Honzuki no Gekokujou ~Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen~ Dai 1-bu 「Hon ga Nai nara Tsukureba Ii!」 - Vol. 3 Ch. 14.5 - Extra: Strug…

[MangaDex]

 

[welcome2atlantis]

There are some weird vegetables there lol.

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

I think it's cute the way the Japanese seem convinced they have one of the world's great cuisines and know cooking better than anyone else. I mean, don't get me wrong, they have some good dishes. But they have a good deal of pretty mediocre stuff and downright awful stuff. In terms of culinary stature, they're not exactly China or France.

 

[RhoninFire]

@Purplelibraryguy - Anime and Manga love to toot their own horn about cooking, but Japanese cuisines is pretty good. But food is pretty subjective, so it's kinda hard to say one is better of the other. The best I can think of for metrics is things like number of Michelin Star restaurants (which Japan actually now beats France for the #1 spot for a couple of years now).

That said, at least in America, Chinese Cuisine is not particularly upheld as that prestigious. Going by Michelin Stars, they are only starting to get recognition - which actually counterpoints Michelin Stars, is food is reflect of national prestige as much as actually how tasty the food is.

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

@RhoninFire Sure, the Japanese are wealthy and cultured, no surprise if they have plenty of Michelin Star restaurants in Japan. But how many of those are restaurants serving Japanese cuisine? How many are actually French or Italian restaurants, just in Japan? And contrariwise, I think ramen is one of the greatest kinds of Japanese food, but how many of those Michelin Star restaurants are ramen joints? Probably none, not expensive and sophisticated enough. There's a certain stratum of modern upscale food culture that weirdly doesn't seem to care much if the food actually, you know, tastes good as long as it's done in a very high quality way, is innovative enough that their jaded tastes find it interesting, and is well presented.
What I was talking about is more the basic nature of the cuisine, before you start sinking a ton of dollars into it. So like, I like Greek food, but if you look at classic Greek cooking there isn't a lot of variety there. Almost every Greek restaurant is pretty much the same. You got your souvlaki, you got your roast lamb, you got your dolmades, generally you got your usual suspects and they're always spiced in pretty much the same way; for desserts you got maybe what, four or five traditional Greek desserts and that's it. It's not what I'd call a powerful cuisine; there's only so much you can do with it. Really tasty within those limitations, mind. Similarly with say Ukrainian cuisine--OK, I like perogies, I like sausage, but then what? Or if you look at Scandinavian cuisine, it's a bit more variable but still fairly one dimensional, plus it has horrible things that nobody from anywhere else would ever want to eat, like lutefisk.

But French cuisine has a ton of different stuff done with a ton of different flavourings and sauces and cooking techniques and most of it is good. And for a lot of techniques and kinds of things, the measure of "This is how you do it" is set by how the French do it. It's fundamentally a powerful, versatile cuisine. If you go to other countries and look at their top restaurants, half of them are actually either French restaurants explicitly or use French cooking techniques. If you go to a typical "fine dining" restaurant in North America which doesn't really specify that it's a particular nationality or kind of restaurant, it's basically French.
Japanese cuisine is much more powerful and versatile than Ukrainian or even Greek. But in my opinion it has distinct limitations. Take karaage, for instance--it's good enough, but there are other countries that do that kind of thing better. Teriyaki stuff, the Chinese generally do similar but better dishes. Plus the Japanese have weird fermented things like Natto, and extensive use of seaweed, and stuff where they deliberately make a flavour like fish that's gone stale and fishy, which most people from anywhere else wouldn't be into. Basically, they have a rather idiosyncratic taste, which is somewhat unsuited to having some reincarnated person introduce their stuff to people from other cultures and have them swoon over it. You don't generally see other countries imitating Japanese cooking techniques or flavours the way you see with French food.

 

[wankerLin]

tldr

 

[jonsmth]

@Purplelibraryguy

I think it's cute the way the Japanese seem convinced they have one of the world's great cuisines and know cooking better than anyone else

What even gave you that sort of impression? The main character is Japanese, misses Japanese food, and therefore cooked Japanese food.
Furthermore, the author is Japanese, and probably only knows how to cook Japanese food.
Would it satisfy you if the author chose French cuisine even if they might not be familiar with it?

If you're speaking generally, it's the same thing. Most Japanese authors are in the same situation and could only competently write stuff that they know about without hiring a consultant.

You could always look towards some of the more food-oriented manga, and I could make a case where I would say that the Japanese seems to praise foreign cuisine more than their own.
Shoukugeki no Soma for one is big on French iirc.
Chuuka Ichiban is all about Chinese food (or trying to be).
Yakitate Japan is about trying to make original Japanese bread, when it's usually dominated by bread of non-Japanese origin.

It's usually only isekai stories which seem to be big on bringing Japanese cuisine over to an isekai.

