Seattle and Teriyaki

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/dining/06unit.html

January 6, 2010
UNITED TASTES
A City’s Specialty, Japanese in Name Only

By JOHN T. EDGE
Seattle

SALAAMA, a Somali roadhouse near the airport here, serves chicken suqaar, a dish of griddled halal chicken, onions and peppers, popular with cab drivers. Interlopers to this clubhouse restaurant order the dish the way the menu advertises it — as chicken teriyaki.

At 5 Seasons Grill, a Vietnamese restaurant north of the city, a banner promises “The Best Teriyaki in Town.” That would be Item 38, com bo nuong, beef short ribs, marinated with lemon grass and other nontraditional teriyaki ingredients.

“This is just like teriyaki,” said Cat Vo, an owner. “Only it’s much better.”

In Seattle, teriyaki is omnipresent, the closest this city comes to a Chicago dog.

At Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, fans eat chicken teriyaki. Specialty food retailers stock teriyaki sauces, including a triple garlic take from Tom Douglas, perhaps Seattle’s most well-known chef.

Many Hawaiian restaurants serve a version. Some Thai restaurants do too. Tokyo Garden Teriyaki in the University District violates the dictates of traditional American and Japanese cookery with its corn dog teriyaki, a $5 gut punch of deep-fried corn dogs, sliced, tossed with wok-fried vegetables and drizzled with teriyaki sauce.

The Washington State Restaurant Association has identified 83 Seattle restaurants with teriyaki in their name, including I Love Teriyaki and I Luv Teriyaki. (A concurrent search yielded about 40 restaurants named Burger King, McDonald’s or Wendy’s.)

In Seattle, teriyaki is shorthand for a range of dishes, from teriyaki burgers, piled with chopped beef, to pineapple teriyaki, platters of chicken paved with canned pineapple.

The phenomenon, now in its fourth decade, has roots in Asian immigration. (For a 2007 Seattle Weekly article, Jonathan Kauffman wrote that Toshihiro Kasahara, a peripatetic Japanese-born restaurateur, may have popularized the teriyaki sauce style now standard in Seattle when he opened Toshi’s Teriyaki Restaurant in 1976.)

Teriyaki is derived from the Japanese root words teri, to shine, and yaki, to broil or grill. That’s the way traditional teriyaki looks: shiny and incised with grill marks. In Japan, teriyaki is a mix of soy sauce, sake and the rice wine mirin, which imparts a subtle sweetness.

In Seattle, subtlety gets short shrift. Cooks sweeten with white sugar and pineapple juice. They thicken with cornstarch and peanut butter. Ginger and garlic go into the mix, because of the Korean ancestry of many cooks.

Tokyo Garden’s owner, Sujan Shrestha, immigrated from Nepal 11 years ago to attend college. He stayed to help his brother run a company that imports dried cow’s milk and yak’s milk cheese for pet treats.

For Mr. Shrestha, opening a teriyaki shop was just another entrepreneurial tack. “In Seattle, they eat teriyaki,” he said. “It’s American, it’s cheap and it’s good. I’m a businessman; that’s enough for me.”

He serves Nepalese dumplings, known as momo, with a side of coleslaw, along with gyoza, Japanese dumplings. All are prepared under the direction of the sushi chef, José Ramirez, born in Puebla, Mexico.

That corn dog teriyaki is a stunner. But his signature dish is chicken teriyaki: butterflied boneless thighs, marinated in a soy-based sauce, then grilled, glazed with a thicker version of that sauce and sliced into strips.

“Chicken teriyaki is the best cheap food there is,” he said. “It’s ideal for international students. I got through school on oatmeal cookies and coffee. If only I could have had teriyaki, things would have been different.”

Seattle is not the sole American city that loves teriyaki.

Dozens of manufacturers market sauce riffs, like Veri Veri Teriyaki from Soy Vay Enterprises in Felton, Calif. Waba Grill Teriyaki House, which promotes skinless chicken, cooked without oil or MSG, has more than 20 California locations. Teriyaki Madness, based in Las Vegas (but owned by Seattle natives) is selling Nevada on teriyaki, pitched by an Elvis impersonator.

Only in Seattle, however, are teriyaki restaurants so ubiquitous that they’re virtually invisible, said Knute Berger, the author of “Pugetopolis,” a book of essays on modern Seattle mores.

“Seattle likes to talk about local foods, about ridiculous things like fiddlehead coulis,” Mr. Berger said. “Seattle yuppies love the idea of going to some obscure Chinese place for dim sum but won’t dare tell you that they eat chicken teriyaki. Those places are so much a part of the streetscape that we can’t even see them.”

Teriyaki claims its place at white tablecloth restaurants, too. Daniel’s Broiler, a steakhouse on Lake Union serves teriyaki-marinated beef as well as poached rock lobster tails.

But the average Seattle teriyaki spot is utilitarian, with fluorescent lights overhead and neon signs glaring from smudged storefront windows. The quality of ingredients is often measured by the salt water that packers inject into the restaurant’s chicken thighs. “We use a 2 percent chicken,” said Mr. Shrestha, decrying competitors who, in an effort to save money, buy chicken with much higher saline levels.

