A Review of Michael Booth’s “Super Sushi Ramen Express”
A Japanese Foodie’s Culinary Delight
I’m not much of a foodie — I don’t go out to trendy restaurants and I’m a fan of microwave dinners — but I love a bit of Japanese culture every now and then. So when the chance to snag a review copy of Michael Booth’s Super Sushi Raman Express through my contacts at Picador in New York City came about, I leapt at the chance. The book has actually been around awhile — it was first published in Great Britain as Sushi and Beyond in 2009 — and I don’t think it has been updated much for the American edition, but maybe it didn’t have to be. Still, seeing it in Picador’s catalogue was my first exposure to it, and wanting to learn more about Japan, if not Japanese cuisine, I naturally wanted to give this a try.
Super Sushi Ramen Express is a bit of a travelogue in that Booth decides to go to Japan and cover the entire length of it, trying different delicacies, on something of a dare from a Japanese friend after getting into an argument about the merit (or lack thereof) of Japanese food. What makes the book unique is that the author takes along his wife and two small children, aged four and six, for the ride. So, yes, there’s a lot of spitting out of food from palates more used to McDonald’s fast food. (Though, to be fair, the author does do his share of spitting things out, too.)
But the book is also something of a nutritional case study into why Japanese food is really, really healthy — going so far as to visit the islands of Okinawa, where some of the oldest human inhabitants of the earth live, to find out if there’s a connection between what the Japanese eat and their longevity. There are tons of arguments made in the book that, even though most Japanese food is served raw or undercooked, there are some really nutritious side effects of eating this food, being that it is high in various vitamins and minerals is just one of them.
It would help, though, before reading the book if you knew a bit about Japanese ingredients and foods, even though there’s a glossary in the back. My one big criticism about Super Sushi Ramen Express is the lack of pictures. It’s hard to imagine meals that you’ve never experienced before, and some of the foods tried by Booth and family are exotic to Japan. So you’ll have very little — if anything — in the way of a reference point to these foods and will probably skim over that stuff. Which is too bad, as some of these dishes could be quite tasty if you really knew what they were about.
However, that’s the worst thing I can really say about Super Sushi Ramen Express, except for a bit of an anti-gay slur that comes late in the book that somehow got past discerning editors. (Booth makes a comparison to a “tranny.”) The book is funny, warm and evocative of another culture that may seem absolutely foreign to many Westerners. The book is also something of a look into a dying culture of sorts — while Japanese food is still popular to some degree in Japan, it is becoming replaced with a more Western diet. Sake, in particular, has lost out in popularity to beer, for one thing. And the young just don’t seem to have the patience to master the art of Japanese cooking anymore. So the book is a bit sad, too, because you realize that some of the things that make Japan, well, Japan are slowly disappearing.
Still, there’s a fair amount of outlandish stuff in the book to make it amusing, such as the author’s attempts to find out of Kobe beef is actually massaged and fed beer by trying to sneak his way past the PR flaks at a company farm to do it himself (it turns out he doesn’t need to, as the offer is warmly extended to him upon arrival). Booth’s family make a side trip to a café where dogs are allowed to freely roam and the author rather unwisely tries to lick off his fingers poisonous parts of a fugu after touching them. (You may recognize the fugu: as the author notes himself, this puffer fish that’s highly toxic if improperly prepared was referenced in a rather classic early episode of The Simpsons.)
In fact, and getting back to my criticism about the lack of pictures, one reads this book and wonders why it hasn’t been made into a TV series. (Actually, it has. It turns out that the book was adapted into a 25-part cartoon series in Japan last year, and is supposedly going to be made into a movie.) There’s a load of stuff here that’s a virtual goldmine, though I suppose some of this stuff might not so easily transport to a real-life film (such as Booth’s failed attempts to get an MSG manufacturer to admit that the stuff isn’t so good for you, changing the author’s mind about its harmful effects in the process). Honestly, Booth has a writing style that is entirely filmic and cinematic, and he has a chatty and personal way of speaking to the audience, even though, as a Cordon Bleu-trained chef, he does very occasionally lapse into restaurant reviewer speak.
There’s even a healthy bit of foreshadowing in the book. In the earlier chapters, Booth gets an invite to the best restaurant in Tokyo — a place so secretive that it barely exists since, in order to attend it, one must be invited by a current member, who can only themselves eat there once a month. Then the book forgets about the place, making you wonder if the author decided to pass on the invite and not mention it further. However, the invite pops back up at the book’s end, and, yes, the restaurant does turn out to be quite the dining experience. This technique makes the book feel like a novel, though it is not fictional (though it can certainly feel fictional at times, due to some of the outlandish aspects of Japanese culture!). Again, the author’s writing style is personable and refined, and something to savour.
In fact, I started out reading this book very slowly, trying to really relish all that it had to offer. But then, about 100 pages in, I divided in and read it virtually cover to cover. There’s really no right or wrong way to read Super Sushi Ramen Express, though. Basically, if you like Japanese food or are even a tiny bit of a Japanophile, you’ll likely get something out of this. Crammed with pop culture references (yes, the family goes Pokémon shopping in Tokyo), and about as wide of a survey of all aspects of Japanese food and culture that you can imagine, this is a great read for those who love to eat and want to experience something different beyond the carbohydrate-stuffed diet of the typical Westerner. I loved Super Sushi Raman Express, and, if you’re anything like me, I bet you probably will, too. This is one delightful morsel, and I’m glad that I tried it.
Michael Booth’s Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family’s Journey Through the Belly of Japan was published by Picador on September 6, 2016.
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