Work Text:
It’s a Monday afternoon when Osamu talks to Akaashi Keiji for the third time.
He’s almost sold out of their most popular and seasonal varieties— the pork shogayaki had gone by 10am— and he’s about to fall asleep from staying up until an unholy hour the night before. But as the bespectacled man walks into his store, Osamu’s interest skyrockets anyway— Akaashi, all lovely in his long wool coat, cream muffler, black turtleneck. They are some thousand kilometres away from the Sendai City Gymnasium, away from a sizable Onigiri Miya stand perched out the front. They are some hundreds of kilometres away from Spring Nationals, from the Fukurodani v Inarizaki match in their third year.
This is him, Miya Osamu, in his natural habitat, and it’s as much of where his heart inhabits as much as his home, and part of him suddenly becomes hyper aware of every little detail of the construction of his restaurant, from the industrial concrete walls to the snow queen pothos trailing down next to his cashier. How it’s just him, by himself— he had sent Mie-san home earlier, as she needed to attend a doctor’s appointment with her son.
And god, Akaashi looks lovely.
“Well, if it ain’t Akaashi Keiji,” he drawls, pleased. He’s in the middle of prep work— constructing fillings for tomorrow’s batch— but he sets down his knife like a good store clerk, and remarks, “You’re a long way from home, aren’t ya?”
“Miya-san,” Akaashi replies, his tone as cool as ever, “I’m in Osaka visiting some relatives. I thought I’d— drop by.”
“Glad y’thought of me,” Osamu chuckles, “What can I get for you?”
Akaashi contemplates, peering down at the varieties in front of him. His eyelids droop low, and Osamu realises just how long his eyelashes are, illuminated in the mid-afternoon light.
“One each of the umeboshi, the nanohana, the konbu, please. Oh— and also, two of the karaage chicken, two of the salmon, one of the mentaiko,” Akaashi looks up, chewing on his lip. “Is it okay if those ones are packaged separately?”
“Coming right up,” Osamu says, plucking the rice balls out of their stand and into a lovingly designed box. “You givin’ out my onigiri to your whole family, Akaashi-kun? Or do you just have a monster appetite?”
Akaashi smiles as if he’s been caught off-guard, but a kind of distant familiarity stretches out between them both. Osamu wonders when he started wearing glasses.
“Nah. I’m actually visiting Bokuto-san tonight,” he says matter-of-factly.
“You’d better not let him pawn off any of those to my brother, or else he’s gonna have to pay up. Double,” Osamu replies, a kind of sharp, teasing tone in his voice. He knows that Atsumu is notorious for stealing food from their shared apartment’s fridge— has seen it, dobbed on it, had to live with it for nineteen years. And now it’s Bokuto’s problem, the poor guy. He offers up a silent prayer for his sanity.
By way of thanks, Osamu sneaks in extra onigiri— a gyutan variety tucked away from the display, and a negitoro. Just in case.
“Don’t worry,” Akaashi says, laughter dancing across his cheeks, “I’m sure they’ll all be gone before your brother can get his hands on them, Miya-san.”
He turns to leave, and Osamu waves.
“See ya around, Akaashi-kun.”
“I’ll probably be back,” he replies.
That night, Osamu closes up with a pleased kind of smile on his face. He doesn’t think much of it— there have been many familiar faces who have dropped by in the short span of his restaurant, and as is, Akaashi Keiji is another blip in his star space.
A blip with long lashes and the kind of syrup-sweet smile that comes with years of growing into your own skin.
He packs up his knife roll, cleans off his ten-inch takayuki blade, labels the last of the fillings in their tupperware containers and sits them aside for later. He munches on a failed prototype saba onigiri, sitting on his own counter seats like a customer. He breathes a sort of sigh of absolution, a weird mixture of content and lonely, all at once.
He opens up Twitter, sees that prolific food blog Hungry Owl has updated. Reads something about tonkatsu that makes his mouth water.
Rinse and repeat, Osamu thinks, as he shutters the store, calling his brother on the commute home.
Tonkatsu Makoto
$$ / Shinjuku Lumine Est
A crispy, shatter-light panko coating. The juicy interior of flavourful pork. The thin layer of buttery smooth sinew that rests in between. Sauce, rich and savoury with the sweetness of fruit, home-made. These are the things essential to any good tonkatsu, and they find their home in chef Taro Iwai’s Tonkatsu Makoto.
Tonkatsu Makoto is a fan-favourite establishment which has been in Shinjuku’s Lumine dining hall almost since its establishment. Its clean, bamboo exterior and modern lines provide the perfect environment for a casual family meal or a relaxed mid-week date.
It is every bit deserving of its reputation— the portions are generous and the tonkatsu is memorable, with even the economy cuts offering a melt in your mouth experience. While the kaki furai are nothing to write home about— the oysters are a little bit tough and rubbery— everything from the side dishes to the asari miso soup is fantastic. The tonkatsu sauce is absolutely sublime; absolutely nothing like the store bought variety, it is so wonderfully umami that it brought a tear to my eye.
Try: The ladies’ set offers a wonderful sampler of all the fried cuts and some of the side dishes. It also comes with dessert. Otherwise get the loin. It won’t disappoint.
Miss: The kaki furai. I wish I hadn’t.
Would I eat here again?: Yes. Absolutely.
[ATTACHED IMAGE: two heaping slabs of tonkatsu served on a wire rack, nestled with a pile of cabbage and several colourful side dishes.]
Miya Osamu dreams.
His dreams have always been vivid, the kind with the startling clarity of a knife’s point. When he was younger, they were full of inane things— the extra piece of tamagoyaki that couldn’t fit into a bento box, the acid-sharp fizz of ramune during a summer festival. The time he scraped his knee on the polished floor of their elementary school court. The infuriating feeling of his bottled cafè au lait getting stuck in the vending machine near their house.
Now that he is older, he dreams of travelling through Europe, through the winding streets of Modena, Italy; the remote seaside town of Noirmoutier, France. He dreams of walking through vineyards in the Napa, dreams of a lunch that morphs into dinner in the Sicilian afternoon. He dreams of the fine pleats of xiao long bao, of the chewy-supple texture of hand-pulled noodles, of the sour-sweet bursts of flavour from an Australian finger lime.
Instead of the smell of rubber of a Mikasa ball, instead of chasing the high of a well-timed spike, Osamu dreams of the clean marble kitchen tops of an unopened restaurant. He dreams of hours and hours spent revising recipes under a fading sun. He dreams of the satisfaction of hearing those blessed words— yes, chef.
