A Taste of Home: Japan

“I used to work in an office ten minutes away from here,” Daisuke Onishi tells me, explaining his fondness for Hosen. For Onishi, who co-owns cocktail bars Twilight and Mokihi, as well as having a hand in Apothecary, Hosen is a place that satisfies the occasional craving for homestyle Japanese cooking. “In Japan now, even at home, mothers don’t make really hearty stews anymore,” he laments. “The whole food culture is shifting away from homestyle cooking.”

The tonkatsu (RMB 60) Onishi recommends is excellent, a juicy package of minced beef and pork wrapped in a thick breadcrumb, served with sweet brown tonkatsu sauce and karashi (yellow mustard). Hearty comfort dishes like this are one thing, but most of what we order exemplifies the less-is-more essence of Japanese cuisine. To illustrate that point, Onishi points to bamboo served with a gently tart, preserved plum sauce. “You want to keep things as simple as possible,” he says. “The bamboo is just boiled – you don’t add too much else. It’s all about retaining the natural flavor.”

The dish takes Onishi back to his Tokyo roots. “This one definitely reminds me of home. My mother is English, but she cooks Japanese food well. We have a plum tree in the garden, and she’d use plums to make a sauce like this.” We also try kazunoko, a combination of herring roe and seaweed traditionally served at New Year. “My father’s favorite,” says Onishi. “You’d have this as part of a five-story bento box filled with seafood and meat. Everything is cold, because you want to keep it for four or five days.

Hosen’s manager, Izumi Sawa Shigeki, leads us off the menu by recommending one of the restaurant’s current specials, octopus served in a light soy dressing with scallions and chilli-infused daikon. “You make a hole in the daikon, then stuff it with whole chilli peppers. Then you grate them, which brings the two ingredients together,” Onishi explains. It’s another perfect example of what happens when flavors are given room to breathe.

“You don’t really see Japanese restaurants here specializing,” Onishi says. “In Japan, if you want unagi, you go to a restaurant where they only serve unagi. At the moment, Beijing doesn’t really have that, but I think it will come.” I ask him what he’d like to see more of. “It’s the cheap stuff that you can’t get here, the things that Japanese people like to eat every day. You don’t really get restaurants in Beijing doing udon really well. And ramen, too. In Japan, a ramen place is a ramen place, and that’s all they serve. Here, ramen places serve everything, izakaya-style,” Onishi says. “I haven’t actually been to a good ramen place in quite a while. I’ve been to this place called Hinode in Lido a couple of times, though. They do chicken broth and fish broth quite well.”

The conversation takes us through as many Japanese cooking styles and dishes as I can throw out, with Onishi firing back recommendations, some more enthusiastically than others. I ask about okonomiyaki. “Takenosuke is OK,” Onishi concedes. “Not bad, but not very special either.” For sushi, he recommends Isshin, which surprises me somewhat. “I go there quite a lot because it’s close to Twilight,” he adds. “But they do a decent job. Places like Geba Geba and Edomae aren’t bad.” I confess to an addiction to Japanese-style curries which has cost me at least a few lunch friends. “Kura Kura’s curry is quite good – have you tried that?” Onishi asks. I have, and I agree.

Time for one last question: What would Onishi go running for immediately after arriving back in Japan? “I just want what my mother normally cooks. Rice, miso soup, some fish. Maybe fried chicken. I think my mother’s is the best, but then that’s probably the same for everybody. It’s that simple Japanese stuff I miss.” Sometimes, Onishi adds, it’s the really simple stuff. “Maybe some onigiri from the convenience store,” he laughs. “The ones in 7-11 here aren’t really good.”

Hosen Daily 11.30am-2pm, 5.30-10.30pm. 1/F, 2 Sanlitun Beixiaojie, Chaoyang District (6461 1498) 丰泉, 朝阳区三里屯北小街2号1层

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Photo: Judy Zhou