. I have stayed here three times before. On my walk, for the first time, I noticed a Spanish restaurant (Agalito) a few blocks from my hotel. In Beijing, I often have Japanese food, so I decided to try it. The menu (mostly tapas) looked good. It wasn’t expensive (Ikebukuro is full of relatively cheap restaurants).

I had seven dishes. Every one surprised me and tasted great. I had pickles, a vegetable terrine, deep-fried shrimp and avocado (the avocado was also deep-fried), mackerel, a dish of large mushrooms and bacon, marinated cherry tomatoes (skins removed), and baked/grilled cheese and tomatoes. Far better than the tapas I had in Barcelona (or anywhere else). Far better than the tapas at a Berkeley restaurant (Cesar) next to Chez Panisse owned by Alice Waters’ ex-husband. The pickles were a small dish of carrots, cucumber, cabbage, and red pepper. The best pickles I’ve ever had, and I’ve had pickles hundreds of times, as anyone who knows my passion for fermented food will understand. They are a staple of Japanese and Szechuan cuisine. I’ve had Japanese pickles at dozens of places. The carrot pickles were so good, such a great blend of sweet and sour, so perfectly crunchy, that I want to start trying to recreate them. I didn’t know carrot pickles could be that good.The tomato and cheese dish also opened my eyes. I never knew that cheese and tomatoes could go so well together. I want to get special equipment (the baking pan) just to make this one dish. I want to try many different cheeses and tomatoes to find the best pairing. No meal at Chez Panisse or anywhere else has pushed me to do two new things. A tiny number (five?) have pushed me to do one new thing.

This restaurant is a few blocks from my hotel. No one recommended it. The meal, with drink, cost $60. I’m told that if you ask a Tokyo resident what are your favorite restaurants? they look at you blankly. Now I see why. There are so many great restaurants it doesn’t matter. This meal also taught me that recommendations may be counter-productive. Recommended restaurants are often expensive. Expensive food is likely to require lots of labor, special tools, and expensive ingredients. Making it harder to copy and thus less inspiring. Whereas this “plain” meal, with cheap ingredients and relatively little labor, will continue to influence and teach me whenever I do stuff it has inspired me to do.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky and Casey Manion.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts4 Comments
  • Harvard professors behaving badly: Alan Dershowitz. “In a phone interview Dershowitz denied writing to the Governor [of California], declaring, “My letter to the Governor doesn’t exist.” But when pressed on the issue, he said, “It was not a letter. It was a polite note.”” Dershowitz wrote the Governor of California to try to keep the University of California Press from publishing Beyond Chutzpah by Norman Finkelstein, which calls The Case for Israel by Dershowitz “among the most spectacular academic frauds ever published on the Israel-Palestine conflict”. Finkelstein’s book says nothing about whether Dershowitz actually wrote it. According to a statement from the UC Press, “[Finkelstein] wondered why Alan Dershowitz, in recorded appearances after [The Case For Israel] was published, seemed to know so little about the contents of his own book.”
  • Umami Burger takes Manhattan.
  • The trouble with measuring students on only one dimension: South Korea
  • Why do twins differ? Both twins have autism spectrum disorder, but one has the disorder much more than the other. Guess which one was “given powerful drugs to battle an infection”?

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts10 Comments
  • A brash high-school student discovers — maybe by accident — how much famous writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, and John Updike, don’t want to write. Any excuse to avoid writing will do.
  • A pretty good talk by John Cochrane, a University of Chicago professor of economics, called “Restoring Robust Economic Growth in America”. What’s most interesting is what’s missing. At one point he asks: “Why are we stagnating? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows, really. That’s why we’re here at this fascinating conference.” In spite of this topic, his talk contains nothing about what controls the rate of innovation. Not only does he not know anything about this (judging by this talk), he doesn’t even realize the gap in his knowledge (judging by this talk). Shades of Thomas Sargent. It’s as if a Harvard Medical School professor spoke about how to fight disease without mentioning the immune system, without even appearing to know that the immune system exists. (Which happens.)
  • Garum, a fermented fish sauce. It was the “supreme condiment” of ancient Rome.