Now that he is older, his dreams threaten to eclipse him whole. They are coloured with the dreamy wash of daybreak, with the haze of the morning rush. They claw into the crevices of the spaces he inhabits, leaving him with no room for anything else. No room to enjoy holidays and explore, no room for anywhere but up, because who on earth will run his dream when he rests?
Osamu wakes to the feeling of want, over and over and over again. It makes him ache with the sting of it; follows him through his waking hours. When you’re seventeen and figuring things out, no one ever tells you that dreams are made of glass, made of the dust of the earth and too easy to shatter. No one ever tells you that dreams are high maintenance as fuck, that they are the marathon and not the victory lap.
So he tries. He looks to Atsumu, wrapped in his armour of night and claw marks, and he sure as hell tries his best, because it would feel like an injustice not to.
This time, it is morning rush when Akaashi turns up to Onigiri Miya. It has been three days since their last encounter— Osamu’s not counting, he swears— and he’s wearing the same wool coat, the same subtle smile. There are quite a few seated patrons, so he works fast, grins at the other man in between careful presses of rice and nori. He doesn’t need to look at which side of the nori sheet is which, not anymore, he can feel it with a subtle brush of his fingertips.
“Welcome back, Akaashi-kun,” he says. Akaashi’s cheeks are slightly flushed from the cold, his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“Thanks, Miya-san. Bokuto-san really appreciated the extra gyutan that you gave us the other day,” he says, removing his coat from around his shoulders. “He called you his hero.”
Osamu laughs and takes note of the lack of mention of the missing negitoro. Hook, line and sinker, he thinks. His brother took the bait.
“Glad to hear it. Are you eatin’ in or takin’ away?”
“Eating in, please,” he answers, and Osamu points to the lone seat that is just out of his line of sight.
Mie-san hurries over to give him a menu, to replace cutlery and give him a warm towel. Osamu responds with a nod as she hands him his order on a slip of parchment paper.
He orders miso and tamago today. The miso is Osamu’s favourite. It’s arguably his most simple, the grilled type of onigiri that is slightly chewy on the outside and soft in the middle, but the miso that he uses is a red variety from a small supplier in Shizuoka Prefecture that makes his rice sing. The first time he’d tasted it, a tiny little sampler at a premium department store in downtown Kyoto, he couldn’t shake the thought of it out of his mind for weeks.
He thinks about it again as he brushes the rice generously with it, places it on low heat. Swerves around to present it in front of Akaashi.
“Thanks for waitin’,” he says, as is customary.
And then: “You in Osaka for very long, Akaashi-san?” As is not customary.
“Just another week or so,” he says, nodding in thanks. “Deadlines are eternal, unfortunately.”
Osamu nods as if he understands (he doesn’t— high school was a long time ago, now), and that somehow awards him another nice smile.
Something else he doesn’t quite understand: the way his eyes keep flickering back to Akaashi’s seated form, the curve of his jaw, the soft of his cheeks. The heat, itching down his throat. It’s dry, his throat is so dry, and he doesn’t understand, so he opens his mouth and says instead:
“Well, if y’wanna pop in before you leave again— y’should. I’ve got a new variety comin’ up in the next few days—“ he doesn’t, “y’can be the first to taste test it for me.”
“I will,” Akaashi replies, bringing the onigiri into his hands. The warmth coats his glasses in a tiny sheen of fog, and he bats it away, chuckling. “Thank you.”
Osamu temporarily forgets about their conversation as they are hammered for morning service— there is a line that stretches out of his restaurant, twists around the path next to the bubble tea store. He remembers again when they are closing up, as he is, once again, cleaning off his takayuki. He thinks of the fragrant lightness of nanohana, of its tendrils stuck in his teeth. Thinks of fingers, wiry, long, grasped around an onigiri, threaded through his own.
“Ah, fuck,” he says aloud, making Mie-san jump.
East Japan Eki-ben Awards 2020
$ / Tokaido Shinkansen stops
I had the pleasure of sampling some winners of the Eki-ben awards recently on a holiday. These are the ones available along the JR Tokaido line that I managed to snag on restock. It was a bloodbath, let me tell you.
A small disclaimer that some of these were eaten quite a few hours after I had purchased them— I am only one man, after all, and I had to employ some rather enthusiastic help to finish them.
Three, eight: “Hiruika” bento
1,250 yen
As its name implies, this bento features an array of beautifully marinated seafood atop a bed of seasoned rice— layers of juicy mackerel are nestled between slices of arrow squid so thin that they are practically translucent. Octopus shards, coated in a sweet-sticky soy, and spring bamboo shoots top off the box and enhance its flavour profile by bringing a kind of balance to the fishy flavours. This eki-ben is well worth its price tag— for 1200 yen it is practically a steal.
Aomori Ogawara Beef: Yakishabu bento
1,200 yen
This bento is what it says on the tin. It is succulent pieces of high quality beef from Aomori, which is known to carry a certain quality of beautiful marbling on their products. There are some tsukemono on the side, but let's be real: you don’t choose this box for the side dishes.
When I showed this one to my aforementioned help, he promptly picked me up, spun me around, and squeezed me in an all-encompassing bear hug. (He is 87 kilograms of pure muscle and a professional athlete). When he tasted it, he did it again, much to my dismay. There were actual sparkles in his eyes. If I had known it would only take 1,200 yen to elicit this kind of reaction from him, then I would have done it much sooner. (I should have known— his favourite food is yakiniku.)
(Read more…)
Osamu is twelve when he starts to dream of food.
It is his parents’ fifteenth anniversary, and to commemorate the occasion they take them on a weekend vacation to Kyoto. They stay at the fanciest hotel that he’s ever seen in his life— he and Atsumu share a king bed, there’s a freaking television in the bathroom, and Osamu thinks that he has reached paradise. That is, until they are taken to a lovely restaurant in Arashiyama overlooking the Katsuragawa River, and he and Atsumu experience their first ever kaiseki dinner— and it leaves him absolutely floored.
The meal is a work of art, and he still remembers every course— he remembers the medai, sashimi style, perched across a fan of pickled zucchini ribbons; the exquisite texture of the house-made yudofu, silky and pure and accompanied with the most flavourful dashi broth. He remembers the autumnal flavours, the single maple leaf accompanying the seasonal cut of Kawachi duck, the chewy texture of the chestnut mochi at the end.
He had never been a particularly picky eater, as a child: both he and Atsumu had hated natto with a passion, but that was the exception. But after this meal, Osamu resolves to try everything.
