The Soul of Yakitori
A trip away from the conbini to mine clay and craft charcoal.
Two weeks ago I was in Portland, Maine with my wife and mother-in-law. For a small town (pop. 66, 700) Portland has a bizarrely high concentration of superb restaurants. bon appétit magazine even crowned it the “Restaurant City of the Year” in 2018. Eventide’s chef reasoned it: 1) relatively low startup costs enabling chefs to dictate a restaurant’s vision versus investors; 2) the region’s amazing seafood.
I think there’s a third, ineffable factor — the Mainer. The people are salt of the earth, hardworking folks, who just know quality products mean an extra dollar spent and hour worked. Not to mention they’re kind as hell, especially compared to the assholes in Boston.
Why are we talking about Maine in a newsletter about the conbini?
Well, all these excellent restaurants need sharp knives, gadgets, and apparently, ceramic grills from Suzu, Ishikawa. In Portland’s East End we stumbled into a kitchenware shop unlike any other I’d seen. It’s called Strata. And it has an entire wall covered in Japanese and German knives — but no Globals or Wüsthofs. Instead, there were nakiri, deba, and yanagiba blades chiseled with the mark of craftsmen. I might as well have walked into a knife shop in Nishiki or Tsukiji. Just look at these beauties!
Naturally, the salesman had a mustache. When I inquired about where the fuck he got all these, he explained he’d been at it for years building relationships with vendors. Consequently, this shop is one of only a handful with such tremendous wares for sale.
Now, about those ceramic grills from Suzu. Mike and I lived in the Noto Peninsula, a remote part of Japan that sticks out like a thumb into the Japan sea. Suzu is at its very tip.
Towards the end of my time there I learned about konro, high-end ceramic grills made locally, which are especially great for yakitori (grilled skewered chicken). I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw not just one but a selection of them in this Portland shop.
Thanks to the internet, I managed to find the company that makes them: Noto Nenshouki Kougyou (能登燃焼器工業株式会社). Their website is worth many clicks, especially the gallery at the bottom.
Amazingly, a 71 year-old man mines the clay by hand. And we are lucky a documentary team captured his fine work on video. Click the gear icon to translate the subtitles.
I was forunate to work for a travel company in Ishikawa specializing in showcasing shokunin or craftsman. The skill, dedication, and reverence for their craft is hard to explain. The Japanese capture this with the word monozukuri.
The spirit of monozukuri exists in every step of the process — from sourcing the raw material to crafting the final piece. I once spoke with a shokunin who had grown nervous that his brushmaker was growing old and would soon be unable to provide the tools he needed for his fine work (he decorated wristwatches with lacquer and maki-e often using magnifying glasses). “The best bristles come from the belly hair of horses,” he said before correcting himself, “Actually, the best are from rats, who have been on wooden ships. Getting knocked around the wood does something special to their fur.”
The effort put into finding the materials to make the tools feels greater than the effort required to make a finished product. Shokunin simmer with a yearning for perfection while knowing they will never achieve it. Consequently, their effort never wanes.
This 71 year-old man is a wonderful example of such a shokunin.
Imagine being the next person in the process, the craftsman who shapes the block into a cylinder. A mistake would render the man’s effort worthless. It’s a cascading pressure towards perfection.
How far can the Japanese take this? Could they take it to…charcoal? You’re damn right they can!
My favorite yakitori shop, Akiyoshi, uses soft charcoal from Iwate according to their website. While I can’t say who their vendor is Iwate Prefecture has a charcoal association!
And these motherfuckers are putting more effort into hand-making charcoal than I’ve ever put into anything ever. All for a tasty piece of chicken!
I had thought to include a bit about conbini yakitori. After all, it is in the hot box alongside the chikis. But that is not the real deal. It’s a lame facsimile of the smokey, salty, juicy flavor bomb that drips hot fat onto mint charcoal burning red hot in a grill made from the calloused hands of a 71 year-old miner.
That’s not to say it isn’t good. It’s just not great.
In Case You Work for Netflix
I know Netflix is burning cash, cracking down on passwords, pondering ads, and just shitting its pants. But if you work for Netflix, here’s an idea for a show Mike and I could host.
It’s called The Conbini Boys! Every episode we start at the conbini and introduce an item. For example, yakitori! We grab it from the hot box, pay, and chow down while doing the whole moaning thing. THEN we travel Japan in search of the very best version of yakitori. But we don’t just find the chef. We meet the people who make the tools, equipment, and ingredients. The clay miner and Iwate Charcoal Association are perfect examples of people we’d meet.
Ok — now send us an offer!
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I would absolutely watch every single episode of that show if you filmed it.