Taiyaki What is Taiyaki? The first Japanese sweet I had ever tried was during winter in Setagaya, a suburb in south-western Tokyo. A local confectioner was making these little fish-shaped pieces of waffle, grilling them to shape on a specially designed mold. They weren’t expensive at all, maybe around 100 yen or roughly one dollar apiece, so looking for a quick treat to warm my belly I joined the queue of people in line to order and waited my turn. I asked for one, paid my money and walked off staring at it. It was warm to the touch with a rich smell of waffle. Then I bit into it. Wow. What a treat. I didn’t expect to find anything inside but the waffle was hiding a small dollop of red bean paste that was just sensational. I later learned that this fish-shaped treat filled with sweet bean paste was …show more content…
The story goes that a similar sweet known as imagawayaki was being sold in Kansai, the western part of Japan, and that vendors visiting Tokyo (then known as Edo) began selling it in near one of the bridges in the Kanda district. Imagawayaki was made with a thicker batter and tended to be round in shape whereas what became taiyaki was prepared with a thinner batter leading to a slightly crispier cake and was shaped like a fish. Both sweets were part of a trend of using cast metal molds to create shape in foods. By the turn of the century, as the Meiji period was coming to an end, taiyaki was already catching and there were several mentions of them in the newspapers of the time. Not much is recalled about why the sea bream was chosen for the shape of the mold but the most readily available theory is connected with luxury. At the time, sea bream was somewhat expensive and so, the theory goes, molds were shaped as sea breams so that the eater could at least imagine that they were doing well and eating luxuriously. In Japan, the sea bream is known as the ‘king of fish’ so this origin story doesn’t sound too