Atsumu is floored by it too, of course. Both of them take home their menus as keepsake, even though the calligraphy is too difficult for them to decipher and the kanji far too complex. Atsumu loses his a few days later, buried and crumpled somewhere amidst the chaos of returning back home. Osamu carries it like it’s something precious— like a volleyball, he thinks, and he continues to talk about it for weeks until Atsumu quietly overtakes him as setter in their elementary school league.
After that, Osamu sits down and actually thinks about the flavours in his mother’s oden, pours over shitty recipes in magazines and watches those B-tier food tour shows on television which have a cutaway to the audience reacting to a huge bowl of gyudon. He consumes content about the greats: Yamamoto Seiji, Ono Jiro, Marco Pierre-White. He ropes Atsumu into watching Iron Chef with him, and they howl every single time Kaga Takeshi takes a heaping bite into a raw green pepper at the start of every episode.
He takes the meagre allowance he has and saves it towards cookbooks, and this is something done in secret, while Atsumu will still be at the gym practicing his serve. He has a Robuchon phase, in which he thinks he’ll learn French cooking, has a Massimo Bottura phase, has a Julia Child phase. He reads reviews— of Kyubey, of L’Osier, and is ecstatic when the Michelin Guide is announced in Japan. He watches No Reservations in three parts on Youtube, sans subtitles, trying his best to decipher Bourdain’s chatter.
And of course, Osamu cooks. His mother is wary, at first, his father even more so— but slowly he learns how to handle a knife, learns his mother’s recipe for oyakodon, her miso soup, her curry. He becomes good enough that she is confident to leave him be. There’s a kind of smug satisfaction he gets when she rats out Atsumu for not helping as he is.
He caters for a small little celebration after the third years’ graduation. It’s nothing fancy— some chahan and karaage and a plate of curry croquettes, but his peers are happy, and his senpai are happy, so he is content.
Later that day, he and Atsumu walk home, each cradling a stack of empty tupperware containers, full of his cooking and laughter and the memories that they don’t need. It’s seven in the evening, and they walk through a gentle snowstorm of peach blossoms, illuminated by fluorescent streetlights.
“Hey Samu,” Atsumu says, nonchalantly, “When did’ja learn to cook like that?”
Osamu just shrugs in response, flicking a petal out of his hair. He says something dismissive, throat dry and aching, and part of him is almost thankful when his brother begins to spout volleyball talk once again.
Atsumu’s question clings to his mind for weeks.
It is there when they do their final exams for the year, there when he picks up a new bento cookbook in the spring break. It sticks to him— like mochi, like the sticky-sweet honey glaze atop of his mother’s chicken recipe, leaves an imprint in his soul.
Oh, it makes him think, maybe I do have a chance, after all.
True to his word, Akaashi Keiji enters Onigiri Miya for the third time on a Friday night, shortly before closing. This time, Osamu thinks about the way that his turtleneck wraps around his neck, his chest, his lean waist. The slanted tips of his ears, the slender bridge of his nose.
“Akaashi-kun! Glad y’could make it. Have a seat,” he says, instead.
The other man thanks him, gives him a little half-bow as he takes off his coat and slides into the counter seat directly in front of where his main workstation is. This time, Osamu is the one to serve him tea, to hand him a warm towel. He had given Mie-san an early mark, just for tonight.
“How have you been, Miya-san?” Akaashi asks, as polite and structured as ever. Not a single strand of his hair out of place.
“Peachy,” Osamu replies, with a lazy grin. He starts structuring the Akaashi special— his take on akuma no onigiri. He figures that Akaashi would appreciate the flavour and quality of his rice, the comforting smell of dashi; the small slivers of tempura crisps.
“Did something good happen?”
“I mean, I’m doin’ what I love, I have loyal customers, I get to hang out with people like you,” Osamu says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Somethin’ good is always happening.” His smile widens as he places the rice ball down in front of Akaashi.
“Thanks for waitin’,” Osamu says, and his anticipation is palpable.
“Ah, is this what I think it is?” Akaashi inquires, and there is a faint dusting of pink on his cheeks that Osamu deludes himself into thinking wasn’t there before.
“Yup. Ak—aashi no onigiri,” he smirks, pleased with himself.
The other man stares for him for a beat, before bursting into a raucous fit of laughter. He laughs until there are tears in his eyes, and he looks so wonderful— his smile, his cheeks, and Osamu didn’t know that Akaashi could look like this, so unhindered and joyous and precious.
“Miya-san,” Akaashi replies, “I can't believe I’m saying this, but your jokes are just as bad as your brother’s.”
Osamu scowls at that, face on fire as his awful attempt at a pun gets completely shot down, but he’s still giddy at the remnants of Akaashi’s laugh.
“It’s okay,” Akaashi says, still smiling. “All of your onigiri could be named as badly as that and I would still eat here.” He takes a bite, and Osamu watches as he chews, Akaashi’s delicate features not giving anything away.
“Well? Does it live up to your namesake?” Osamu asks.
“It’s good, Miya-san,” Akaashi says. There’s a strange kind of expression on his face, Osamu thinks, and it makes him frown, just a little— he speaks slowly, as if he’s choosing his words carefully. “I think you could probably afford to make the tempura pieces a little bit bigger, though.”
“You can tear me to shreds, Akaashi,” he assures, laughing, “I can take it. My staff do it to me on a regular basis.”
“It’s a bit bland. The dashi rice itself has kind of a subtle flavour, so I think you could afford to salt it a little bit more. The aonori is also a bit underwhelming— there’s not enough of it to taste the flavour,” Akaashi replies, all at once, before covering his mouth out of embarrassment— and Osamu can definitely see the flush on his face now. But rather than being pissed off or affronted, or even taken aback by any degree, it is endearment that invades his thoughts. Akaashi Keiji is endearing, he can’t help but think, with all his subtle half-smiles and his beautiful, windswept laughter.
“Yes, chef. It’ll be better next time, I promise,” Osamu replies, and he means to give Akaashi a reassuring smile, but what comes instead is a fond grin.
“But if you don’t eventually put this on the menu, I’ll be very disappointed, Miya-san,” Akaashi says, still taking bites despite how it is— and Osamu thinks about his own inability to waste food. Akaashi casts his gaze downward, bashfully, before he continues, “You shouldn’t trust my opinion, though. I’m not a chef and I have no food experience.”
“Why wouldn’t I trust you?” Osamu replies, “You’ve been eatin’ stuff all your life, haven’t you?”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t count—“
“Sure it does,” Osamu frowns, “And even if it didn’t, I'd trust you anyway.”
