alt Hacker News> Japanese people like to say that they “eat with their eyes,” relishing the colors, shapes, and textures of a dish before it ever hits the tongue
That's interesting, because, as a French person, I'm used to restaurant menus being, at best, a few words written on paper ; and sometimes there's no physical support and the menu is only provided orally by the waiter.
And places that display pictures of the food or, even worse, plastic replicas, tend to turn down my appetite. It feels gross and unnatural. I think part of it is because it means two things: either you'll have exactly the same thing in your plate, which mean industrialized food, or it won't match what you've been shown, you've been lied to.
Meanwhile, in restaurants without visual clues, you can only let your imagination go wild and guess what you're going to have. Once the plate is put in front of you, two surprises awaits you: does it looks like what you imagined and is it good?
At least that's the experience I'm looking for in restaurants.
Replies
> * as a French person, I'm used to restaurant menus being, at best, a few words written on paper ; and sometimes there's no physical support and the menu is only provided orally by the waiter*
Plenty of restaurants in Japan are omakase in various forms. Sometimes this means high-end sushi. Often, that you sit down and are served the chef's special. (Particularly true in the towns.)
I think French (and by extension, many Western) and Japanese people just emphasize different aspects of the restaurant experience.
Order a sirloin steak anywhere in the Western hemisphere, and you know almost nothing about what it will look and taste like, other than the fact that it will contain a piece of beef sirloin. The chef might have his own secret sauce, or garnish the steak with unusual herbs, which can change the flavor completely. Those are the some of the surprises that you're looking for, but most of them can be visually identified. They'll be ruined if you can see in advance exactly what kind of herbs will be used.
In Japanese cuisine, many dishes are based on either raw or minimally modified ingredients. White rice is white rice. Poached shrimp is just poached shrimp. You already know what a slice of tuna or fried tofu looks like. The dish as a whole just looks like the sum of its ingredients. Heck, if you can read Japanese, it looks exactly as its name says! No surprises there at all. Instead, you find delightful surprises elsewhere: the freshness of the fish and vegetables, the richness of the broth, the way in which disparate flavors balance one another in your mouth as you take a bite. These surprises will not be ruined by knowing what the dish looks like in advance. Because you're not looking for an original recipe here. You're looking for the most perfect execution of a known recipe.
Of course it's a gross simplification, but this might help explain the different reaction between East and West.
French have rather specific relation with food, in some aspects better and in some worse than most of the world. Spending on and off there last 15 years so I have a bit of experience with that.
The simple fact is, french restaurants are aimed at french people and not really care about anybody else. So you are conditioned for your style of experience you keep expecting, for anybody else its rather uninviting experience that leaves you at most tolerated, if you know the language and its local aspects and food well enough (which is rather high level and properly sucks for foreigners).
Or to put it in other way - food itself is often superb, as long as its more traditional one and not some copy of foreign one (ie dont try south/east asian stuff its rather disappointing). The human part of experience will leave a lot to desire compared to literally anywhere else in the world.
Personally I always hated the minimalistic style of these menus, the descriptions are never enough and I was often underwhelmed by the final result of a 5 word description.
I get the appeal of the "mystery" and leaving the art to the artist but I honestly prefer the Chinese menus with pictures of food they personally took of the dishes they made.
I was just on a short trip to Japan, and I find the replica food very intriguing. Take the experience with a large grain of salt of course, since it's just a few days worth of sightseeing.
What's particularly interesting, is that the replicas really do look like the actual food. Some replicas are so good, that I would not be able to tell that it is fake even by close inspection. One of the gyoza replica got the doughy body, the crispy bottom, and oily surface that is visually indistinguishable from a real one. Even the touch is somewhat real.
I'm not saying seeing those replicas gives me a better appetite; that's doubtful. I just appreciate the crafts.
The other side of the coin is that the actual food do look like the replica/photos, so it's not a bait-and-switch scheme. The people who prepare the dishes---be it a chef or a worker at a fast food chain---all seem quite accurate. Not that all dishes always look beautiful; but they do look consistent. Your plate of curry over rice might be plain, but it will look exactly the same as the previous order (and also as the photo), even if it is created entirely by hand. It's kinda amazing in its own right.
> Meanwhile, in restaurants without visual clues, you can only let your imagination go wild and guess what you're going to have. Once the plate is put in front of you, two surprises awaits you: does it looks like what you imagined and is it good? > > At least that's the experience I'm looking for in restaurants.
Well, you still retain the second part of the surprise: "is it good?". But yeah, it will ruin the first one, because of the accuracy. It's not something that particularly bothers me, but I can understand why you want to avoid the spoilers.