Foreign Chefs to Master Proper Japanese Cooking

Washoku, sushi, tempura and you name it. Japanese cuisine is now globally acknowledged and Japanese cooking terms are seen and heard everywhere. Japanese restaurants are not hard to find wherever you tour.

In inverse proportion to its growing popularity, however, non-authentic, untraditional Japanese cookery is circulating. To put things straight, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will introduce next fiscal year's new system to certificate foreign chefs of Japanese cuisine.

Japanese cuisine having been registered a world's intangible cultural heritage, the number of Japanese restaurants around the world increased 1.6 times to 89 thousand by the end of July. However, the basics of Japanese cookery are often neglected in serving Japanese food. Taking soup stock, for instance, the very basic of Japanese cookery is often neglected; in some unfortunate cases watered-down soy sauce is used instead.

Applicants are required to either apprentice in Japanese restaurants for a set period of time or to take necessary courses at authentic Japanese cooking schools. All conditions met, foreign chefs are issued the Cooking Certificate. A Japanese restaurant with such a chef in its employ can display the certificate to show its authenticity.

"The idea behind this is just to offer those self-taught Japanese cooks a chance to learn the basic art of Japanese cookery and have them pilot further promoting Japanese cuisine," comments Chief Sakuraniwa of the Food Industry Bureau.

The ministry has once had a bitter experience introducing a similar system. Based on the lesson learned then, the ministry is subjecting individual chefs this time instead of shops to be oriented into Japanese cookery. Previously, overseas restaurants serving Japanese food resisted the ministry's proposal for reasons that, if not "approved", they would be branded bogus by customers and their business would suffer. Certain Sushi shops in the United States protested against detaching sushi police.

Let's see how this new "individual approach" will work to further the rising boom of Washoku.

News Souce: NHK