Akaashi doesn’t argue with that. He takes a few sips of his tea, and Osamu can practically hear his brain kick into overdrive, can hear the sound of the exhaust rattling as Akaashi’s thoughts speed across at 150 down the highway. You barely know me, is what Osamu thinks Akaashi would say, if he were a little bit less polite. And because Osamu thinks that he’s pretty good at picking apart silences, having had to decipher Atsumu’s for years, he takes a shot in the dark.
“I’d like to get to know you, Akaashi-kun,” Osamu says, a measured smile on his face. “Let’s do dinner? Somewhere that isn’t here?”
There is— shock, Osamu thinks, that flits across Akaashi’s eyes. For a moment Osamu thinks that he’s overstepped, that he’s moved too quickly. Maybe Akaashi isn’t single?
“Ah, well, you see,” Akaashi hesitates, smiles that little sheepish half-smile that Osamu likes, “I’m actually going back to Tokyo tomorrow, Miya-san.”
Ah.
“But the next time I’m in Osaka— or you in Tokyo— I’d love to. I’d love for you to take me around to all your favourite spots, and vice versa,” Akaashi’s smile morphs into something gentle, wistful, and Osamu’s heart skips a beat. Or two. Or several. Or a hundred— he might as well be in cardiac arrest, because he thinks that this is his favourite Akaashi Smile so far, and if Osamu were cooking a steak right now, it would be past the point of well-done. It would be burnt to a crisp. Absolute fucking rubber.
“I’ll hold you to it, then,” Osamu replies, and the promise hangs in the air through the rest of the night.
After he is done cleaning, Akaashi tells him how his uncle owns a sake brewery in Hyogo, describes it nestled between a frost-capped mountain and a river with crystal clear water. Osamu exchanges stories of Kita’s rice farm, of his two-week-long stay there helping him tend to the fields after he had quit his first line chef job.
Akaashi will tell him stories of Bokuto in high school, his obsession with yakiniku, the time where he ran out of hair gel and suddenly everyone could not stop talking about him. He will return these with the tale of Atsumu frying his hair with bleach for the first time, of the time where he forgot his bento at the bottom of his bag for weeks and it had grown mushrooms, of his brief hyperfixation with Ayumi Hamasaki. Both of them will commiserate over the chaotic whirlwind of those two— who in some ways, will always be a part of them— and laugh about continually having to do damage control.
Akaashi stays until the only stores that are left open in the neighbourhood are the conbini, until Osamu’s cheeks hurt with laughter.
When he leaves, Osamu wipes the spotless counters down again. Stalls at his shop for a little bit longer. The silence stretches out as he slides into the seat that is still warm from Akaashi’s body heat, as he idly scrolls through Hungry Owl on his phone.
It is hard, Osamu thinks, to build relationships with suppliers. These are the kind of things that he didn’t anticipate until starting his own restaurant from the ground up, having only worked in kitchens of restaurants that had been fairly established for years. Every new dish demands a new supplier, particularly those with unique ingredients, and it isn’t just as simple as asking for apples from Aomori, he has to consider costs and seasonality and terroir and all that other bullshit. It’s frustrating, especially not having a sous chef to bounce ideas off, he just has— well, he has Atsumu. But Atsumu is a professional athlete with a professional nutrition plan, and he knows that Atsumu would bend over backwards for “free samples” on the daily, but Osamu wouldn’t do that to him.
He is in the middle of a meeting with a new sabi supplier when his phone dings with a text from Akaashi. It catches him off guard— he and Akaashi have been chatting casually for the past couple of weeks, ever since he had left for Tokyo, but Akaashi rarely texts during work hours. Osamu wonders if something has happened, and the thoughts occupy him through tastings of the grated horseradish, through negotiations of specific requests.
When bows have been exchanged and he is alone, once again, he properly reads the text preview. Onigiri Miya is closed on Mondays— so he allows himself the indulgence while working on the akuma no onigiri again.
Akaashi Keiji (9:36 AM)
> do you ever stop to think what life would be like if you went pro instead?
He raises an eyebrow.
Well— of all the things, he wasn’t expecting that. But Akaashi Keiji is, as he has learnt, full of surprises, and this little sliver of vulnerability is refreshing, almost. It unlocks something in him that feels intimate, that breaches the hundreds of little walls that he’s put up between himself and the world.
Me (10:32 AM)
> yo. sorry for the late reply
> i can’t say i’ve never thought abt it before but
> honestly i’d probably feel like a bit of a fraud
Osamu finds it both difficult and simple to put it into words. Climbing alone, reaching his own goals, away from his support network, his friends, from Tsumu— he feels this strange kind of dichotomy between content and disparate that has never quite gone away.
He knows that he would have been miserable, chasing after a dream that wasn’t his own, and it has long stopped feeling like guilt, but the possibility still lingers like nothing else. Some part of him craves the energy of being on a living, breathing unit, on a team, and though Mie-san and him have a companionable thing going, it does not replace the high of going through a journey with people you cherish.
Akaashi Keiji (10:34 AM)
> thanks for indulging me.
> sorry that was so out of the blue.
> i think i’d be unhappy too, though.
Me (10:35 AM)
> is something up?
Akaashi Keiji (10:37 AM)
> haha yeah.
> [ attachment: IMG_6676.jpg ]
Osamu expands the image. It’s a store bought bento, a relatively healthy one with plenty of vegetables and potato salad. There’s nanohana tucked away in a little compartment at the top, and pressed into the centre of the rice is a single umeboshi. It looks good, he thinks. Like something he could probably eat on the regular.
Akaashi Keiji (10:37 AM)
> this was the bento my mother used to buy for me when i was in high school.
> i found it again today at a random bento takeout shop
> and immediately gave me all this nostalgia lol
> and it got me thinking i guess
Osamu can hear him thinking all the way from Tokyo, and it hurts, just a little bit. He suddenly wants to see him, wants to see the knot in between Akaashi’s brows; his little half-smile.
He texts back something about his own mediocre high school lunches, and talks about associating the drink Green Dakara with the time that he and Atsumu had almost passed out trying to outrun each other in the middle of fucking nowhere and his brother had slammed the wrong button on the vending machine and got it instead of Pocari— and had to suffer through chugging it anyway, because they had no change left.
The idle chatter seems to work, because Akaashi enthusiastically replies with his own stories of post-game yakiniku related shenanigans, before he finally realises the time and decides to resume productivity.
Akaashi Keiji (11:15 AM)
> alright time to actually go back and work.
> but thanks, miya-san
> i rly appreciate it.