Economy is one of the virtues of Seattle teriyaki. It’s part of the problem, too. “Teriyaki is cheap and kind of dirty,” said Debbie Sarow, a bookstore owner who often eats a brown-bag lunch at her desk. “Everybody here is focused on what’s in their food, but teriyaki sauce is mysterious. You can’t figure out what’s in there, and that scares some people off.”

Boo Yul Ko and her husband, In Ja Ko, own Manna Deli & Teriyaki, cater-corner from the 5 Seasons Grill. She sells chicken, beef and pork teriyaki plates.

On the front counter, Ms. Ko stacks teriyaki wraps with the heft of lead piping. Engorged with meat, sauce, rice and salad — the constituent ingredients of a teriyaki plate — they rise in pyramids near a ceramic cat statuette, its paw raised in a gesture of welcome. She takes great pride in selling those wraps for $3.99, a price that first-generation immigrants (and college students) recognize as a bargain.

The Kos, Korean natives, moved to Seattle from Idaho in 1999, when their son, Sam Ko, enrolled in Seattle University as an undergraduate. (He went on to earn a dual M.D./M.B.A. degree from the University of Rochester.)

“Seattle has a thousand teriyakis,” Mrs. Ko said one afternoon. Her tone was dismissive, as if explaining the looming presence of the Space Needle to a not particularly bright child. “No Americans do the cooking. Koreans do.”

“This is Seattle food,” she said, extending her argument. “For Seattle people. This is what we eat here. Seattle people eat teriyaki. This isn’t Dallas.”

San Juan Islands

Fri - San Juan Island

Drove around the island today. Saw orcas on the west side. Stopped by Roche Harbor Village, which reminds me of the village from the BBC show The Prisoner. Really. About to go salmon fishing. 70F and sunny today.

Th - San Juan Island

Kayaked around Friday Harbor today in a sit-on-top Hobie pedal boat. Rented a crab pot and caught two red rock crabs, which we had for dinner.

Wed - Orcas to San Juan

Packed up Wed morning at Moran State Park (rainy night), then took the ferry to San Juan Island. Our ferry, The Evergreen State, has half-done puzzle out on tables for passengers to entertain themselves with, which Oliver would appreciate. We arrived in Friday Harbor and dropped in on Joyce. One of her neighbors is away, so she let us stay at their house. Very nice! They all live in a secluded development on the west side. We picked apples from two kinds of apple trees, snap peas from Joyce's other neighbor, an Alaskan fisherman.

Tues

Took a six-hour kayak tour out of Deer Harbor, great weather and views. Stopped on a couple of islands along the way. Tried fishing off a pier out of Orcas Village in the eve, just caught some bait and dogfish sharks.

Mon

Took the ferry from Anacortes to Orcas Island. Set-up camp in Moran State Park. The eponymous Robert Moran is a very interesting character, look him up. Last night we did some window shopping in downtown Seattle, went to the Columbia Sportwear and Mountain Hard Wear stories. They almost count as high-end fashion in Seattle, sort of like Armani and Prada.

Urban Seattle - Sunday

We shopped for our trip and spent time in and around Seattle. Went to Uwajimaya in South Seattle, a fabulous Japanese megamart with great produce, Japanese groceries and delis. Also stopped by Fran's Chocolates in downtown -- famous for smoked sea salt caramels, I have her cookbook)in downtown, one of my favorite chocolate places all time, I've spent way too much money there. Stopped by the Bumbershoot music festival. Browsed some Pacifc NW First Nations art galleries. Off to Orcas Islands tomorrow. Pictures to come later in the week.

www.uwajimaya.com
www.bumbershoot.org
www.franschocolates.com

Arrived in Seattle - Puget Sound and Salmon

I've decided to post to his blog again, at least for a little while, so as to not clutter Facebook with too many updates of my trip.

We arrived at SeaTac Sat afternoon. It rained on and off during the day, but it was mild -- 55F at night, 70F during the day. Our campsite is at Dash Point in Tacoma, right next to the ocean. It rained quite heavily at night, but fortunately, we were upgraded to a rental car that is large enough for us to sleep in. That worked out real wekk. We will be able to weather the rain this long weekend in Seattle in the car. Hopefully once we arrive on the San Juans on Monday, the rain will let up. This weekend if also the Bumbershoot film festival in Seattle.

One of the attractions of the Puget Sound area is that is has the urban attractions of Seattle, but relatively pristine nature nearby, including the sound. I took Edita to Point Defiance Park, which has inexpensive boat and fishing rod rentals. We saw people catching Dungeness and salmon there. This got us excited about the prospect of fishing the islands next week. You wouldn't catch me eating a crab or salmon out of SF Bay, but here it's fine.

Another Seattle attraction for me and Edita is Ivar's Seafood Bar. This is literally a fast food joint, but it has wild Yukon river salmon (grilled or fried) as well as other wild fish such as halibut. Also, among other thins, salmon chowder and cioppino. This is kind of the McDonald's of Seattle.

Right now we're waiting out pouring rain at Starbucks in Tacoma. Trying to decide whether to do something outdoors or indoors.

http://www.ivars.net
http://www.metroparkstacoma.org/page.php?id=79