This piece has been produced with content from the following Magnesium members:
Japan by Jim O’Connell / Magnesium
Denmark by Arnaud De Grave / Magnesium
Holland by Nathalie Farigu / Magnesium
Additional photographs by:
Pete Barr-Watson / Magnesium
David Teter / Magnesium

On July 3rd in 1916, Lawrence “Chubby” Woodman, dropped a few battered clams into the fryer he normally used for French fries at his roadside stand in Essex, Massachusetts, not having any idea that almost a hundred years later, I’d be sitting here in Tokyo, craving a hot dog roll filled with his creation.

My ex-wife introduced me to clam rolls in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a short drive from her family’s summer cottage. “Ooh, clam rolls,” she said, and a short time later, we were sitting outside a shack near the water digging into a couple of them. It’s been more than fifteen years since that day, but the memory of those clams rolls has my mouth watering and stomach rumbling in anticipation of something too far away to procure.

Another legendary guilty pleasure, one that has been lost to history, was the Little Tavern “Slider,” a small hamburger that was best bought a dozen at a time. “Buy ‘em by the bag…” their signs proclaimed and yes, we did. For me, the place to grab a bag of sliders was the Little Tavern in Georgetown. In mid1980′s in the wee hours of the morning, after clubbing or before hopping to another club, we’d head up Wisconsin Avenue to the familiar little chateau-styled building clad in green and white tile. The preferred way to eat sliders was with mustard — somehow, ketchup never tasted right on them. Founded in 1927, Little Taverns were a familiar sight all over the DC / Baltimore area, with around 70 shops at their peak. But their numbers declined at the end of the century; they limped along for another decade or so, until the last Little Tavern closed in 2008.

The delights from these food emporiums aren’t the sort of meals you serve up on a first date, nor are they the sort of places you eat at every day (unless you have a very good cardiologist). They’re guilty pleasures to be savored, food shared amongst trusted friends and select initiates in a ritual of indiscretion and indulgence; saying “let’s go grab a bag of sliders” is much the same as saying “let’s be bad” with a devilish glint in your eye.

Customer samples "kaki fry" or fried oysters at a fish shop in Tokyo

Every culture has food like this. In Japan, there’s ramen, of course, considered by many to be the quintessential Japanese fast food. Ramen, while universally inexpensive, can vary widely in its quality. Avoiding mediocre ramen is key—the reward for finding a good bowl is a meal that is sublime. It’s worth the effort.

N.B.: Be forewarned that you should never mention “ramen noodles,” the plastic-wrapped staple of college kids in discussions of “ramen” (occasionally Romanized as “lamen”) as you will be branded a fool. As the Oshima Ramen chain of shops proclaim, “Ramen is a gift from God.” They may be saying that with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but it’s best to play it safe and just agree.

If you see a line of more than a couple of people waiting to get in to a ramen shop in Tokyo, you might as well cancel your plans and join the queue, because it’s likely to be an amazing experience. “Ramen Jiro” in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district is a place like this, where for under ten dollars, you get a legendarily huge bowl, but true ramen connoisseurs will scoff, saying that Ramen Jiro’s main appeal is the immense size of the portions, not the quality of the ramen. Listing the top ramen-ya (ramen shops) here would likely invite an un-winnable battle of opinions, so I’ll refrain from trying, but they’re easy to find—either look for the queue, or ask a trusted friend.

Then there’s Okonomiyaki, a kind of savory pancake, rich with varied ingredients and topped with seaweed flakes, dried bonito, Kewpie mayonnaise and/or a thick brown sweet sauce akin to A1 steak sauce. Monjyayaki is a thinner variant, said to originate not far from Tsukiji’s famous fish market, best had in the little shops of Tsukushima, where each table is equipped with a griddle from which it’s directly eaten with little metal scrapers.

Takoyaki is a similar batter, but made into spheres on a special griddle, each with a piece or two of tough octopus meat. It’s best had when bought at a roadside stand or summer festival, especially when prepared by the sort of guy you would not want to meet in a dark alley. “The secret ingredient to good takoyaki is fear,” a friend is fond of saying.

To be honest, though, it’s hard to feel the same level of guilt eating this sort of food in Japan, as on the whole, the dishes are fresh, the ingredients are the same as you might buy for your own kitchen and, well, it’s Japanese and as a people, they just seem so healthy. Not so in other places:

First of all I’d like to state that, as a French man, there is no such thing as junk food in my diet (at least that I’d confess if no torture is involved). There is plenty of junk food to be found in the streets of Copenhagen; as everywhere else in the world we get our share of McDonald and that sort of things. In certain areas of the city the shawarma is ruling as the King of Junk, in other places it is called kebab but it is basically the same thing. And there is the pølsevogn (literally “sausage wagon”) which is the local version of the hot-dog stand so dear to the heart of new-yorkers. A complete sociological study would be necessary to understand that thing, what with old guys blocking traffic while going from wherever those mighty beasts sleep to the spot where they’ll deliver the greasy goods to customers of all ages… And the fact that they sell French hot-dog is not enough to have me try it!

A customer gluttonying down a sausage at a pølsevogn in the deep winter of Copenhagen...