Osamu smiles down at his phone, a kind of teethy, private grin that he can’t control. If Atsumu were here, he would have immediately chewed him out.
San Ryouriten
$$$ / Osaka, Japan
A few weeks ago, I asked you guys on Twitter for suggestions for restaurants to visit in Osaka. (I know, I know. I will get around to writing my review of Onigiri Miya soon. I promise it’s coming.)
Quite a few of you also did recommend San Ryouriten, an up-and-coming French bistro which was recently awarded a Michelin star. The restaurant is an unassuming space with counter seating only, and from its bamboo exterior it’s easy to mistake it for a traditional Japanese restaurant, but rest assured the menu is very decidedly French.
The chef’s set menu (totalling 6000 yen before wine pairings) is structured like your typical French eatery. The soup course is a beautiful wild porcini consommé with fresh herbs and a few delicate morsels of liquid gnocchi, served with a crisp sliver of almond shortbread. It was so flavourful that my dining partner decided to drink the remnants directly with his mouth as if it were tea, trying to elicit every drop from the tiny bowl.
It is the meat course that is the show-stopper, however. Perfectly cut A5 Kagoshima Wagyu, cooked pink with a pomegranate jus, with a beautiful golden potato terrine, arranged artfully like a rose. The meat is wonderful, with enough bite to hold its own but enough marbling to leave a pleasant melt in your mouth, and the subtle acidity of the jus ties it all together magically.
Overall, San Ryouriten lives up to its one Michelin star title. We were here to celebrate my dining partner’s recent success— a league championship win— and it sure did leave us with the aftertaste of victory.
Try:
The wine pairings with the chef’s course are incredible, with a variety of wines sourced from France. The dusky, stone fruit flavour of the Cabernet Sauvignon was the perfect accompaniment to the steak course.
Miss:
The a-la-carte menu doesn’t even contain the best dishes from the chef’s set.
Would I go again?:
Yes. This would make for a wonderful date night spot. (It’s not like I have someone in mind at all. Nope.)
[ATTACHED IMAGE: The hors d’oeuvre, fresh seasonal vegetables and shallots sit atop a tiny bed of flaky pastry, accompanied by a beautifully lush pea sauce.]
From that day, Akaashi and he exchange pictures of their meals on the regular. Osamu sends him pictures of the five different varietals of black garlic ramen from the back-alley restaurant down the road from his, sends him pictures of the matcha red bean taiyaki from the sweets store near his apartment. Akaashi sends him pictures of a washoku-style omurice sitting in a clear dashi broth, of a gyukatsu sandwich dripping with gravy, of a soft serve ice cream in a cute brown paper cup topped with kinako and warabi mochi. There are other cuisines, too— Osamu sends him pictures of a steaming bowl of seolleongtang he had once for dinner, the bún riêu that he and Atsumu tried, sends him pictures of the tortellini from the “authentic” Italian restaurant ‘round the block.
They also begin to exchange photos of less exciting meals— the first time Osamu texts him a picture of his cup noodles, Akaashi immediately texts back not ten seconds later his sad little reheated conbini dinner. One morning, Osamu sends him photos of his Seven Eleven iced coffee, and Akaashi replies back with soon, we’ll be sending each other pictures of our glasses of water. Osamu does, just to get a rise out of him.
This proceeds for the better part of a month. He looks forward to them, he admits— they break up the monotony of his day. Sometimes, Akaashi’s hands will be in the shot, and Osamu will stare at them for a beat longer than acceptable; Akaashi’s hands are larger than he would have expected, fingers long and slender and with the kind of beauty that the man commands. Setter’s hands, Osamu notes, but they are entirely unlike his brother’s— the callouses and cuts have faded, tape peeled back from many years out of practice. Akaashi uses them artfully in his photos— for holding up fruit cream sandwiches, for threading them through with skewers of yakitori, for clutching around the waffle cone of a hazelnut gelato scoop.
Today, Akaashi’s hands are perched around a beautiful passionfruit eclair, topped with rose petals and little kisses of delicate meringue. It isn’t a perfect photo— Osamu spots a little smudge of cream on the nail of his thumb, and has to absolutely stop himself from going down a dangerous path. He is, in some ways, extremely glad that they are not together at this very moment.
He sends back a picture of his lunch— his own onigiri, two of the miso ones.
Akaashi Keiji (8:21 PM)
> that’s unfair.
> i miss your cooking already, you don’t have to rub it in even more
Me (8:22 PM)
> then come over here and get it then
> there’s a nanohana one with ur name on it!
Osamu doesn’t get a reply to that— and it doesn’t bother him, genuinely; they have long been comfortable in their silences. He has long been comfortable with his own, had to forge it for himself some few years ago when he’d moved out of home without Atsumu.
Instead he peruses Hungry Owl, and his heart leaps into his throat when he clicks their latest blog post about some French restaurant in Osaka, and realises that they had just admitted to dining at Onigiri Miya. His Onigiri Miya.
When the fuck had that happened? How the hell did he not know? What did they look like? Osamu wonders if they were the beautiful brunette OL who visited last weekend who had legs for days. Or maybe they were the cute salaryman with the tongue piercing. Or maybe they had jet black hair, long eyelashes, wiry and smooth hands— Osamu chuckles freely, out of a sort of shocked defence mechanism, and Mie-san once again looks at him as if he’s gone mad. They are in the middle of closing up.
“Hey, Miya. The hell’s got you drifting off to space an’ laughin’ to yourself like that recently?” She huffs, arms crossed, as she wipes down the table tops. She brandishes the spray bottle at him, “You’d better not tell me it’s a boy y’ve been moonin’ after.”
Osamu stares at her. Had he really been acting like that? Like some lovelorn puppy? Like Atsumu at his absolute worst, giggling and chattering non stop about a certain orange-haired teammate of his? No, surely he wasn’t quite that bad.
“Ah, actually,” Osamu feels heat rise to the back of his neck. “There’s a food blog that I like— Hungry Owl, have y’heard of them? They’re Tokyo-based, but they went and ate at our restaurant on a trip here.”
“Shit, Miya. Have I heard of Hungry Owl— of course I fuckin’ have! They were featured on TBS the other day, y’know.” There is shock written on Mie-san’s face; she has stopped cleaning. “Well? What did they say about your onigiri?”
“They— well, they didn’t,” Osamu replies.
“Whadd’ya mean they didn’t?” Mie-san replies, looking outraged, and Osamu thinks in that moment that she looks a whole lot younger than her thirty five years. She’s looking out for him, he thinks, and suddenly he’s filled with a kind of appreciation for all that she does.
