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'Omurice', comfort food for Japanese and Koreans, a symbol of warmer ties
Japanese and South Korean officials have declined to confirm the plan or venue, while Rengatei, famed as the birthplace of omurice in 1900, declined to comment.
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People check the menu list on a window of Rengatei, a popular and long-established restaurant specialising in Japanese-style Western dishes, at Ginza district in Tokyo, Japan March 16, 2023. (Reuters/Issei Kato)
N
early everything about South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's first summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo will be scrutinised for signs of warmer bilateral ties, including a shared meal of a Tokyo classic called omurice.
The dish, whose name is a mash-up of omelette and rice, has become the talk of the town since Japan's Fuji TV reported on Monday of a hushed plan for Kishida to treat Yoon at Rengatei, the storied but no-frills restaurant that invented it.
Yoon, a self-described foodie and avid cook, reportedly had "unforgettable" memories of the omurice he ate in his youth at the 128-year-old establishment in Tokyo's Ginza district. He made frequent trips to the Japanese capital in 1966 while his father, a university professor, spent a year there, he told the Yomiuri daily.
Japanese and South Korean officials have declined to confirm the plan or venue, while Rengatei, famed as the birthplace of omurice in 1900, declined to comment.
Although many foreigners might associate Japanese cuisine with sushi or tempura, "yoshoku", or Western-influenced dishes such as omurice and tonkatsu (deep-fried pork cutlet), are more common fare on Japanese dinner tables.
Yoshoku is a genre of Japanese cuisine established more than a century ago, and some made its way to South Korea in the 1960s as ethnic Koreans travelled between the two countries, said Motoo Kawabata, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University who specialises in Japanese restaurants' global strategy.
Kishida and Yoon will reportedly share a more formal dinner of sukiyaki beforehand, but the real ice-breaker could be when they sit down for omurice, Kawabata said. Japan and South Korea are holding a summit for the first time in 12 years, seeking to mend relations that had deteriorated severely.
