Far East, Near Home

The cluster of Japanese restaurants in Gurugram is almost like a secret subculture in Millennium City

- Sneha Bhura

Yukihiko Yamada, a Japanese expat, takes one look at the lively, appetising posters of a dish made of vinegared rice on the walls of a quaint little “Japanese” restaurant in South Point Mall, Gurugram, and he knows. “This is not Japanese sushi. This is fusion of Japanese and Korean style of cooking. We, the Japanese, do not use sesame oil for sushi. Koreans use it. And rice? We like it rather sticky. Koreans do not care too much about the stickiness of rice,” he declares slightly irritated, comically manifesting historical grudges between the neighbours.

But Yamada, an accounting and tax consultant, does not seem to recall a time when he badly missed his gohan (rice), miso shiru (miso soup) and tsukemono (pickled vegetables) in Gurugram. He first came to India in 1999, and has been staying here on and offsince then. His current stint has been the longest, almost six years. And concurrently, he has seen a number of Japanese restaurants mushroom around the business towers and sky-scraping condominiums of Millennium City. There are, at the very least, ten restaurants run by Japanese expats, dishing out menus far more edgy and authentic than the gleaming, fine-dining, “contemporary” variants in south and central Delhi.