Without miso, we cannot talk about Nagoya's popular foods. Miso (English: fermented soybean paste) is one of the necessary seasonings (along with shoyu (English: soy sauce) for Japanese food.
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| Miso is fermented in this big barrel at Miso Factory |
The term miso is figuratively used to mean the "essence" of something. Therefore, we could say that miso is an indispensible element of Nagoya's food.
Although there are several nationally popular foods that originate from Nagoya, this post will provide a short introduction to three of Nagoya's most popular foods, which have miso as a major ingredient.First, misokatsu is one of Nagoya's popular foods. Misokatsu is tonkatsu (meaning deep-fried pork) served with sweetened miso. Among different kinds of miso, Nagoyans like the very dark-color kind. Can you imagine how tonkatsu looks with that dark miso on it? You might think the food looks and tastes strange until you acquire the delicious taste. Yabaton is a famous restaurant franchise, which features tonkatsu. As you see in the picture below, there is always a long line of people who want to taste tonkatsu or misokatsu.
Secondly, misonikomi udon, or "udon noodles in the miso soup," is one type of noodle that Nagoyans enjoy. You might think misonikomi udon is less sophisticated because noodles are just dumped in the miso soup. Actually, it is not that simple.
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| Misonikomi Udon |
Finally, even cookies have some miso flavour. This shop (shown in the picture above) is called "Glico Shop," which sells sweet products (e.g., caramel and chocolate) of Glico, a famous confectionary in Japan. The company Glico sells speciality sweet items all over Japan. In Nagoya, cookies called miso-flavoured "Pretz" are one of Nagoya's specialty items.
Interestingly, as you can see from the picture, t-shirts carrying Japanese characters of Nagoya dialect ("doerya" introduced in our previous blog) are on sale as a good souvenir item, along with these cookies.
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