So I don’t like, let alone love, junk food. So why then contribute?
Because there is that thing called smørrebrød which has a weird status around here. One can find smørrebrød in many variations but also in many caste, matter of speaking. There are smørrebrød of the junk kind, of the home made kind (of course) and of the gourmet kind, found in restaurants. Many Danes eat smørrebrød everyday for lunch, either they bring it in a little lunch box or they buy it from a smørrebrød-to-go shop. It is a common sight to see people in the streets with white little boxes around lunchtime. Although, it beats me how they can eat them properly as it becomes quite rapidly a mess as there is nothing to top them. The exact same concept can be found in restaurants, specialized restaurants of high standards. And that is why I found it fascinating, it would be like having three stars restaurants making hot-dogs.

Lunch box, the Danish style.

Technically it is an “open-ended sandwich”, meaning a sandwich with only one piece of bread. Smøre means butter, brod means bread. So that’s what you get, bread of the dark/black kind (more a compaction of cereals if you ask me), butter and then stuff on top, a lot of stuff. You have from one up to three items piled up on top of that ridiculously small piece of bread. Usually one major and two minors. Major can be fried fish, liver paste, ham, eggs, etc. Minor is usually some kind of vegetable in various state of conditioning: coleslaw salad, beetroot, cucumber, you name it… Then a sauce of some sort: mayonnaise, etc. and sometimes an additional topping: fried bacon, crumbles of bread, fried onions, shrimps and what have you. I have always suspected that a very strict code was ruling this as a state affair, the Danes being quite close to traditionalists. Surely one cannot mix some of the major with some of the minors as one pleases. I remember the first time I went to the cantina of the university where I work. One cantina was for everybody (mainly students) and the other one was for staff. In the first one smørebrod were aligned and prepared beforehand for one to shovel in one’s plate whereas in the latter one had to make them oneself being presented with a buffet of many ingredients. For at least one year I didn’t dare doing it, picturing myself trying to go through the cashier toll. I was sweating profusely imagining the girl in the white outfit looking at me sadly and doing a shy negative sign of the head, sending me back to the buffet for the choice of a bad combination of ingredients.

Smørrebrød(s) lined up and ready to be consumed.

A regular customer shovelling his prey to his plate at lunch break.

But all in all, at the end of it, what they do love here is their café cold-feet as they say: the dreaded “pølsevogn”…

(by Nathalie Farigu / Magnesium)

Snacking is not a modern phenomenon. As a matter of fact, for centuries people have satisfied their cravings for sugar, fat and cholesterol with little in between meals. When the snack attack struck the ancient Romans, they would rush to the thermopolium, which was a little shop selling warm wine and the ancient equivalent of what we now know as fast food. And apparently, the author Pliny was a big fan of eggs marinated in vinegar, which were subsequently deep fried. Other Roman snacks included boiled eggs with pine nut sauce, and libum, a sweet cheesecake.

Those dishes seem to require an awful lot of preparation. Luckily,  the Dutch alternative only requires a Euro or two and a visit to the automatiek, a special kind of vending machine. An almost exclusively Dutch phenomenon, it’s made up of rows of little heated boxes designed to keep the delicacies warm. Behind little glass doors you’ll find enough fat and cholesterol to eat your heart out, literally. Word is that the automatiek originated in Germany at the beginning of  the 20th century. However, its popularity waned after the sixties and the automatiek disappeared everywhere but the Netherlands, where it remains popular til this day.

One of the most popular items you’ll find at the automatiek is the kroket, which is a meat (mostly beef) ragout covered in breadcrumbs, then deep fried beyond recognition. Though it might not win any prizes for looks, it sure does for taste. Especially on a cold winter day, it’s very comforting to bite into a freshly deep fried kroket, perfectly crunchy on the outside, hot, gooey and salty on the inside. It’s the perfect snack in between meals, or after a night of debauchery and libations on the town.

When asked what food they’d miss the most while abroad, the majority of the Dutch population will tell you it’s the kroket. Luckily, the Dutch kroket has found its way onto a few menus of restaurants abroad as well. I found, and consequently enjoyed a kroket in places such as Lovina, Bali and Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. You just don’t get to pull it from the ‘muur’ (Dutch word for ‘wall’).

The kroket isn’t exactly a Dutch invention. It originated in France and can be found in many countries all over the world with a filling of cheese, shrimp, potatoes and/or vegetables. However, the beef kroket is a typically Dutch snack.

Most automatieken are not stand-alone walls of greasy goodness, there’s usually a counter available where you can order drinks and French fries called ‘patat’, which are often served with mayonnaise (‘patat met’). Other popular choices are ‘patat speciaal’ which are fries served with mayo, ketchup and raw onions, or the extremely delicious ‘patatje oorlog’ (war-style French fries) which will make your cholesterol levels soar beyond your wildest dreams and your fat cells scream with orgasmic delight, with its serving of mayo and fatty peanut sauce.

So, what kind of people commit these dietary crimes? According to a recent survey 75% of the Dutch population admits to eating a kroket every once in a while. I bet the other 25% hasn’t come out of the kroket closet yet.

I know that I, as a ‘vegetarian’, whenever I’m in Holland enjoy a ‘vette bek’ (which translates into ‘a greasy mouth’) on a regular basis. As my sister said: ‘It’s oh so bad, but so so good.’