As an important life scene, izakaya plays an important role in Japanese pop culture. Whether it's pop songs or movies and TV, we can often catch a glimpse. With the popularity of Midnight Food Store and Lonely Gourmet, people pay more attention to izakaya culture than ever before. Compared with ordinary restaurants and bars, izakaya belongs to the late night; In Kan Kan, some people talk in groups, while others are alone and preoccupied.

Izakaya has such a magic power that no matter who you are or where you come from, izakaya has a place for you. The pleasure and satisfaction brought by a pot of hot wine and a dish of side dishes are real and the perfect end of the day.

So, where did izakaya come from, and why did it become an irreplaceable existence in the hearts of the Japanese?

Well, we have written the basic encyclopedia of izakaya you asked for.

1. The history of izakaya

2. izakaya and Japanese culture

What should izakaya eat and drink?

Appetizer | order wine | order food

4. Super dry goods! Comparison of Romantic Pinyin between China and izakaya Menu

Ancient Japanese brewery site

In Japanese history, wine brewing appeared as early as the early 8th century. In 733, a department called "Brewing Department" began to levy taxes on rice as a brewing fee. During the Heian period, brewing houses gradually rose in 1 1 century and spread all over Japan, and temples and shrines all over the country joined the ranks of brewing. However, the brewery at that time only served the aristocratic class. According to the law, it is illegal for ordinary people to drink alcohol on days other than festivals.

Until the Kamakura era, there was a brewery of the samurai class, which was called the "lascivious house" and, as the name suggests, was a "kiln" for providing drinks. In the Muromachi era, the shogunate began to levy taxes on brewing houses, and brewing and sales gradually separated. Most wine suppliers have changed their names to "wine houses". During the Warring States Period, when the whole country prospered, the shogunate began to support the civilian economy such as "wine houses", and this prototype of modern izakaya gradually became popular in cities.

Izakaya really developed in the edo period.

At this time, many wine houses will provide simple appetizers. Many people lingered in pubs, which was called "Ju?けてむ" at that time, which literally translated as "stopping to drink". The shopkeeper will put up a notice on the door that says "Stay in the wine and wait". Over time, it will become "izakaya", which is what we now call "pub".

Izakaya Signboard in Edo Period

The reason is that there was a serious imbalance between men and women at that time, and single men who were not good at cooking and liked drinking were everywhere. Therefore, killing two birds with one stone by eating and drinking, "izakaya" has well met the food and drink needs of the country's bare sticks.

Until1970s, the image of izakaya in the eyes of Japanese people was still the place where male white-collar workers drank Japanese wine. Times have changed. With the continuous improvement of Japanese women's social status, they also joined the ranks of their male compatriots to drink in izakaya. In order to cater to the preferences of female customers, some stores have introduced women-only menus and adopted more aesthetic decorations for women.

By the 1980s, izakaya had developed into a chain store model, and the types of food and wine began to become rich and the prices became more common. Izakaya has gradually become a simple gathering place for students, company personnel and friends, and the age groups of the guests have also become wider.

In the past, shops in izakaya hung a red lantern in front of their doors instead of billboards, so izakaya was called "red lantern" by many people. Similarly, some shops choose to hang warm curtains with ropes, so izakaya also has another name "rope warm curtains", and this decoration style has continued to this day.

Now, izakaya is the most popular social and gathering place for Japanese people, and it is also an indispensable part of Japanese culture. A group of friends sit around a table, drink if they want, or book a private room to chat. Sitting in a bar, most people come alone, or drown their sorrows by drinking, perhaps just killing time and chatting with their boss while drinking. In fact, they are not alone.

The atmosphere in izakaya is always unusually warm, dark and warm, with earthenware dishes and log bars. The boss is talking and laughing with the guests through the bar, letting the city people relax their nervous nerves and enjoy the comfort brought by food and wine.

At the same time, izakaya is also a common scene in Japanese movies and TV series.

Izakaya is a frequent visitor to Anjiro's films. In his films, food has become an aesthetic, which is based on and divorced from daily life. Eating and drinking attentively and living up to every dish is the attitude of hard life.

In another phenomenal Japanese drama, The Lonely Gourmet, the grocer played by Goro Inoue can always find delicious food hidden in the corner of Tokyo, including izakaya.

Delicious chicken kebabs, no hot soup Dandan Noodles, Shizuoka Guandong cooked. The close-up of the food in the play and the enjoyment of the protagonist chewing it carefully ... don't brush the play in the middle of the night.

Japanese animation is not far behind, and the painting style is quite magical. The 26-year-old office worker and singer is a natural alcoholic, who wanders the streets after work, looking for a good place to drink. At the moment when the good material entered, there was a sigh of "poof ~" (just an animated version edited by this article. )

? appetizer

As soon as you sit down, the clerk will serve you a small bowl of side dishes. Kanto is called "Otoshi" and the relationship is called "Tsuki dash", that is, appetizers, which may be vegetables, meat or fish, and are not on the menu. Whether the guests eat or not, the store will include it in the bill, which is generally around 3,400 yen (equivalent to RMB 20 yuan).

