Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Tarako Supagetti
Tarako spaghetti — spaghetti tossed with salted cod roe and butter
Spaghetti tossed with salted cod roe and butter, a wafu-style pasta. Said to have branched off from the wafu supagetti line pioneered by a Tokyo spaghetti specialty shop that opened in 1953.
- Origin: Tokyo Shibuya
- Pasta
Lineage
What it's made of
Boiled spaghetti is tossed with flaked tarako and butter. The popping texture of the roe against butter's richness and the roe's saltiness are said to define the dish. Many shops finish it with shredded nori for a note of the sea, giving this yoshoku pasta a finish that leans surprisingly close to Japanese food, often with shiso leaf layered on for further aroma.
How it's made
The usual method is to toss boiled spaghetti with butter, then mix in salted, flaked tarako. Because tarako turns hard and dry if overcooked, many shops rely only on the residual heat of the cooked noodles to warm it through. Some finish the dish with shredded nori or a squeeze of lemon, and a few drops of soy sauce for a hidden savory note.
Why it took this shape
One account traces it to a spaghetti specialty shop that opened in 1953 and is said to have researched ways to remake Italian cooking, still unfamiliar in Japan at the time, using Japanese ingredients, giving rise to a whole line known as wafu supagetti. A version using tarako is said to have branched off from there and spread nationwide, becoming a coffee-shop staple along the way.
Before you go
- 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.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- Mentaiko PasutaPasta tossed with spicy cod roe in butter or soy sauce. Said to have branched off as a spicier version once wafu-style spaghetti using tarako had spread.
- Nattoo PasutaPasta tossed with natto in soy sauce and butter. Said to have started from applying natto, a staple already on hand in most households, once wafu-style spaghetti had taken hold.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Related lineage
- Mentaiko PasutaPasta tossed with spicy cod roe in butter or soy sauce. Said to have branched off as a spicier version once wafu-style spaghetti using tarako had spread.
- Wafuu Kinoko PasutaPasta tossed with mushrooms sauteed in soy sauce and butter. Said to have been worked into the wafu supagetti movement of remaking Italian pasta with Japanese ingredients.
- Nattoo PasutaPasta tossed with natto in soy sauce and butter. Said to have started from applying natto, a staple already on hand in most households, once wafu-style spaghetti had taken hold.
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."