Japanese Culture in New York - Chopsticks NY

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What I love about Japanese society is the great sense of the “We.”

Michael Romano
Born in New York, he entered the restaurant business even before attending culinary school.  After graduation, he built up his career working in France, England, Switzerland, and across Europe.  He joined Union Square Café in 1988, and shortly after that, the restaurant received three stars from the New York Times. It also earned a Zagat Survey #1 ranking as New York’s Most Popular Restaurant.  He has received numerous nominations and awards, including the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef in New York City. 

Michael Romano has helmed Union Square Café (USC), the top-rated New York City restaurant, for over 20 years both as the executive chef and as a co-owner.  He also contributed to the opening of landmark restaurants like Tabla and Blue Smoke.  This past March his new restaurant, Union Square Tokyo (UST), was born.  Recently returned from Japan, he talks about his efforts to launch UST and his adventures in Tokyo while chatting in his home base of the USC.

How is UST going?
It’s going well.  When you talk about starting to develop a restaurant’s personality, this restaurant (USC) is 22 years old.  It wasn’t until after the first few years that its personality started to develop, and it’s still developing, still growing.  So, to look at a restaurant that’s only 7 or 8 months old, it’s a baby.  But I think it’s got a good foundation.

How do you describe the differences between diners here and at UST?
Typically for Tokyo, there are many groups of women going out for lunch.  The men, I think, go out more for dinner.  This time, I saw more foreigners and more Americans than before.  When I spoke to them, they had a lot of good comments.  We have a lot of Australians in Japan, many more than we get here, I think, and they all seemed to like the food.  A lot of them knew about USC in New York. The hardest thing to do with a new restaurant is to develop a base of new customers, a new clientele.  It’s not enough to just open your doors and say, “Ok, come on in, we’re open.”  You have to know who’s coming, why they’re coming, what they like, what they don’t like, what you can do to make them feel more at home.  And that’s very much what we’re doing here: trying to make people feel at home.

The ingredients you get in Japan must be very different from what you can get in New York.  How do you deal with that?
Some things are tricky to find.  For example, I had two dishes that we’re very well known for here in New York: garlic potato chips and mashed potatoes. When I first got to Japan in March, I started trying to develop those recipes and they gave me a certain potato that wasn’t working.  It just didn’t cook right, the mashed potatoes didn’t have right consistency.  And I asked the chef, “Can you find me something else?  This isn’t really working.”  And he came up with what’s called a May Queen from Hokkaido, and it’s beautiful.  It’s a great potato that’s really good for mashed potatoes.

So, you try hard to incorporate unique Japanese ingredients into your dishes?
Exactly.  For example, in New York we just pick a fish we want to serve, put it on the menu, and buy it every day.  But in Japan the chef prefers not to commit to one particular fish so that he can get what’s best at the market since it changes a lot. They use small purveyors for fish so we really depend on what the fisherman catches each day, just trusting that it’s fresh. Also, we’re using American beef at UST, which is good for the steaks; however, on the lunch menu, we have a hamburger.  Our hamburger here is a very specific recipe from our butcher, made fresh every day, just for us.  We tried to do something similar in Japan, and it wasn’t quite right, so the chef developed the recipe using wagyu and different seasonings, that is really, really delicious, but it’s different from the USC burger.  So, for the moment, I think that’s the best solution.  It’s better than trying to imitate what we do in New York and having it not taste as good.

What’s the most popular dish in UST?
Well, let’s see.  Definitely Ibelico Pork is very popular, and Grilled Garlic-Rubbed Fillet of Chu-Toro Tuna. It’s very interesting how this tuna actually developed. Our signature dish here in New York, for 22 years, has been the filet mignon tuna. We thought that would be a popular dish in Japan since it has Japanese ingredients, and then we discovered that it’s not.  So we analyzed it, trying to figure out why, and there were several reasons. So, instead of fighting it we decided to just do something different.  So I developed this recipe with Chu-Toro, which is a beautiful piece of tuna.  It came from a recipe I have here for steak where I rub it with lots of garlic, lots of black pepper, then grill it, slice it and serve it with lemon and coarse sea salt. So we tried that with the tuna and it was delicious and it’s very popular now. Hopefully, we’ve just created our new signature dish, although we don’t believe in telling you, the guest, what our signature dish is.  You tell us what it is by ordering it.  You enjoy it for years and years and years and then it becomes our signature dish.  So, we’ll see.  Right now, we don’t really have a signature dish in Tokyo.