Thanks to Allan Jackson and Peter Couvares.

An Unbiassed View of What We Should Eat . . . From a Rat

Seth Roberts20 Comments

In nature animals must choose a healthy diet based on what tastes good. This doesn’t work for modern humans — lots of people eat poor diets — but why it fails is a mystery. There are many possible reasons. Are the wrong (“unnatural”) foods available (e.g., too much sugar, too little omega-3, not enough fermented food)? Is something besides food causing trouble (e.g., too little exercise, too little attention to food)? Are bad cultural beliefs too powerful (e.g., “low-fat”, desire for thinness)? Is advertising too powerful? Is convenience too powerful? Lab animals are intermediate between animals in nature and modern humans. They are not affected by cultural beliefs, advertising, and convenience (the foods they are offered are equally convenient). Their choice of food may be better than ours.

Nutrition researchers understand the value of studying what lab animals choose to eat. In 1915, the first research paper about “dietary self-selection” was published, followed by hundreds more. The general finding is that in laboratory or research settings, animals choose a relatively healthy diet. There are two variations:

[1.] Cafeteria experiments with chemically defined [= synthesized] diets showed that some of these animals, when offered the separate, purified nutrient components of their usual diet, eat the nutrients in a balance that more or less resynthesizes the original diet and that is often superior to it. [2.] Other animals eat two or more natural foods in proportions that yield a more favorable balance of nutrients than will any one of these foods alone.

Both findings imply that housing an animal in a lab does not destroy the mechanism that tells it what to eat.

Which is why I was fascinated to recently learn what Mr. T (pictured above), the pet rat of Alexandra Harney, the author of The China Price, and her husband, liked to eat. It wasn’t obvious. “We tried so many foods with him and always thought it made a powerful statement that even a wild rat turned his nose up at potato chips,” says Alexandra. “He hated most processed food. He also hated carrots, though.” Here are his top three foods:

  1. pate
  2. salmon sashimi
  3. scrambled eggs

Pate = protein, animal fat, complex flavors (which in nature would have been supplied by microbe-rich, i.e., fermented, food). Salmon sashimi = protein, omega=3. Scrambled eggs = ??

He liked beer in moderation, but not yogurt. “Owners of domestic rats say they love yogurt,” says Alexandra, “but Mr T only liked it briefly and then hated it, even lunging to bite a friend who brought him some. [Curious.] He loved cheese, stored bread for future consumption (but almost never ate it). Loved pesto sauce and coconut.” Note the absence of fruits and vegetables. Alexandra and her husband have no nutritional theories that I am aware of. They did not shape this list to make some point.

For me the message is: Why scrambled eggs? I too like eggs and eat them regularly and cannot explain why.

More Alex Tabarrok’s Thanksgiving post shows the connection between libertarian ideas (economies work better when more choice is allowed) and dietary self-selection.

Seth Roberts Interview With Pictures

Seth Roberts12 Comments

This sidebar appeared in an article about self-tracking (only for subscribers) by James Kennedy, who works at The Future Laboratory in London. The top photo is at a market near my apartment. Below that are photos of my sleep records, my morning-faces setup, my butter, and my kombucha brewing jars. Back then I was comparing three amounts of sugar (each jar a different amount). Now I’m comparing green tea/black tea ratios.

Kombucha For Bees, Man, and Woman

Seth Roberts8 Comments

Dennis Murrell calls himself a “natural beekeeper”. This is one reason he sprayed kombucha on his bees:

In the early spring, I grade my hives strong, average, below average, weak. This year, I sprayed the below average hives with a slightly diluted, about 30%, solution of overly ripe kombucha. It was probably about 3 weeks old. The spraying was done incidentally, without any planning, etc., just to watch the first reaction of the bees. After spraying, the below average hives were left alone, without any more manipulation or observations. . . . Ten weeks later, I popped the covers off the below average hives and found they had a full super of honey, while all the others, even those with larger bee populations had none. I was quite surprised to say the least! And I’d had forgotten about the incidental kombucha spraying until looking at my notes a week later.

