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Notes on the Milkfish Belly Bento
The cost of deboning, and a layer of white fat inside a square box At midday, Taiwanese street corners develop a particular pattern of movement. Motorcycles pull to the curb and riders stand in front of bento shops without removing their... -
Notes on the Box Tied with a Rubber Band
A square of heat, distributed across Taiwan at noon At noon, the air on Taiwanese street corners shifts by one degree. Office building elevators open in succession and release streams of people onto the pavement. Suited office workers, l... -
Notes on Boneless Milkfish in Tainan
How the Philippines and Taiwan arrived at opposite solutions to the same fish The market in Tainan is moving before sunrise. Fish arrive while it is still dark and are laid out across wet-down tables. The silver bellies catch and return ... -
Notes on Milkfish and the 222 Bones
A fish without a dedicated shop, found everywhere in the south of Taiwan Tainan starts early. Before dawn, the diners beside the aquaculture ponds have their fires going. A large pot holds clear broth, and silver fish are lowered into it... -
Notes on the Steamed Dumpling That Lost Its Shop
How two parallel lines from opposite ends of China came to share the same menu Finding steamed dumplings (zheng jiao) in Taiwan requires a particular kind of patience. The difficulty is not that the dish is rare. It is that dedicated zhe... -
Notes on Ippudo and the Reframing of Tonkotsu Ramen
A record of how smell, space, and design reshaped a regional dish One stands in front of the shop. It could be Tokyo, New York, or Paris — it makes no difference. The first thing registered is not a smell but its absence. A tonkotsu pork... -
Notes on the Overseas Path of Japanese Tonkotsu Ramen
A bowl encountered in New York Open a ramen menu in New York, London, or Paris, and the photographs are likely to show an opaque white soup. Not the translucent amber of soy sauce, not the pale clarity of salt. White, from the beginning.... -
Notes on the History of Japanese Tonkotsu Ramen
The birth and evolution of a clouded white broth In Japan's dashi tradition, transparency has long been held as a mark of quality. Broth drawn from dried bonito and kombu maintains a clear, unclouded color. The earliest soy sauce ramen e... -
Notes on Japanese Tonkotsu Ramen
A record of the white broth that traveled beyond its place of origin Walking through Hakata, there are points where the quality of the air shifts. Within a radius of roughly fifty meters, a distinctive animal smell spreads through the st... -
Notes on Japanese Ramen
A record of density, structure, and the freedom that thickens flavor When a foreign visitor enters a Japanese ramen shop for the first time, what stops them is often not the flavor. It is the sound. The continuous noise of noodles being ...
