Home-style ── Machi-chuka (Japanese-Chinese diner food)
Ebi Chiri
Ebi chiri — shrimp in a mild, ketchup-tinted chili sauce
Shelled shrimp are finished in a thickened sauce that layers ketchup's sweetness over doubanjiang's heat — said to have been created by a Sichuan-born chef who softened Sichuan's ganshao xiaren to suit Japanese palates.
- Origin: Tokyo Minato
Lineage
What it's made of
The shrimp's springy bite comes with the red sauce's sweetness first, doubanjiang's sharp heat trailing in afterward, kept mild. Ketchup gives the sauce its color and body, shaping a sweet-heat balance built to go with rice rather than heat for its own sake.
How it's made
Prepped shrimp are dusted with potato starch and passed through hot oil, and a sauce is built from garlic, ginger, and doubanjiang fried fragrant, then combined with ketchup and chicken stock. The shrimp go back in for a quick toss, and some shops finish with beaten egg stirred in for a softer mouthfeel. How far ketchup's sweetness tones down the doubanjiang's heat is said to be each shop's own call.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that a chef born in Sichuan, at a restaurant he opened in Tokyo around 1958, reworked the region's ganshao xiaren — a considerably spicier dish in its original form — by adding ketchup and egg to suit Japanese taste. Bridging the gap with ketchup, a condiment already familiar in Japanese kitchens, rather than serving the dish as fiercely spicy as the original, is thought to be what let it spread to Chinese diners nationwide.
Before you go
- Yokohama ChinatownSaid to be one of the largest Chinatowns in Japan, with more than 150 Chinese restaurants and food shops. Offerings range widely from street snacks to formal course meals.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Annin-dofuA dessert descended from Chinese medicinal cooking that uses apricot kernels. In Japan it is often made with milk and almond essence, and the Hong Kong style of fruit and jelly floating in syrup took hold at Chinese restaurants and in school lunches.
- BambanjiSteamed chicken pulled into shreds and dressed with a sauce rich in ground sesame, served cold. It is based on a Sichuan dish, and in Japan a milder, sweeter sesame sauce with cucumber and other vegetables became the norm.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tokyo
- Abura SobaNo broth is poured at all — noodles are tossed in a soy-and-sesame-oil tare pooled at the bottom of the bowl, said to have started at shops in the Musashino area in the late 1950s, with vinegar and chili oil stirred in partway through.
- Ajitsuke NoriSheet nori brushed with a soy-and-sugar seasoning and toasted crisp, said to have been devised as a gift for an imperial visit to Kyoto in the Meiji era. Its snap gives way to a burst of flavor and aroma.
- Anago ZushiConger eel, simmered sweet and savory, is laid over sushi rice and brushed with a reduced glaze called tsume — a staple Edomae topping from a fish that thrived in Tokyo Bay's nutrient-rich waters, its slick skin demanding a sushi chef's careful hand to clean.
- AnmitsuCubes of agar jelly topped with red peas, sweet bean paste, and dark syrup. Said to have begun when a Ginza sweets shop in the early Showa era added its own bean paste to the simpler "mitsumame" — jelly and peas in syrup — marking a point where wagashi met café culture.
- Asakusa shichimiA seven-spice chili blend from a shop tracing back to 1625 in Asakusa's old Yagenbori district, often described as the origin point of shichimi togarashi. The neighborhood's history as a hub for medicinal-herb wholesalers is credited with shaping a blend informed by traditional Chinese medicine, and the shop is known for custom-mixing blends to order.
- Bettara-zukeDaikon salted first, then pickled sweet in rice malt and sugar — said to descend from a lightly pickled daikon once sold at Edo's ebisu-kō market. The rice malt gives it a natural sweetness, and it still headlines Nihonbashi's autumn "Bettara Market."