We are What We Eat

I am not a fussy eater although I think I know how to tell good restaurant from bad. But I always set my expectation at the moderated level, in order to avoid the disappointment. In Tokyo, the competition is so severe that every restauarant works toward perfection to distinguish themselves from peers. I haven't tried the top-grade Chinese or Malaysia or Vietnamese yet (the regular ones don't do very well). The safest bet is to go Japanese (however, Tokyo has very decent Italian and French, even the not-so-famous ones are good).

I was following my colleague on Friday night to look for a place to eat and drink. We had this trip a couple of months ago, even the order of restauarnt we checked, and got turned down were identical. The restaurants were definitely not the chain stores (although I think those izakaya or yakitori chain stores in Tokyo are really good, at least you get what you expect), those were the quiet, elegant, indepedent eateries in Kagrurasaka area. We were sent out by the apologetic waiter without exception, they were all fully-booked on Friday night.

I think when you reach certain age (or stage of life), what you eat and where you eat have turned into part of your life style. It also explains to the world about what you are. That's why my colleague refused the chain store? (At the end, we had no choice but going to one of those, the distaste surfaces on his face).

I am getting very picky about beer recently, I started to realise non of the bottled beer has fine-enough bubbles yet they don't taste fresh at all. Suppose the beer is not chilled properly or even if the beer glass is not frosty, basically this is a beer not worth drinking.

Some experiment carried on blind tasting of the same wine in ordinary wine glass and extremely fine, delicate wine glass. 99% of the time, the blindfolded drinkers were tricked to think the fine glass carries a higher graded wine.

The line between oridinary food and excellent foods is extermely fine, the same ingredients might produced differenet results only due to very small deviations the ways foods are prepared or served. Getting old is great that you are bounded to get more picky and fussy, we call that developed tasted.