Restaurants offer Japanese vegetarian delights

Japanese restaurants here are now offering vegetarian variants of typical Japanese food such as 'Miso soup'-- generally prepared with soybean and fish stock, and 'Yakitori' -- a form of grilled chicken among others.
Typically, Japanese cusine has a lot of seafood offerings like fish, shells, shrimp, lobsters, oysters etc that are used in dishes like sushi sashimi, Shabu Shabu and Teppanyaki.
"Almost 40 per cent of Indian population is vegetarian and there are atleast two days in a week when that number rises to almost 60 per cent. We want to serve this group of people also so we are introducing a vegetarian menu," says Russell Merdjanian, Operations Manager, Benihana restaurant.

The restaurant specialises in the Teppanyaki style of Japanese cusine, which utilises an iron griddle for cooking.
Merdjanian says the restaurant has played with ingredients to make authentic Japanese cuisine more acceptable to Indian taste buds.
"If we serve authentic Japanese food eaten in Japan, you cannot eat it, so we are playing a lot with the taste to modify it to the Indian palette," he says.

Sea food from the land of the rising sun, which owns long coastlines, has gained popularity in the Asian sub-continent also.
"You know, Japan is known for its sea food like fishes to crabs, the Japanese diet is famous for all varieties of seafood. In India, though a large part of the population is vegetarian, another part which belongs from the coastal regions are very delighted by it and so the cuisine is flourishing so much," says the Benihana manager.

Japanese recipes usually call for most vegetables and meats to be cooked in the simmering 'dashi' or fish stock particularly mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, tofu and fish etc
Restaurants here are also adapting meals by not using 'dashi', for preparations like soups and noodles in broth.
Miso Soup also cooked in fish stock can be adapted to suit vegetarian tastes by fermenting a mixture of ground cooked soya beans, rice or barley and salt.