About Life in Tokyo, would you share a couple of your experiences with our readers?  
Well, just a few weeks ago I was on the subway, and I looked over and I noticed that there were two disabled people in kind of big wheelchairs. I didn’t think anything of it, and then I looked again and suddenly thought to myself, “That’s amazing. There are wheelchairs on this subway.”  Wheelchair accessible subways are not something that happens in New York. But what happened after that was even more amazing.  I was watching as they got off at the station and there was a uniformed subway attendant waiting at the door where they were getting off, at the exact door. He had a ramp, and the door opened, he opened the ramp, and helped the person get off just like that (snaps his fingers).  No delay.  So, that means they had to call ahead, tell the station where they’re getting off, where they were on the train, what door they’re going to get out of.  It’s amazing. The best way I can put it is that what I love about Japanese society is that there’s this great sense of the “We” as opposed to New York which is about “Me,” I think Japanese society is about, “Ok, we’re gonna live together on this island, and live in a civilized way and so we have to follow certain rules.”  And everybody knows what the rules are, and by and large people respect them. Maybe “agreements” is a better word for this. There are certain behaviors that everyone agrees to live by. And it works.  And there is, I feel, respect for the person. Over and over and over, you see that the person is acknowledged as an important human being.  I found that very refreshing.

You once mentioned that you like Asakusa.  Why is that?
Because it’s about more traditional Japanese goods. It’s not the Gucci, Chanel and Tiffany.  I love really simple things, tenugui or that kind of thing.  And I just got very interested in kimono for men.  So, I had a little adventure in kimono, looking for one for when I go back.  I was walking around and there’s a place ahead of me with kimono outside.  So I went into the store.  I didn’t know at this point anything about kimono – how it’s worn, the different layers, how you tie it – nothing.  I was thinking I want to just get, like, a bathrobe.  So, I wander around for a little while, talking as best as I could because they don’t speak English and I bought two pieces, kimono and haori, and obi and himo and whatever.  But whenever I find out about something interesting I always like to learn about it, the right way to do it, the significance, and so I started to research kimono online and I learned that I was missing the nagajuban, the long piece underneath the kimono.  So, I went to Matsuya, Mitsukoshi in Ginza, and they don’t have any kimono for men.  But in Matsuya, the sales girl, told me “Oh, just two blocks around the corner, there’re wonderful kimono for men.”  Motoji, that what it’s called, so of course I went. Now, this place is like the top of the line.  It’s only custom made.  You have to pick the silk and so on. Fortunately one of the attendants spoke English.  So, I started asking questions, she explained everything and I bought a magazine that had a lot of information with beautiful kimono pictures.  

You didn’t order a handmade kimono there?
Well, through my research I started to learn about all the different layers and how you wear it, so then I came back again to the store with the one I had bought.  And they took my measurements, then they measured the one that I bought, and it turned out it didn’t fit me.  They were made for much shorter men. They said maybe they could fix it, but it would cost more than I would pay to buy it.   I had no more time because I had to leave to come back to the US but I said in February, when I come back, I’m going to have one made, the full deal.  So, I’m very excited about that. I think the idea of a formal kimono would be nice because I could wear it to the James Beard Awards.  I think that would be a lot of fun.  

—— Interview by Noriko Komura

Union Square Tokyo
Tokyo Midtown Garden Terrace
9-7-4 Akasaka Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052
TEL: 03-5413-7780
(From the US, dial 011-81-3-5413-7780)