“Well, they said they visited, but they haven’t written up a review yet. It’ll happen soon then, I guess,” he says, as he shows her on his phone. She squints up to see it, before her face erupts in a huge smile.
“I guess we gotta start preparin’ for the store to get a whooole lot busier,” Mie-san says, resuming her cleaning.
“We dunno whether it’s going to be a good review or not, though. What if we’re the worst thing they’ve ever tasted?” Osamu laughs, but inside he truly is just a little bit nervous. Just a little bit. Ten percent nervous. He’s confident in his craft; he knows that he’s good. He’s always been sure of that.
Mie-san gives him a flat look in return.
“Miya Osamu. Tell me y’didnt just say that.”
“I know, I know,” Osamu replies, smiling. He makes a mental note to give her a raise.
The next few days, he is on edge. He snaps at Atsumu when they are out grocery shopping with each other, and his brother absolutely chews him out with no remorse. It is a touch more acidic than their usual banter, and he is ashamed when Atsumu is the one to shut him down.
“The fuck’s got you so high-strung, Samu?” Atsumu will say afterwards, through heaping mouthfuls of their lunch. With some hesitation, Osamu will tell him, to which Atsumu will look him in the eye and say, “Bein’ a coward ain’t a good look on you.”
Osamu will punch him in response. He’s pissed, but he also grins down at him.
“Well, it ain’t a good look on you either,” Osamu quips back, “When’re you gonna ask out Shouyou-kun?”
The satisfaction of watching the bright red flush spread onto Atsumu’s cheeks is immense.
Osamu considers it a win.
Osamu’s first job is as a dish-washer, when he is no more than seventeen. His mother had told him that one of her friends was looking for a kitchen hand, and it is a small Chinese restaurant in their neighbourhood that he is more than familiar with. He helps out one day a week, just on Sundays, in between a relentless schedule of volleyball practice. It tastes like rebellion, almost, and he is triumphant until he realises that it is not at all glamorous. He washes dishes for almost a year, and the heat is killer on his hands, so much so that it becomes a choice between volleyball and this, and when he is just about to throw in the towel, Chef Morioka waves him over at the end of his shift and teaches him how to properly handle a knife.
His second job, fresh out of high school, is at a trendy modern teishoku-ya in downtown Osaka which boasts a menu that is entirely worthy to be put on social media. He starts back from square one, and it leaves him frustrated and sore, but he knows that this is a kind of rite-of-passage, knows that this is something that all chefs must start with. Every night, without fail, he will stay back and practice until his volleyball callouses morph into kitchen ones. It is hard— on his commute, he watches reruns of food documentaries to stay afloat, of Noma and Alinea and The Fat Duck, will watch the same videos on produce and agriculture and wine-making, of food trucks and fast food cult-classics. He forces his dreams back to the surface time and time and time again, and it is unflinchingly isolating as he works through Golden Week, works through Valentines’ and Christmas and everything in between, gets home past midnight and wakes up after his family has left for the day.
For a while, he and Atsumu’s free days never match up. He always works weekends, and Atsumu always has weekends off. They live in the same house, and yet Osamu will not see him for weeks, will see him only ever on Facetime calls squeezed in just before service starts for the night.
It feels like triumph when he is finally promoted to stock chef, becomes in charge of the dashi and the soup courses. And then all of it is abruptly cut short when the restaurant goes under, all his love and careful work gone overnight, and he cries with their head chef, cries with the sommelier, cries with all the other line chefs who have been with him since day one.
At his third job, he is promoted to sous chef within the year, and it feels like some kind of twist of grace. It is at a tiny French restaurant with counter-seating only, all clean lines and bamboo wood, but he is proud of the menu that he has a hand in. He is proud of their vegetable course— Jerusalem artichokes, macadamias, legumes, all seasonal and sourced from farms around Hyogo, pooled with a white miso burnt-butter sauce. He’s proud of their fish, their entree, proud of the praise that they get from the local papers.
Osamu’s even prouder when he leaves to open Onigiri Miya. It isn’t anywhere close to fine dining, a far cut away from the gastronomy that he has been practicing for the past five years, but it feels like it is part of him, that it is part of home. And it softens everything else that comes in between.
It softens the feeling of having to climb alone while his peers reach for the top together. It softens the fact that he is continually caught between being inexplicably, deeply lonely, and not wanting to be seen at all.
Papier Acca
$ / Nakameguro
A stationery store turned sweets parlour, Papier Acca is a beautiful stop for purveyors of all things aesthetically pleasing. Alternatively, if you want to drown out your relentless pining for a man who lives five prefectures over, these treats provide the perfect distraction.
There is a strong focus on seasonality and quality with Papier Acca’s menu— this month’s offerings focus on the humble kinako, the warmth of roasted chestnut, and the salted-caramel-like taste of mitarashi. I had both the kinako milk soft serve and the mitarashi milk tea, which were served with beautifully chewy warabi-mochi and dango respectively.
As you readers may know, I’ve never been too fond of things that are overly sweet. But the milk soft serve was subtle and with just the right amount of creamy and bitter and sugary, with the underlying hint of the roasted notes of kinako. Similarly, the salty shoyu of the mitarashi provided a lovely contrast to the sweetness of the milk tea.
I took home a chestnut cream sandwich to save for dessert that day. While not eaten immediately, the sandwich still kept its own, and though I’ve decided that I’m not the biggest fan of the nama cream sandwich trend, the chestnuts were flavourful and tasted nostalgic of the colder seasons.
Try:
The Kinako stuff.
Miss:
Honestly, all of it was pretty consistently good. Maybe leave behind your pining. These sweets are only a temporary solution.
Would I go again?:
Probably. Maybe not too soon, lest I get emotional.
[ ATTACHED IMAGE: Swirls of soft ice cream peak atop a kraft brown paper cup with the store’s branding printed with fine white ink. Two cubes of warabi-mochi on a skewer are balanced around its side, a semi-translucent honey colour. Powdered kinako is dusted on top. Large, wiry, setter’s hands wrap around the paper cup delicately, artfully. ]
It turns out that Akaashi had taken him literally.
Akaashi shows up to Onigiri Miya on a Friday night at 10pm, winded and cold-rattled, and Osamu has to blink a few times to make sure that he hasn’t completely lost it. The restaurant sign has already flipped to closed, but the sound of knocking is what pulls Osamu out of his cleaning routine.