Such side dishes are a benchmark to quickly judge the style and level of a izakaya: whether it is a fixed side dish or a seasonal fresh dish, the cooking attitude and hospitality of the restaurant are obvious.

After the side dishes are served, the clerk will come and ask questions. At this point, they are actually asking what kind of wine you want to drink.

Japanese people pay attention to manners and forms. When eating out, they are used to ordering wine first. When people arrived, they raised their glasses and said "Thank you for your hard work today". After everyone cheered, they slowly looked at the menu and decided to order.

? Order wine

There is an idiom in Japanese, "Let's have a beer first." とりぁぇずビール) has become the prologue for drinkers to enter izakaya.

Most Japanese beer tastes light and bitter, and the alcohol content is about 5 degrees. Japanese people often drink mainly four brands: Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo and Suntory.

Volkswagen izakaya usually provides ホッピ(Hoppy), which is a blended wine that imitates the taste of beer, that is, about 25% Shao and Hoppy are added to the precooled flagon according to the ratio of 1:5.

Sake is the first kind of Japanese wine. Sake comes from "turbid wine". Rice wine was originally turbid, and after pressure filtration, sake was produced.

Japanese sake provided by ordinary izakaya generally includes "Yinniang", "Pure Rice Wine" and "Benniang" (there are also "Pure Rice Yinniang", "Big Yinniang" and "Pure Rice Dainiang", which are not sold in ordinary izakaya, so I will not repeat them here).

"Yinniang" is one of the high-quality, low-temperature fermentation, which requires high whiteness of rice. "Pure rice wine" takes the second place, and "Benniang" will be mixed with a small amount of alcohol, and the price is relatively cheap.

The sake made by these different methods has different alcohol content, sweetness, spiciness and acidity, and the drinking methods are also different. Generally speaking, sake brewed above Yin level is more suitable for cold drinks, while pure rice wine and this one are relatively cheap, so warm wine and cold drinks are not so particular.

Regarding sake, you can refer to this essay written by our good friend, Teacher Mao: It's cold, is it time to drink some wine? .

In izakaya, sake is divided into two specifications, one in one (180cc) and two in two.

In some izakaya, the clerk will take out a small box (wooden casket), put a small glass in it, pour the wine face to face, and the spilled wine will flow into the wooden casket.

The order of drinking is like this: first suck out the sake in the center of the cup you drink, and then pick up the cup and taste it slowly. After drinking, pour the wine in the wooden jar back into the cup, and drink the residual wine mixed with wood fragrance. This is the taste of wine.

Shao, made by a unique distillation method in Japan, that is, Japanese shochu, has a concentration below 40 degrees.

Burning can be divided into different types according to raw materials, such as wheat burning, rice burning, taro (sweet potato) burning, brown sugar burning and so on. There are generally four ways to drink shochu. "Rock" comes from the English proverb "on the rock", which means adding ice. "Water cutting", as you know, is water mixing. "ソーダり" means adding soda to soju. The last one is called "cutting soup", which is shochu to heat water, which is very suitable for drinking in cold weather.

This kind of thing, golf, is simply a universal match in izakaya. The name comes from a glass of wine and is usually used as a long cocktail. I don't know why it was translated as "Hi Bar" in China, and I was a little drunk.

Whisky is usually mixed with soda water, and the most common one is of course Suntory Corner Bottle. In izakaya, which is generally reliable, the soda water used is mostly Suntory's own soda water (it is said that it is full of gas).

Golf also derives a variety of flavors, such as blackcurrant flavor and lime flavor, which are suitable for girls to drink.

Cocktails served in izakaya are usually not too complicated and difficult to make. Mainly long drinks, mostly just fruit juice/soda mixed with alcohol, which is not much different from drinks and suitable for girls.

Plum wine is a mixture of plum (and plum juice), sake and roast. The alcohol concentration is about 12 to 18 degrees, which is very popular with female guests. There are many kinds and tastes of plum wine, including brown sugar, black tea and green tea. In recent years, Qiao Yamei wine, which everyone is familiar with, has also begun to promote perilla wine and black sugar wine in China. Its drinking method is similar to burning, basically with ice, of course, it can also be drunk alone.

? order

After ordering wine, I can finally look at the menu with peace of mind! ! !

When ordering food in izakaya, it will be ordered in batches. When a dish is served, everyone shares it, instead of putting it into the bowl one by one (although many times, everyone is quite careless).

Of course, first of all, some appetizers and wine:

One bite after another, edamame is said to prevent hangover. It is no exaggeration to call it the king of side dishes in izakaya.

In izakaya, most edamame is cooked. It is common to drain and add salt after cooking, and another method is to directly add edamame to salt water and boil it. The edamame cooked in this way will not be too dark. Sometimes I will encounter roasted edamame, and the aroma is better than boiling water.

