Wonka food with Jiro Gravity
Wonka food with Jiro Gravity
Takoyaki in Osaka. Post sponsored by Umeda Area Management Alliance
Osaka has a reputation, as its residents will gladly tell you, as a sort of breadbasket for comedy in Japan. The people of Kansai—the region where Osaka is located—with their melodic off-country accents and big-hearted ways, are just better at jokes than the rest of the country. If you don’t speak Japanese, of course, punchlines will breeze by you in any dialect. So you look for the good humor in the non-verbal: the nod of a traffic cop, the smile of the takkyubin driver, the whimsy of the pachinko-like paths through Shinsaibashi-suji or the glass canopies of Osaka Station City.
There is also playfulness on the plate. Take Junya Suzuki’s pocket restaurant Takoriki in Osaka’s Chuo ward. It isn’t playful in the kawaii sense. There are no plush animals or anime cutouts or even plastic display foods in the window. Junya is studious as he works takoyaki—fried spheres of minced octopus and batter—on the grill. His hair is closely cut on both sides and pulled into a small ponytail on top, but with the meticulousness of most countercultural fashion statements in Japan. There is, however, something unmistakably bright and spirited about his cuisine. Junya’s innovation is to make takoyaki—which originated in Osaka as a deep fried street food for the hurried or the inebriated—as light as clouds, and pair them with the effervescence of champagne. It’s Wonka food with Jiro gravity.
The first time we went there, the long counter of guests started as strangers to one another. It was late winter outside, which even in temperate Osaka can mean bulky jackets and collars turned against the wind. But inside Takoriki, the lightness was contagious: we all started, slowly at first but then with increasing buoyancy, to float along with the bubbles of the champagne and the weightlessness of Junya’s golden orbs (order the lightly salted variety; they are so balanced as to not need the ponzu and mayo bath typically seen). Someone wanted to know our impressions of Osaka. We said people here are funny, and that seemed to please the counter. There was a woman who had lived in California, and she had questions and a few memories for us. Her boyfriend had never been, and he didn’t speak any English, but by the end of the evening, he had punchlines for us in Japanese. We can’t remember them now, nor would we understand them if we could, but somehow in the moment it all made perfect sense.