Life Always Wins. Follow Me

Japanese cuisine is so varied and refined that it’s hard to happen upon something unpleasant to the palate. My personal procedure in Japan is to take a seat at the counter and start pointing, completely at random, to a series of dishes chosen on the basis of how much I like the characters with which they are represented. Normally, they turn out to be small dishes, with small servings, that in no time start crowding the counter space allotted to me, turning it into a little work of art. That’s the moment I like best: You feel the rush that comes with gambling, but without the risk, except the negligible one of a truly unsavory dish. Then comes the pleasure of discovery: What am I eating? What are the ingredients? How was it prepared?

During one of these blind dinners in Kitakyushu, I happened onto a mysterious dish that defied all my efforts to figure it out. It was a sort of whitish little pouch about the size of a ravioli, lightly fried and filled with a creamy substance tasting of fish. The flavor was delicious and so, having finished the first serving, I promptly ordered a second, so as to study it in depth. It reminded me of something from Italian cooking but I couldn’t put my