He is— once again, surprised. Maybe he should come to expect the unexpected, when it comes to Akaashi Keiji— it continues to catch him off-guard, every single time. Osamu had thought that he was the type to make lists and plan things out and deliberate decisions rationally; that was the kind of impression he had gotten ever since their first encounter at Nationals all those years ago. But that goes against what he knows now, with Akaashi standing before him, white flecks of snow caught in his lashes.
“Akaashi-kun? What are y’doing here?” he says, unable to hide his shock. He ushers him inside quickly, closing the shop door behind them. The other man is shivering, he notes, and his jacket looks lighter than what is probably appropriate for the current weather.
“Myaa-san,” Akaashi replies, voice husky and frost-bitten, and it does something to Osamu that makes his stomach lurch. He clears his throat, and starts again, “Miya-san, you said there was a nanohana onigiri with my name on it.”
“Akaashi— you… you’re impossible, y’know that?” Osamu replies, but there is no bite to his words and a kind of wonder set in his eyes. “I’ve closed up for today, y’know. So it’s gonna have to cost you extra.”
“I’ll pay,” Akaashi replies. Osamu chuckles.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” He assures, softly, and he helps him take off his jacket, the feather-light touch of his clothed shoulders electric. Osamu directs him to his seat.
It takes him a while to start up the process again: his rice has long gone cold, the warmer off. But he figures that a small pot should be quicker, so he measures out the rice, washes it, takes out his nanohana filling from the fridge. He glances furtively at the man in front of him, the curve of his mouth, his fingers— wrapped in woollen gloves, today— thinks that Akaashi looks like the perfect kind of storm.
When Osamu is content that the rice is perfect, he finally breaks the silence that hangs in between them, the kind of quiet tension that he knows that is punctuated by Akaashi’s relentless thoughts.
“Thanks for waitin’” he says, putting the nanohana onigiri in front of him, and Akaashi gives a quiet thanks in reply. “Did’ja come here straight from work, Akaashi-kun?”
“I did,” Akaashi replies, “so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little bit all over the place.”
“No, no, you just caught me off guard, that’s all. You’re fine, don’t you worry.”
Akaashi nods, takes ravenous bites out of his onigiri. Osamu distantly wonders whether he hasn’t eaten since lunch. When he finishes, he hands the plate back to Osamu, giving him another quick thank you. In the middle of washing up, Akaashi speaks again.
“Sorry”—Akaashi can’t meet his eyes—“this was a bad idea, I should have asked you beforehand —“
“Akaashi,” he says. “I would’a turned you out if I didn’t want you here.”
Akaashi looks up. He looks lovely even when lost, Osamu thinks, and it takes all of him not to reach out and embrace him right then and there, to fold him into his arms.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Akaashi replies, nonchalantly, “You’re too kind for that, Miya-san.”
Osamu barks out a peal of shocked laughter, morphing into a smile, beautifully sardonic. He thinks back to their conversation many nights ago; Akaashi’s high school bento, the sole umeboshi pressed onto rice.
“Kind would’ve been me continuing to stay on the court, Akaashi.”
Akaashi opens and closes his mouth. Osamu takes off his apron, and sits on the counter seat adjacent to him.
“That’s not fair. Putting yourself first isn’t unkind,” Akaashi retorts.
They are close, Osamu notes. The counter seats are close together, and they are both not by any means small, so their knees touch, thighs making contact through layers of fabric. It is searing— Akaashi is warm, warm, warm, and he wants to reach out and press his cool hand to his cheek, wants to cup it in his palm.
“It is, sometimes,” Osamu replies. “It is, for me.” The other half of a whole, he doesn’t say. The conniving half, the manipulative half. Atsumu doesn’t have a mean bone in his body— childish, yes, relentlessly stupid, yes— and Osamu knows that he isn’t the same.
“Yeah,” Akaashi concedes, quietly. “It feels that way for me sometimes, too.”
Osamu knows that part of him is hung up on Bokuto— not necessarily in a passionate sense, but in a way that he always considers himself to be his second, his vice-captain. He knows that, for himself and Akaashi both, parts of them will always belong to other people. This is the kind of love that they give— advice, straight and to-the-point; support, quiet and unflinching. They are always there, and they will always be there, not out of some warped sense of obligation or duty, but simply because that is who they are.
And Osamu knows that it is people like Bokuto and Atsumu— who may seem flush with reckless abandon, who may seem like they have the world clenched around their fist— who need it the most.
Because they are the kinds of people who are able to take the love that they receive and turn it into miracles.
“What do they call this, again?” Osamu laughs. “Side character syndrome?”
“We’re the NPCs, aren’t we?” Akaashi’s mouth upticks in a smile.
“Yup. The palate-cleanser before dessert. The sourdough bread they give you while you’re waitin’ for a meal.”
“Or the little edible wrapper on a white rabbit candy. The bottom quarter of a Harajuku-style crepe.”
“The last few bites of an onigiri, when you have no filling left—“
“The end tail of a tempura prawn—“
“The goop you get at the bottom while tryin’ to eat an Oreo Mcflurry—“
“Pushing yourself to drink the rest of the ramen broth to see what’s printed at the bottom of the bowl—“
They burst into comfortable laughter, and Osamu thinks how he’s missed that smile, how he’s missed this unburdened version of Akaashi Keiji. How he wants to take inventory of all of his little expressions. He lets the longing overtake him, feels a prickle of heat slowly rise up through his neck, through his jaw, through his lips. Osamu’s throat feels parched. His hands are dry. He breathes, and he feels like he has never been ready to embrace the downpour. Not until Akaashi. Not until now.
“I wasn’t lyin’, though, Akaashi,” Osamu says, “By all intents ‘nd purposes, I should be tellin’ you off— you spent some ten thousand yen and three hours on a bullet train— on a whim— to see me, because I made an offhand comment about how I had some onigiri for you.
“But I won’t,” he continues, smiling. “And I don’t feel bad about makin’ such a comment, even if it’s selfish of me to admit it— because it worked, didn’t it? I don’t feel as bad as I should. Me, rattlin’ the usually planned and precise Akaashi Keiji? No, I’m really happy. I’m real happy you’re here.”
There’s a familiar sting, an ache that pervades his entire being— and in this moment, Osamu wants.
It’s not something he’s typically known for: that’s Atsumu’s thing. Atsumu, who lives and breathes his craft, and loves freely and openly like every day could potentially be his last. Who demands more, commands for more, because he has already put in the hours of work, because he has put in the labours of care. But they both know that Osamu has it just as bad— they are cut from the same kind of cloth, after all, identical but fundamentally different, the same kind of yearning packaged in two different ways.
