Eating Out

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #19, 2009)

When eating out in Osaka, the sheer amount of choice can be paralysing. The number of restaurants in the Osaka area is mind-blowing (I’m going to hazard a guess and say… ten billion?) and virtually any kind of food can be found if you look hard enough. But where to begin? Walk down any major street and restaurants bombard you with flashing lights and catchy jingles (yes, many restaurants have their own jingle), while shop assistants stand outside, yelling their sales pitch and thrusting coupons in your face. This can all be a little overwhelming, and the easily confused can spend hours aimlessly wandering about, trying to find somewhere to eat.

To ease the confusion, restaurants often post their menu outside, or better yet, have surprisingly realistic plastic replicas of each dish in the window. Because of this, a lot of places expect you to make your decision outside and will ask for your order as soon as you sit down. If you tell the waitress you’re still deciding, she’ll give you a polite nod and then vanish, never to be seen again. It took me a while to realise that if you want something at a restaurant or bar, you have to loudly hail a staff member rather than wait for them to come to you. This isn’t considered rude at all and is actually pretty convenient, once you get used to it.

Some places try to make the ordering process as swift as possible by eliminating interaction with staff altogether. For example, there are revolving sushi restaurants, where small plates of sushi do circuits around the restaurant on a conveyor belt while sushi chefs work frantically in the centre. The great thing about this is you can just grab stuff that looks interesting without actually knowing what it is, such as a plate full of miscellaneous tentacles. Just make sure you don’t accidentally eat a piece of whale bacon and raise the ire of the entire New Zealand population. Ahem. There are also places where meals are chosen from the menu with an electronic pen. After holding the pen over your desired dish, the pen recites your choice back to you in a perky female voice and then wirelessly transmits your order to the kitchen. What an age we live in. And by ‘we’, I mean the Japanese.

While some restaurants try to minimise wait staff, other places eliminate the need for chefs. It’s pretty common to cook food at your own table, usually on a hotplate, on a grill powered by hot coals, or in a huge pot of boiling water. The danger, of course, is that you burn yourself, either by touching something hot or eating something too quickly. It may sound funny, but a mouthful of molten octopus is no joke. But hey, the added risk is part of the fun, and the joy of cooking your own meal is not to be underestimated. I can only hope that Dunedin has restaurants with individual grills and talking pens by the time I get back.