How pervasive is eel in Japanese cuisine.
My wife and I are traveling to Japan in a few weeks I was wondering how pervasive is eel in Japanese cuisine. My wife is very allergic, and obviously with the language barrier this will be a larger concern than normal. We have no intentions of ordering dishes that are very obviously eel. Are there any dishes to avoid that might not note the presence of eel or street food dishes a traveler might not know have eel in them. Please and thank you.
4 comments
I can’t say I’ve ever seen an eel containing dish where eel isn’t the main or only content of the dish. I’ve never seen eel-based dashi, or seafood stir-fry with bits of eel, or dishes similar to that. I could see some eel offal skewers being sold at a festival stand that might not look like eel, but there’s going to be a giant cartoon of an eel on the signage as it’s the main selling point.
Probably best to make a little multi-language allergy card to show, just in case, but in my experience, it’s going to be a non-issue.
I’ll just note there are a lot of different Anguilliformes which are served in Japan (unagi, anago, hamo, etc.) I don’t know the Japanese word that would cover this entire universe, but to be safe I would have “Anguilliformes/eel allergy” written in Japanese on a card you can show.
We dined at variety Japanese restaurant – casual, mid-range to expensive, across all types of food here: sushi, donburi, teppanyaki, yakitori, etc.
The ONLY places where we encountered eel:
1. Omakase sushi restaurant – they explicitly serve eel sushi (it is obvious looking)
2. Obviously, at an eel restaurant
We did not see eel anywhere else…
It is a very expensive thing in Japan. People are not just gonna add it in random dishes, I think you are safe.