It is "cold tofu". The protagonist is similar to preserved egg, preserved mustard tuber and cold tofu in China, which is a very common appetizer. You only need a piece of tender tofu, then add Jiang Mo, shallots, Muyu flowers, green perilla leaves, radish sauce and other condiments, and then pour soy sauce.

The wine thief made the insides of bonito with salt and spices. After a long period of pickling, the sweetness is more concise and layered, and the aroma is particularly charming after the wine enters the throat, which makes people unconsciously drink up the wine, thus gaining the name of "wine thief".

However, the smell of wine thieves is usually heavy, which will be difficult to accept at first, and it is a more advanced dish in appetizers.

Many people can't stop eating Japanese food because of it. Common sashimi are salmon (salmon), octopus (octopus), flounder (flounder), snapper (snapper) and octopus.

However, ordering sashimi in izakaya is not for satiety, but for early taste, so it is generally not too much.

\ Baked food/

One-night drying is named after fishermen's fishing, so it is dried by sea breeze at night and made overnight. The obtained dried fish is not only easy to store, but also won't lose water like ordinary dried fish. The roasted fish meat is slightly tight, and the taste is fresh and sweet. If it's grilled, the fragrance will be more attractive. This method can often highlight the original flavor of different fish.

Chicken kebabs (grilled chicken kebabs). Similar to kebabs, the practice is to treat chicken into pieces, string them with bamboo sticks, and then roast them on the fire.

In addition to the chicken breast, chicken leg and other parts of the meat, there are chicken skin, chicken gizzard, chicken liver, chicken heart, chicken cartilage and other parts, even the chicken butt has been dubbed "phoenix tail", and there are many addicts (such as the editor of this article). Some roast bird shops even offer "rare parts" such as diaphragm and chicken shoulder meat.

Japanese roast birds are not only made of chicken, but also made of fish, pigs and meatballs, but they are all called roast birds. There are roughly two ways to eat: salt roasting or sauce roasting. The former eats more meat, while the latter eats seasoning kung fu, which means that the representative dish is chicken balls.

\ Cooking/

In fact, the Japanese people's common name for "Guandong cooking" is Guandong cooking, and Guandong cooking is more of a Kansai name. Of course, it's not the kind of Guandong cooking you get in convenience stores.

Just the soup head, we have made great efforts: using bonito, minced meat, kelp and mushrooms to make soup, and seasoning with soy sauce, glutinous rice and sugar. The contents include radish, eggs, kelp, konjac, vermicelli, bamboo fish cake, thick-cut tofu and so on.

\ Explosives/

Beer comes standard, which is the soul of izakaya's fried things. The biggest difference with Korean fried chicken in Europe and America is the "thin powder frying method", which is thin but not greasy and has a little powder feeling on the surface. For friends who don't like thick shell batter, it is a great gospel.

Of course, there is also a dispute about whether Japanese fried chicken is wrapped in powder or noodles, so please look forward to further discussion.

The word "Nanman" here should be handed down from China in the Tang Dynasty, which has the same basic meaning as the word "Nanman" in the context of China, that is, "foreigner", which is the name given to the Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards who first arrived in Japan when the Japanese just opened the port.

In a dish, it usually means ... something fried with mayonnaise (mainly chicken leg meat). It originated from the local family cuisine in Miyazaki Prefecture. The fried food is mixed with the sauce claimed by sweet and sour, onion, spicy seeds and Tata sauce. It is rich and thick milky yellow, slightly sweet and sour, which makes the fried food smooth and dense, and also makes up for the meat that is sometimes dried by fire.

\ Other/

Roasted caviar is also a must-have snack in izakaya. Add the broth to the egg, stir it thoroughly, spread layers of egg juice on the pot, turn it over and cut it, and stack several layers together. This is a very perfect and harmonious relationship, which does not occupy any sauce and is very tasty.

You can refer to this article about caviar burning, thick egg Shao vs egg roll. Isn't this the same thing? Teaching Video of Enchanting Thick Egg Burning

Hot tea soaked rice is called "tea stain" and written as "Ochatsuke" in Japanese. The usual practice is to add salt, bonito powder, seaweed and other seasonings to the cold rice and brew it with hot tea. Japan often eats coarse grains, and the rice is mixed with the smell of seaweed and tea juice. Simple and light, it can be used as breakfast, and it is also a good product at home late at night.

Izakaya's tea-soaked rice, the basic version of plum tea-soaked rice, and the advanced version will provide mushroom or salmon flavor. If you eat greasy baked goods and roasted seeds and nuts, a bowl of sour plum tea soaked rice at this time can not only fill your stomach, but also kill two birds with one stone.

Having said that, it's no use looking at Japanese menus!

I'll give you a Chinese-Japanese comparison table of common wines and dishes in izakaya.

You're welcome.

Edit | Nutmeg from Siebel

ihi？ Figure | | Pinterest/ Google

Menu design || Mini

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Intern Gu Yixin also contributed to this article.