I walked into Vanderbilt Hall on March 8th seeing Japan Week banners and glowing red lanterns and filled with booths run by travel agencies, airlines, technology companies, food and beverage companies, and more. A theater was set up showing videos pertaining to various topics including landmarks, stories of Jewish refugees, and food. Japan Week was an event held in Vanderbilt Hall of the bustling Grand Central Terminal from March 6th to 8th. I visited the booth for Azuma Foods International Inc., U.S.A., a company that strives to mix traditional Japanese food with other food traditions, to try its food.
The booth featured ready to eat packages of calamari salad, seaweed salad, and sweets that looked like sushi. A man offered samples of the salads to visitors. I took a sample of each salad and tried them in a less crowded space in front of the theater. The calamari salad had small pieces of calamari and slices of mushrooms. It was chewy and sour. The seaweed salad had thin slices of seaweed covered with sesame seeds. It tasted sweet and tangy. There was also a presentation board showing images of sushi sweets, which were mochi, a gelatinous rice flour treat, in the likeness of sushi and sashimi, which usually consist of raw fish and rice. I took a bite of each but I cannot give an unbiased description because I have an aversion towards mochi’s pasty texture and flavor. If the booth had an argument, it would be to buy Azuma Foods’s featured products.
The salad samples were not amazing but not terrible. They had enough flavor but not enough to make an impression. The seaweed salad looked like an unnatural green, and I figured out why once I read the ingredients. There was Yellow #5 and FD&C Blue #1, both synthetic food colorings. Even though the ingredients included red pepper, there was no red pepper in my sample. The crunchiness of red pepper would balance the sweetness of the seaweed. Likewise, the ingredients for the calamari salad included bamboo shoot but there was no bamboo shoot in my sample. The idea to make mochi that looked like sushi was clever. Many New Yorkers are familiar with sushi and sashimi because of their availability in buffets, supermarkets, and restaurants. However, they might have not tried mochi. Thus, they would be interested in eating these sushi-shaped treats.
It was very smart for Azuma Foods to provide pamphlets with the ingredients of the salads to inform visitors that may have food allergies. In addition, visitors who do not buy the salads that day will have something to remember them. Having the pamphlet might convince visitors to buy their products another day. It is interesting how the photographs of the seaweed salad and the calamari salad in the ingredients pamphlet are accompanied by forks rather than chopsticks. The choice to use forks, not chopsticks, in the photographs shows how Azuma Food is incorporating Western food traditions with traditional Japanese food, thus tailoring to its target audience, New Yorkers and other Americans.
People who appreciate Japanese culture will enjoy reading about Azuma Foods. They will learn how the company is introducing Japanese food to other cultures by making it a part of other cultures. Azuma Foods adds to public discourse about authenticity and assimilation by bringing in the perspective of someone who wants to spread the food of its culture to other cultures and make money from that goal. Theirmission to mix Japanese food with other food cultures demonstrates how people can be introduced to another culture by experiencing it with something familiar.
The salads and the sushi sweets are examples. Japanese have side dishes that have vegetables in them but they are not called salads. Azuma Foods produced packages of seaweed salad and calamari salad so people could incorporate it with their food. People can mix the salad with noodles, rice, or even a sandwich. Azuma Foods’s website gives suggestions how to use a product such as placing some calamari salad on a martini. The incorporation of Japanese food with other kinds of food can create a mix that is not completely Japanese. In addition, the sushi sweets bring something unfamiliar in the form of something familiar. Sushi-shaped mochi can be fun to eat. However, authentic mochi is usually round, not in the shape of raw seafood and rice. Even though the salads and the sushi sweets are not extraordinary, I recommend them for the experience of eating and tasting them.
-Virginia