Wow. Does this presage a honey surplus? As other beekeepers follow his example? He sprayed kombucha on his bees partly because he himself had found it so beneficial:

I began drinking about a cup a day. . . . I’d been afflicted with a skin aliment since my youth [psoriasis?]. There’s no known cure. Modern medicine can relieve the symptoms. But the drugs used have more long term side effects that are worse than any benefits. Well, within 24 hours [of drinking kombucha], the itching associated with the irritated skin disappeared. Within three days, the slight swelling associated with the irritated skin also disappeared. Within a month, 99% of the irritated areas disappeared. During that time, I lost joint pain that had plagued me for a decade, commercial beekeeping is rough on the back and joints. I regained full movement in my right shoulder. And a sense of wellness replaced whatever biologically stressed out condition I thought was normal. Once you’re over 50, some of the things lost along the way become more apparent. Hair texture, intestinal fortitude, urinary function, energy level, and sexual prowess all decrease. And weight increases. Using kombucha, a probiotic, has reversed my losses to that of a man 10 to 15 years younger. And I’ve lost some weight. Before using it, I felt old. After using it, I feel alive. . . . My wife, a nurse, was more than skeptical, she thought I’d poison myself with that ugly looking concoction. But when she saw my results, she tried it. Within a month, her joint pain completely disappeared, allowing her to get up off her knees without help or pain. And her hair has returned to the luster and thickness it had when she was in her 30′s.

I gained a few pounds when I moved from Berkeley to Beijing in August. Until I read this, it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be due to kombucha deprivation. (It took three weeks to brew kombucha in Beijing. I have not seen it for sale in Beijing even in Western-style health food stores!) To me, the most interesting change he describes is better hair texture. Perhaps it reflects better digestion. I can’t see why better immune function would improve your hair.

Thanks to Steve Hansen.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

  • Interview with me on Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Locarb
  • This article about natto helped its author win a prize for best newspaper food column
  • great QS talk about self-measurement by John Sumser. “It all started when I quit smoking. Bad idea. Since I quit smoking in 2004, every quarter for 7 years it has rained shit on me.”
  • In a QS talk, I compare the Quantified Self movement and the paleo movement.
  • Chinese high-school students in America: Not what was promised. Lack of “rigor” has benefits, as I have blogged: “Dismayed by the school’s [poor] college placement record, Chen considered transferring. Instead, he began to enjoy himself. Because his courses were undemanding, he had time for friends and outside interests. He took four Advanced Placement tests on his own.“I’ve developed my personality a lot,” Chen said. “Everything turned out for the best.””
  • If you read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, a pro-vegetarian book, you may remember the big role played by some casein experiments with rats. Rats that ate a low-casein (= low animal-protein) diet were supposedly in better health than rats that ate a high-casein (= high animal-protein) diet. In this article Chris Masterjohn shows how misleading that was. “One thing is certain: low-protein diets depressed normal growth, increased the susceptibility to many toxins, killed toxin-exposed animals earlier, induced fatty liver, and increased the development of pre-cancerous lesions when fed during the initiation period of chemical carcinogenesis.”

Thanks to Janet Chang.

Grandmother Knows Best About Crohn’s Disease

Seth Roberts24 Comments

On Boing Boing a post by me tell about a man who cured himself of Crohn’s Disease mainly by following what is called The Specific Carbohydrate Diet. He got the idea from his grandmother, who heard about it on the radio. The diet is about eighty years old. The version he used appeared in a book published in 1994 — 17 years ago. Still no clinical trial.

As I’ve said, if you have managed to cure yourself of a serious medical condition please let me know. I would like to learn from your experience and help others learn from it.