It’s fake sushi. Japanese restaurants usually show food replicas in their entrance. It’s pretty useful, because you know what you are going to eat, or at least you know how it looks like. It’s not the same in China, where every restaurant is a surprise.
Iwasaki-bei is considered the best company in the world making fake food. Look for example at this picture I took from their site:
“Gyoza” is one of my favorite Japanese/Asian food. And I say “Asian” because this food comes from China where Gyoza is called “Jiaozi”.
Gyoza/Jiaozi typically consist of a ground meat and/or vegetable filling wrapped into a thinly rolled piece of dough, which is then sealed by pressing the edges together or by crimping. – Wikipedia
The Chinese “Jiaozi” are usually filled with meat or vegetables and they are prepared boiled or steamed, in the case of the Japanese “Gyoza” the preparation is very similar but they are fried and usually have more garlic.
Japanese style fried “Gyoza”.
Everywhere in the world knows that Tokyo made a record of Michelin stars but here in Japan is not so “big news”, people doesn’t really know what the Michelin Guide is. Furthermore, it is not surprising for them, they already “know” their food is the best.
I just watched a TV show where they were talking about the Michelin Guide and explained what it is to the Japanese audience. After the explanation they started criticizing; they said that the Michelin inspectors only visited 1.500 places and in Tokyo area there are around 200.000~300.000 restaurants. That’s a lot compared with the 20.000~30.000 restaurants located in New York or Paris. The TV show guys talked about how many stars would Tokyo have if they would visit more restaurants. Now Tokyo has more stars than New York and Paris together! Some other comments on newspapers also talk about “foreigners/gaikokujin” having a different taste, even saying that no one can appreciate better the food’s taste and quality than Japanese.
Japanese are “gourmets”, they love eating, and talking about food and restaurants. And it’s true, in Tokyo I’ve eaten some of the best food in my life, (irony mode)even though I don’t have a Japanese tongue to fully appreciate food’s taste(/irony mode). Here are some food pictures I took in Tokyo’s restaurants:
This restaurant has 3 Michelin starts. It’s also one of the most expensive restaurants in Tokyo. I’ve never been inside, just took the picture 🙂
If you are interested, I recommend this excellent article written by and expert.
And if you like rankings and you are traveling to Tokyo: here there is the list with 3 stars restaurants, 2 stars, and 1 star with maps and telephone numbers.
