"If you're hungry for home, you can get anything in Düsseldorf." - An interview with Masao Kobayashi

Masao Kobayashi is a restaurateur and runs the well-known ramen restaurant Naniwa in the Little Tokyo district of Düsseldorf together with his father. Born in Osaka, Japan, Masao moved to Düsseldorf with his parents at the age of three. In the early 1990s, when the family started running the restaurant, Japanese culture was already present, but nowhere near as popular in Germany as it is today. In this interview, Masao talks about his experience with the Japanese community and provides insights into gastronomic Japan in his home city of Düsseldorf.

How did your family restaurant get started?
Through a contact in Osaka, my father received an offer from the previous owner to run a restaurant in Düsseldorf. When he took over the restaurant in the early 1990s, Japanese cuisine and culture in Düsseldorf was nowhere near as popular with international and German audiences as it is today. At the beginning, people "didn't eat anything they didn't know".
At that time, Chinese cuisine had already been adapted to European eating habits and was therefore more widespread. That's why my father initially decided not to start by offering authentic Japanese cuisine. Instead, he added more familiar Asian dishes such as wonton or fried rice to the menu. It was perfectly fine for the start, but it wasn't outstanding.

When did you start to focus on Japanese cuisine?
After the first few years, he expanded the menu to include ramen and Japanese noodle soup. However, these previously rather unknown dishes were hardly ever ordered by German or international guests. He was all the more pleased that more and more people from the Japanese community were asking for and ordering traditional Japanese dishes. These orders ultimately made the other guests aware of the unknown dishes and curious.

Do you have any personal insider tips? Or would you like to recommend Japanese dishes that deserve more attention?
One insider tip from the Japanese menu in our store is tenshinhan: a crab omelette with a sweet and savory sauce on a bed of rice. It's actually a simple yet special dish that definitely deserves more attention - many of our regulars have discovered it for themselves.
Another dish I would definitely recommend is takoyaki from Osaka, the city where I was born. Takoyaki is a Japanese street food snack and is similar in preparation to filled waffles. Pieces of octopus are fried until crispy in dough balls in a kind of waffle iron with small, spherical holes.

How much does the eye eat in Japanese food culture?
The presentation of a dish on the plate is immensely important in Japan. In some cases, chefs even choose the right tableware before creating a recipe and then think about how the dish could look best on it.

Where can you experience authentic Japanese culture and community in Düsseldorf?
The community is still very large. Nowadays it would be possible to live in Düsseldorf without ever speaking a language other than Japanese. There are Japanese doctors, supermarkets, restaurants, hairdressing salons, bakeries, laundromats. The restaurants are varied and authentic: if you're hungry for home, you can get anything in Düsseldorf.
There are also internationally renowned events such as Japan Day. On Japan Day, you can see an incredible number of cosplayers in Düsseldorf - people in costumes of their favorite anime and manga characters. For many enthusiasts throughout Germany, the topic of anime and manga on Japan Day is a reason to visit Düsseldorf. However, the day offers much more Japanese culture, especially in the culinary field. If you want to eat at Naniwa on Japan Day, you should be patient, because our restaurant - like many other Japanese stores in the city - receives what feels like three times as many customers on the day.

naniwa.de

Our tip: If you want to immerse yourself in the Japanese community and get to know the diversity in Düsseldorf, from the oldest Japanese bookshop to sashimi, we recommend the guided tour "Sushi, Sake & Japanese Lifestyle".

Cover picture: Düsseldorf Tourismus

This article is funded by REACT-EU.