American Udon

Since I'd gotten back to the States, I'd been itching to go to a Japanese restaurant. Not because I miss Japanese food so much, though I'm sure I will at some point, but because I wanted to see the difference, I wanted to see how it got tweaked and changed here on the other side of the Pacific. Certainly Japan changes around plenty of American stuff. Lots of the pizza seemed to be laden with corn and mayo, for instance.

Anyway, a few nights ago I was in Mio Sushi on Hawthorne with a pair of friends and ordered tempura udon. I love udon, and ordered it partially because I was amused that it was being offered in such a fashionable area in a sit-down restaurant. I used to get udon all the time, but it was at this little hole-in-the-wall place next to Narita station where very old ladies plopped the noodles and inari into your bowl efficiently and unceremoniously, and I ate standing up at a counter. It was great, it was unadorned, cheap, and I was back at work within twenty minutes.

So that was my vision of udon- thrifty workweek food, stuff you eat while still planning lessons in your head. I had to try this udon, this sit-down, American, restaurant-in-a-fashionable-district Udon. I was anticipating it to be entirely different, and possible reek of a terrible inauthenticity. Maybe part of me wanted that, so I could decry it's terrible inauthenticity, even though I think that arguments like that are usually overblown and unfounded. The udon came, though, and indeed it was different.

There weren't any greens in it, and the tempura, more tempura than they'd have ever give you at my old hole-in-the-wall place, was in a separate little bowl of to the side. They had the spice, right, though, and the soup looked and smelled right, and the noodles... were delicious. The noodles were absolutely wonderful, and so was the tempura. It was some of the best udon I've ever had.

Not the best. The very, very best udon I've ever had I ate while I was drunk at a tanuki festival in Takamatsu. But this came close. This was good, thick, satisfying udon, and it was made right here, in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. I was strangely happy with it. Happy that this little bit of Japan had extended to my home, happy that things bleed out of their national borders, that information, food, experiences and people, extend everywhere. I'm happy that we live in an age of the internet, of rapid transport, of global exchange. I'm happy that you can eat hamburgers in Tokyo and udon in Portland. Sure, ethnic restaurants aren't new, aren't just a product of the current age, the information and globalization age, but it was a nice reminder, a visceral reminder, of how all the borders are permeable, all the walls are coming apart, and about how wide open it all is.