Lee Langley

Octopus beaks and snake soup

It’s ironic, says Michael Booth, that as junk food takes over Japan, Britain becomes addicted to seaweed

issue 07 October 2017

Driving across Japan’s Shikuko island, the food and travel writer Michael Booth pulls into a filling station to find, alongside the fizzy drinks and chewing gum, ‘vacuum-packed octopus beaks’. Who could resist? Not Booth. ‘Very crunchy,’ he reports. ‘And not in a good way.’

Booth is drawn to the offbeat, and The Meaning of Rice gives us a banquet of the unfamiliar: seaweed caviar, live squid sashimi, sea-urchin tongues, snake soup, bonito guts, silkworm pupae, and more, with all their smells, flavours and textures. I recall my disconcerting first meal in a traditional ryokan: pink wafers of raw horsemeat, boiled firefly squid and dark, gleaming eel. It was delicious; Booth would have approved.

Ten years ago he took his wife and two toddler sons on a three-month Japanese trip, eating their way from the tip of Hokkaido to the toe of Okinawa. His book, Sushi and Beyond, became an international award-winning bestseller.

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