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In view of these circumstances it seems more than obvious that the
cooks employed at high-class Western-style hotels in Japan, such as the
Grand Hotel in Yokohama and the Tsukiji Hotel in Tokyo, were French.
Katamura Shigetake, the proprietor of Seiyōken Hotel, followed this convention
and served French menus as well:
Déjeuner:
Pain
Hors d’oeuvre (cold meat)
Poisson (deep-fried fish)
Entrée (stewed poultry)
Entrée (stewed meat)
Chateaubriand (fried beef )
Sweets, fruits, coffee, cheeses etc.
Dîner:
Pain
Potage (soup)
Poisson (baked or deep-fried fish)
Entrée (stewed poultry)
Entrée (stewed meat)
Légumes (vegetables)
Au rôti [?] (meat or poultry casserole)
Sweets or crème glace 31
It was the intention of the exclusive restaurants to recreate French
dining in minute detail. The food was served with a full set of china, glass
and cutlery, and it was considered appropriate for Japanese men to put
on a Western suit for the occasion, rather than to appear in native attire
(kimono). Customarily, three ranks of set menus were served – ordinary,
middle and top. The most expensive version was usually twice the price of
the ordinary one (see overleaf ).
At the time, one could have a bowl of noodles for 1–3 sen and a sushi
meal for under 10 sen; 100 grams of beef were sold for 3.6 sen, 1.8 litres of
soy sauce for 9 sen, 1 kilograms of sugar for 14 sen and 10 kilograms of rice
for 67 sen. 32 It goes without saying that only the very top of the Japanese
society could afford to dine at these select restaurants – cultural conformity
with the ‘West’ was expensive and functioned as a marker of social prestige.
The Hozumi family mentioned earlier occasionally patronized
Seiyōken Hotel and the Fujimiken restaurant – the two best French
45