Masakichi and Seirinkan, Tokyo

On the face of it, Adam Liaw should not be a television personality. He isn’t brash or loud. Or prone to expletive laden rants. He isn’t a particularly snappy dresser or blessed with model-like good looks. As a former lawyer, he was even once part of the most openly despised profession in the world (jokes about accountants tend to joke about them being boring or pitiable. Jokes about lawyers tend to be full of more thinly disguised contempt).

None of this is a criticism of Adam himself, it’s just how he is. Calm, composed, maybe even a little boring. Definitely the kind of person you’d like to see your daughter dating.

Not only are his recipes achievable and delicious, but he exudes a genuine respect and sympathy for the people and cultures he touches. It is these things and much more that make him my current favourite television chef, someone who feels like he is a celebrity in spite of himself.

The counterpoint to his presenting style is, of course, the brash self-indulgent egomaniacs who seem to dominate food television. Gordon Ramsay’s famous propensity for finding and then cussing at people who really shouldn’t own restaurants is something to behold, but perhaps wears a little thin after 2643 continuous seasons of the same, sad, shock-jock television. I mean, the man is a great chef to watch when he is cooking, but I’m not sure I understand why watching him shout expletives at well-meaning idiots in apologetic little provincial kitchens is anything other than desperate for all involved.

David Chang, he of Momofuku fame, seems to be travelling the spectrum, from well-meaning reverential travelling chef (see the excellent first season of Mind of a Chef on Netflix) towards ego-driven, self-indulgent blowhard. He’s not quite there yet, but it can’t be long before he too has a show where he can shout “fuck” at well-meaning, but unfortunately illiterate, deep-fryer operators in midwestern US towns.

But now that the godfather, Anthony Bourdain, has passed, and perhaps given the ravages of COVID on international travel in the last few years, there is precious little new food television to entertain and suggest new places to eat. Netflix’s Ugly Delicious, featuring Mr David Chang, is probably about as good as we’ll get until Adam Liaw pulls his act together and gets on the road for another excellent series of Destination Flavour.

So with this in mind, my dining companion and I undertook what has since become known as the “David Chang Tour” of Tokyo, an unofficial jaunt to a couple of places he visited, to decide for ourselves if his Tokyo fixers know what they’re talking about.

Up first was Masakichi, a yakitori joint in the happily home-adjacent neighbourhood of Musashi Koyama. This is a homey part of town, with a long old-school covered market and plenty of charm. David Chang visited a few years ago (Ugly Delicious, Series 1, Episode 5, “BBQ”) and shows signs of his inflated ego, somehow making the experience about his own ego and delight rather than about the talented, quiet man behind the grill. But in fairness to him and his Tokyo fixer crew, the food is bang on. A limited menu of decent skewers, plus a few key extras (like the incredibly chicken-y ramen) mean that this may not be a hidden gem, but it is a gem all the same.

Second stop, Seirinkan (Ugly Delicious, Series 1, Episode 1, “Pizza”), is a well-known pizza spot in Nakameguro, the hipster heart of southern Tokyo. They play Beatles music and serve only two pizzas, a margherita (1500 yen) and a marinara (ditto, basically a margherita without cheese). Because we are not fools, we had the one with cheese and enjoyed it very much. The overpriced side salad of broccoli (1500 yen), swimming in olive oil and garlic was tasty, but so oily as to detract from the self-congratulatory nature of ordering vegetables and pizza. The requirement to order at least one (non-water) drink per person also reeked of the most irritating kind of money grab. For these reasons, the nearby Pizza Da Isa still reigns supreme in my mind.

So thank you, David Chang. I enjoyed your Tokyo recommendations and your early work, if not your current style of food television. It feels like we’ll fall out of contact completely with one another soon if you look for soft targets to rant at and boost your TV ratings, but it’s always worth remembering that there were once good times.