Tokyo è una grande cucina. I giapponesi si conoscono a tavola

Tokyo Is a Great Kitchen: The Japanese Get to Know Each Other at the Table

When Flavio Parisi first arrived in Tokyo twenty years ago, he had packed two kilos of spaghetti and two cans of peeled tomatoes in his suitcase, unsure of how long he could survive without Italian food. In reality, he didn’t use them until over a month later — and only because his new Japanese friends were determined to try his famous pasta with tomato sauce.
While all-you-can-eat sushi was becoming popular in Italy, Parisi was starting a new life on the other side of the world as an Italian teacher for opera singers in Tokyo. He learned the basics of the language and, above all, discovered a new and burning passion: Japanese cuisine, which in a sense became the “real reason” he was able to put down roots there.
In Tokyo, it is impossible to eat badly: whether you step into a humble izakaya or a refined sushi restaurant, approach a yakitori grill stall or a tavern specializing in soba, you can rest assured. The meticulous care the Japanese devote to form is reflected in the way they prepare and serve dishes: just watch the chef at the counter, adjusting the frying rhythm to match the pace of each diner, ensuring that the tempura is served at its peak of crispiness and flavor.
Through this spiritual and gastronomic initiation, Flavio encounters the rough tenderness of workers at the fish market and the solitude of the shokunin, the sushi master. We meet, alongside him, seasoned rice sommeliers and young nihonshu (for beginners: sake) distillers, umami scientists, pastry chefs devoted to maritozzi, and wandering musicians.
If Tokyo is a great kitchen, it’s not just about quality: the Japanese passion for food becomes culture, sharing, secular celebration, and religious ritual all at once. And it is a spirit that, in the end, unites us: after twenty years, Flavio Parisi is still amazed every day at how much Italy he finds in this distant Japan.