If Atsumu’s greed is a wildfire, Osamu’s is an all-encompassing winter— insidious and slow and consuming, and just as devastating as any flash burn.
And he wants, and wants, and wants, wants to call him Keiji, wants to make his face light up with that same unburdened smile, wants to take his large setter’s hands in his, wants to be close enough to feel his breath on his cheek. He wants him, through his happiness and his contemplation and all of his confidence and all the subtle sadness that he knows that he tries to hide. He wants a part of him that is only his. Wants to see all the hundreds of thousands of parts that make up the puzzle that is Akaashi Keiji, wants to trace the paths that have led him to his own.
“Will you let me take you out for dinner?” Osamu asks, and it isn’t another beat until Akaashi surprises him again, closes the star space between their lips, captures him in his orbit.
He’s right— Akaashi is warm, mouth hot and aching with a fitful kind of desire, his fingers reaching up to entwine their way to brushing Osamu’s ears, his neck, his hair. He kisses him back hungrily, cups his cheek in the way that he’d dreamed of before, feels Akaashi’s eyelashes flutter against the pad of his thumb. His heart reaches a sonorous crescendo in his ears, and it is dizzying, almost, how keenly he feels, the rush of fondness that permeates his senses.
Akaashi tastes sweet, like the subtle amount of vinegar and sugar that seasons his rice, like all of his little smiles, and Osamu finds himself thinking that this is one flavour that he doesn’t need a recipe for.
“Thanks for waiting,” Akaashi whispers as their lips part, and Osamu drinks in his pleased smirk like a bottle of his finest wine.
The bed is warm when Osamu wakes. This has been their routine for the past couple of days: sleep in until ten, breakfast, dinner, tea, bed. It leaves him exhausted and exhilarated all at once, but his heart is calm, clear, like the kind of sake that Akaashi brings from his uncle’s brewery up north. He needs to leave today— the impromptu nature of his trip does not leave much room for negotiation, after all— but Osamu takes it all in stride. He feels lucky to have him in his bed, the bare skin of his back pressed up against his, his face peaceful in sleep. He knows that they have time— all the time in the world— and while he is hungry for more, hungry for the next time they meet, he’s in no rush. Their time will come, and Osamu knows this.
He reaches for his phone with the careful poise that comes with being a chef, not wanting to wake Akaashi sleeping next to him. Checks the dozens of missed messages from Atsumu— something about his new serve and the Iranian team’s setter, something about Hinata, checks his socials for daily news. He eventually finds himself gravitating back to Hungry Owl, of which he has neglected to check for the past few days amidst everything that had happened, of which seems to have a new blog entry.
Osamu’s mouth waters as he reads about a little ice cream parlour in downtown Tokyo, until the fringes of his 8am memory register the description as familiar. He can’t quite place it and spends a moment, or two, or three, trying to remember where he had heard of this little stationery shop turned sweet stand.
He flicks downwards, and his eyes hover over the photograph of ice cream, brown paper cup, hands. Those hands, which he could pick out anywhere. Those hands, thread with his own, through his hair, pressed hard enough to bruise on the skin of his back. He has dreamt of those hands, knows of the little freckle between the pinky and the ring finger on the left, knows that they are larger than his own. Those hands— one of which is presently draped over his waist.
At this point, Osamu’s not even surprised anymore. Akaashi Keiji is a kind of beautiful paradox of contradictions— unfailingly kind, gentle, wholly fierce, with a seafoam smile and hands forged from battle. A chronic overthinker who remedies with distance and time, who doesn’t think twice about the love he gives to those deserving. Akaashi Keiji, who is the type who will make lists and spreadsheets and document every single restaurant that he visits, and then will listen to the tug of his heart like the most gorgeous fucking hurricane.
(And Osamu is reverent in his wake, time and time and time again.)
He stifles an incredulous laugh, but he knows that it rumbles deep in his chest and he feels a little bad when he feels Akaashi stir up against him.
“Sorry, Keiji,” he says softly, fond, as he feels the smaller man draw patterns over his stomach. His touch is as gentle as light.
Osamu decides that maybe, just maybe, he wants to be seen, after all.
Onigiri Miya
$ / Osaka
So, I have a confession to make. I know that this review has been a long time coming, and you readers have been asking for it for literal months now. I guess you could probably assume that I just hadn’t had time to check it out— I am based in Tokyo, after all— but that just hasn't been the case. Yesterday marked the thirty-first time and six months since I first walked into Onigiri Miya’s Osaka store. I could wax poetic about all twenty varieties of its onigiri flavours— I have tried them all— but I’ll just pick out a few of my favourites.
The rice, first and foremost, is incredible. Chef Miya uses a particular varietal of koshihikari that can only be found in his hometown of Amagasaki, Hyogo, which has all of the subtle sweetness and the glossy sheen of typical sushi rice— but the texture is like nothing else, soft and with a subtle chew that is intensely satisfying to bite into. The rice shines the most in the miso yaki-onigiri, which imbues the rice with a kind of roasted, nutty exterior which pairs wonderfully with the lovely savouriness of the Shizuoka red miso he uses.
The nanohana onigiri provides a wonderful contrast to the miso— the nanohana tastes fresh, and has a wonderful bite and acidity to it that seems to be made for the rice. Wrapped around customary Edomae nori, his nanohana onigiri has a trace amount of wasabi in it that brings it all together. It is comforting, almost, especially with the fragrant taste of the asari miso soup that is paired with it.
The showstopper of the menu is Miya’s take on akuma no onigiri. It is on the menu with a rather embarrassing name, but don’t let that deter you from trying it. The rice takes on a whole new quality cooked in dashi, and the end result is something so flavourful that it is simply just addictive. Crispy morsels of tempura and salty flakes of aonori combine together in a deceptively simple, yet complex way, and it is so delicious that it is, as the name implies, dangerous.
Try:
Everything is good, really. But definitely get the asari miso soup, it really does bring out the best in anything you might order. Ask what the seasonals are. You can’t ever go wrong with miso if you’re not sure.
Miss:
The chef.
No seriously— he’s a hunk, I know. But he’s taken. Don’t ask.
Would I go again?:
Yes, yes, yes.
If my introduction didn’t already point towards it, I would go here every day if I could. It deserves about fifty Michelin Stars.
[ ATTACHED IMAGE: Chef Miya Osamu, in his t-shirt and half apron, Onigiri Miya hat on. He is holding a plate of onigiri— miso, tamago, nanohana, and he looks to be mid-laugh. He looks at the camera with a kind of expression that is so, so fond.]