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

@jonsmith The point is that the main character is Japanese, misses Japanese food, cooked Japanese food, and everyone goes wild about it because they've apparently never had food that tasted good before. On the other hand, you don't see her saying of some local dish in her new world "Wow, this is awesome, we never had anything like this in Japan".

But this one isn't too bad. What really crystallized this idea for me was one I read a few chapters of recently where this elf girl ends up in modern Japan and she's all in raptures over the simplest convenience store food because the food where she comes from is explicitly specified as all bland and tasteless and lousy. Right, because elves are known for not bothering with aesthetic pleasures . . . whatever.
It may be only isekai stories that do this, but isekai stories are very common and popular and presumably reflect something about Japanese culture and outlooks.

Incidentally, I'm Canadian; my country doesn't have a cuisine so I'm really an onlooker on this topic.

 

[Glomoro]

@Purplelibraryguy The people in the other worlds would probably go nuts over any modern food from any part of our world I guess, we have a lot more stuff in our food than we probably should. They tend to be somewhat period accurate in terms of what the people are cooking and eating, or perhaps even hyperbole extrapolated from such which means there's a lot left to be desired by people with modern tastes at best, or at worst they might as well be eating cardboard because the author really wanted to emphasize how good modern conveniences have made our foods. I just take this food business as granted for isekai and let it roll off me like water off a duck by now, I guess.

Also, Canada totally has cuisine my dude. The things that come to mind for me are mostly more towards snacks or desserts, and also the famous (perhaps infamous) poutine. Sure, I've never heard of a Canadian restaurant opening up somewhere else to show off Canada's goods specifically. But specific dishes do tend to spread. New England clam chowder is one of the big things from my area I can think of that is popping up in other places too nowadays.

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

@Glomoro Mmm, point. Although in some ways it should go the other way. In most of these worlds all the fruit and vegetables would be organic, heirloom, bred for flavour not keeping qualities, raised in soil that was never nutrient-depleted by modern chemical farming, and come in a massive number of varieties. You'd go to the market and there'd be like 30 kinds of plums instead of two or three. The bread would be fresh baked that morning, no preservatives, and made from flour that was ground on a stone miller's wheel maybe a week ago. Salads would be full of umpteen kinds of herbs gathered from the forest. The meat would be organic, grass fed, free range, you name it--was never kept in a tiny cage or a crowded feedlot. You could have a basic beef stew done by a good cook and it would be like "What is this?! I have never tasted anything this good in my life!"

But anyway, it's not like I was upset about it, I was just making an observation. Note that my initial post started "I think it's cute". It's everyone else who seems offended.

As to Canada, we have a few one-offs, but it doesn't make a food tradition, an overall style of cooking or anything. I mean, I like poutine and Nanaimo bars and butter tarts and even ketchup chips (I still can't believe Americans don't have those), and I love Montreal smoked beef, but they don't have anything to do with each other. We don't have anything like, say, Louisiana where there's a whole cultural cooking thing. Instead we scavenge all the best stuff from around the world. Here in Vancouver I must say there are hints of something developing . . . it's normal for restaurants in Vancouver to incorporate Asian and South Asian ingredients and spices into Western style dishes; in time it could become a uniquely local Europe/Asian fusion cuisine.

 

[Glomoro]

@Purplelibraryguy The wikipedia article I ended up perusing for Canadian Cuisine says something to the effect that it's kind of like a mix of French, British, and indigenous stuff that has since started to take on aspects from everywhere, like how you mentioned the possibility going forward for the European/Asian fusion. Cuisine is kind of a fancy sounding word but honestly it can probably be as simple as how stews or steaks are being prepared locally. I've got a Montreal steak seasoning thing in my kitchen right now, that's a good example of one that's spread already and can continue evolving with the introduction of other ingredients and stuff. The things that seem like one-offs still count as far as I know, it's just that to the locals maybe it doesn't seem special compared to those full on traditions like French or Italian cuisine. Might be part of our areas having become more like melting pots than other parts of the world earlier on than they might have started?

 

[orp]

I've heard that mushrooms can change your perception of reality, but this is ridiculous.

 

[sylvacoer]

I appreciate the food culture and perceptions discussion from below - I think everyone made good points. I've not seen it explicitly in this manga until this chapter, so i wonder if the author did it in the original novel: is insisting on recreating modern Japan in her new life a method of coping with the radical change, either consciously or unconsciously? I assume unconsciously, given how an eight year-old boy is more self-aware than the MC.

 

[immortalartisan]

I’ll stick to my fried meat dumplings and egg custards

 

[Nightlilygirl-]

I also find it kinda funny how she'd try to introduce her family to Japanese cuisine of all things, since for people who never tried them seaweed, raw fish and fermented beans sound like the stuff of nightmares, but then again the one time I was away from Italy for more than ten days I basically started having pasta withdrawals, so maybe this is really just food nostalgia that we all have and never realize it until it happens XD