- A barbarian in Asia.Haguro-san: the 2,446 steps leading to the most remote temple in Japan
The trendy drink this summer in Japan, as it has been for at least two summers before, is what in the English menus is identified as 'boba milk tea': a milk shake and tea of Taiwanese origin to which You can add all kinds of essences -pigment of blue flowers, peach flavor, the always excellent macha tea, and even has a variant in coffee-, but whose main grace, which makes the kids go crazy, consists of "bubbles" deposited in the bottom of the glass, dense and fluffy balls made from tapioca - the sweet extract of cassava - that rises to the mouth as if it were the gas of a soda, and that must be consumed with the help of a generous diameter rod so that the sweet ball rises graceful and viscous to the palate.
What is the summer drink is warned that there is no sidewalk section where one does not pass in which we meet a couple of smiling girls with their stupid in hand, and that where they dispense - in street stalls and in old fashioned coffee shops - there are always long lines in which the chick waits patiently, almost always under a severe sun, to take their turn to get her concoction and proceed to the two rituals that follow the purchase : First, hang the photo on Instagram and then sip the milkshake and swallow the balls one by one, as a Colombian mule would do before passing an airport checkpoint. With the luck that, when the tapioca bursts in the stomach, the most that it can give us is a high of sugar or, in the worst case, a little constipation - the case of a girl who entered the emergency room and the X-ray found a tapioca stash in his stomach that would scare even the Piranha. So that they say about rice.
Osaka deserves all the culinary compliments that experts direct him year after year, but in Osaka he has also succumbed to the power of milk and tea milkshake with tapioca. If you had to do a long-tailed ranking in the street stalls, the fool is well ahead of the takoyaki - other even more succulent balls, stuffed with octopus - or Korean-style hot dogs , a disgusting rich in glutamate, greasy fillings and toppings that would also fall into that category that we identify as "shits that you only find in Japan" and that tourists, even at the risk of losing the line further, do not resist trying, whether they are cookies with yuzu flavor, or the most bizarre juice on sale in any of the dispensing machines that you find on the street
Anyway, when stepping on Osaka our goal was another: to know first hand the Mr. Toyo izakaya , which experts who eat well have identified as the best corner for street food in the city that tourists already know as "Cádiz from the east "-well, people are generally open, shout, they tell you things and to whom you neglect they make friends with you. Toyo's place of food is what in Japan is identified as a tachinomiya: that kind of taverns in which you eat standing, something like a tapas bar where the idea is to ask at the moment, devour in a sigh, give Thanks and a hug and, of course, pay.
Hidden in an alley that can only be reached with the help of Google Maps - outside the main streets, and relatively close to the tourist complex of Osaka Castle and its gardens - it was for a long time a secret place for Japanese gourmets who knew Where to eat well and cheaply. Until mass tourism arrived, recommendations exalted on Tripadvisor and, above all, television. Now, the izakaya Toyo is taken by the curious guiris who stand in line even before they open, the staff speaks competent English and, we fear, prices have risen a bit. But once you try the first bite, as if they want to charge you a kidney: the place is a temple, and Toyo a master of the master meal. His makis fill your mouth with stars.
We say "television" because Toyo was the protagonist of the second chapter of a recent documentary series, called Street Food. Volume 1: Asia , created by the same Chef's Table team . Of all the street stalls there, Toyo's one stood out above the rest because of the charisma of the owner: a guy from La Paz, who speaks loudly to his employees - not in a row, but channeling electrifying energy - who smokes like a carter in the kitchen, and that lights the cigarettes raising a flare of the torch with which the fish roasts - it was not a punctual trick thought to fall in love with the camera; The guy really does.
Now, behind all that humor, lies a hard personal story: motherless orphan since the age of six, abused by an alcoholic father who was fattened in his weakness , Toyo had to learn to cook from the leftovers he found in the street to survive in a hostile and miserable family situation, in which the money that should have gone to the school canteen was wasted on sake.
Clear example that you can get out of abuse with a smile, Toyo discovered that cooking could make him happy - and make people happy - and all his art goes back to that humble origin: cooking with the basics, as if It was the last meal of your life. A seaweed salad, tuna passed by the fire -or raw-, eel, basic vegetables. And, above all, the intense flavor: instead of wasabi, to season the Toyo fish, it serves karashi - a derivative of mustard that tastes the same, but even stronger -, and the explosion in the mouth is a thousand times stronger than the of a tapioca ball in the intestine . In the end, we knelt before Toyo as he only faces the gods and kings.
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