Daily Dose of English 74
(American) Japanese Food
Daily Dose of English 74
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about American Japanese food. This is a continuation of the series, well, not really a series, it's a couple of episodes that I wanna do where I talk about foreign foods that are common to find in the U.S. and share how things, how we see a lot of foreign food in, I guess, just in regular culture. because the U.S. is full of tons of food from all over the world, but it frequently changes a little bit depending on how long it's been there or how it got to the U.S. in the first place. And so I wanna share a little bit of that experience to hopefully teach you something new that you might not know. And today we're talking about Japanese food in the U.S. specifically. And there are three main types of Japanese food that people think of in order of, I guess, frequency. So the most famous and well-known Japanese food in the U.S., by far, is sushi. Sushi is very popular, very common. You can find it in all over the country. And it's usually quite good, especially if you're close to the coast where there's a lot of fresh fish. And it's very popular, especially among younger people, so probably 50 and below, it's really, really popular as especially a fancy dinner option. The next style of Japanese food that's quite common, but not as much, is ramen. Ramen noodles, ramen soup, however you wanna talk about it, is very, very common, but mostly in bigger cities, and it's not as popular as sushi is. Very often, there's restaurants that serve ramen that aren't necessarily like a dedicated ramen shop. However, those are becoming more popular, especially as more people learn about them. That kind of food, ramen, is a little more popular with even slightly younger people, maybe 30 and below, right? So a little bit younger than sushi. Sushi is totally mainstream. Everybody knows sushi. Ramen is a little bit less so, but still quite popular. And then the third one that I want to mention is teriyaki, because teriyaki is very, very common in the name, but typically for just the sauce, teriyaki sauce is the main thing that we know, even though I think it is actually a whole style of cuisine and cooking. that doesn't really come over nearly as much. You can find some Japanese teriyaki restaurants, but they're not nearly as common as sushi or ramen, and you'll typically just find teriyaki something in the supermarket or on a menu. So for example, teriyaki sauce, like I said, is really common to find at a restaurant, or you can find teriyaki-flavored something. Those are also really common. But I've had some good teriyaki food, like more of the style. However, I don't see that that often. It's not super ubiquitous is a good word. Ubiquitous means that something's everywhere, like sushi. But teriyaki, I wouldn't say fits that description. So, now I want to talk a little bit about each of those things because I think there's some interesting ways that they come up and whatever. So, I want to start with sushi because sushi in the US is very, like I just said, it's very popular and rolls especially are the biggest ways that people eat sushi. So a sushi roll is when you take like the seaweed and the rice, and then you put some filling inside, then you turn it into like a roll, like a sort of a log shape, and then you cut it into bite-sized pieces. Sushi rolls are the biggest, the most popular way to eat sushi in the US. I would say by a long shot, I don't think they're nearly as common in Japan, although I've never been, so I don't actually know. and people are more likely to eat other kinds of sushi where it's maybe just rice and fish or something like that. However, the US very much has popularized rolls as being a big part of sushi. If you go to any sushi restaurant in the US, most of the options will be rolls or like nigiri is the other option, which is essentially just rice and fish or sashimi, which is just fish. However, most people will order rolls because they feel more complete. Every state actually has like a roll named after it. Not necessarily from that state, however, it's an easy way to name things. You can have the California roll, it's the most common, most popular one, which is very easy to eat. It just has some crab and some avocado and some other things in it. And that's it. It's done. It's easy. Um, but you can also find roles like the Philadelphia role. Uh, and I'm sure there's a bunch more like, I mean, like I've seen the Oregon role. I've seen New York role. I don't know what's in those. I only can really think of the California role in the Philadelphia role, but I'm sure there's more that exists and are probably fairly delicious. However, At some point, the invention of putting cream cheese into sushi rolls was invented, and I hate that. I absolutely despise cream cheese in my sushi rolls because I don't think that cream cheese belongs with a raw fish. It just does not taste good. I love cream cheese, to be clear. It's really delicious, but I don't want it in my sushi rolls. And divulging a little bit from the topic, every single roll here in Mexico has cream cheese in it. And it's awful. It's terrible. I think it should be illegal. But that aside. I also want to quickly share my favorite sushi roll specifically. It's called the Green Machine, and it is from a restaurant in Portland called Bamboo Sushi, and that's where I'm from, and it is just so damn good. I don't understand it. Their sauce is really, really good, and it's a very popular roll because it's freaking delicious. Um, although I do want to talk about the other kinds of Japanese food quickly. Ramen, like I said, is getting more popular because it's, it's sort of trendy and it's also freaking delicious. There's a trend here because who doesn't like a delicious bowl of soup with extra stuff on top and amazing noodles? Like it's just so good. And I love to eat ramen. It's one of the main reasons I'd like to visit Japan at some point in the future is to have ramen because it's supposed to be even better there and cheaper. And that's something that I want to kind of mention is that ramen in the US is a bit fancier. There's not as big of a culture of it being everywhere and cheap and delicious all the time. It's a bit fancier. And so going to get ramen for two people can easily cost 35, especially if you're going to get some kind of a drink and maybe even a side. It's probably going to cost more like $40. So it's not a cheap, quick food, even though it's still very, very good in a lot of places. However, I've also discovered that it can be very not good if you go to somewhere that doesn't really care about the quality and it's just worse, right? So be careful when you go have ramen. If it looks like it's a nice place and has good options, try it out. I'm sure it's gonna be very good in the US, but beware of places that look a little bit less, I don't know, good. And the last one, teriyaki, I don't really have a ton to share about it, honestly. I've had it a couple times. There's one place that I know that does it. But the sauce is quite good, and so if you wanna make teriyaki beef or something like that, it's a decent option for a lot of flavor very quickly. I've used it to make lunches quickly. So if I wanna make some rice and some veggies and some meat, you can just throw teriyaki sauce on everything and it tastes good with just that. However, really quickly, I wanna share a story of Japanese food in the U.S. from my life. Because growing up, we knew a half Japanese family. The mother was Japanese and the father was American. And she was a very good cook. And we had a couple of times we would do sushi nights where she would do all the shopping to get everything for us. And then we'd come together at one of our houses and everybody would help make sushi. And she would direct everybody and point out like, you do this, you do that. And then it's like, this is how you make a roll. And so that was probably the best sushi experience I've ever had. I think we did that three or four times maybe. And because it's really, really delicious and it's somebody who knows what they're doing in a way that is different than like a professional, because professional sushi is very good, right? Like they're good at what they do, but it is different than learning how to make it yourself and putting something together and having fresh ingredients right there and being part of a family. And that was, so I think that's like the most, my favorite sushi experience ever. And as far as I know, that's a little bit more common in Japan. having it be a bit more of a family experience rather than always going out to a sushi restaurant like is common in the US. However, I think I've seen people talking about sushi restaurants there, so I'm sure it's very common as well to go to sushi. However, if you ever have the chance somehow to go to a sushi gathering at somebody's house, definitely do it. Anyways, that's been this episode of A Daily Dose of English. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a couple of words and things here and there, but I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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