washoku

English

Etymology

From Japanese 和食 (washoku).

Noun

A washoku (Japanese-style) dinner.

washoku (uncountable)

1. Japanese cuisine, traditional Japanese food.
   • 2005, Elizabeth Andoh, Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, page 67:

     She picked up ideas from chatting with local vendors, reading ladies magazines, and watching television cooking shows. She proved an excellent role model, demonstrating that washoku was not a rigid set of rules, but rather a flexible framework in which to collect and consider new ideas.

   • 2007 May 20, Adam Sachs, “They Eat Horse Sashimi in Tokyo, Don’t They?”, in The New York Times, T Magazine:

     Yoshoku is distinguished from washoku, or “Japanese food,” but their histories are intertwined. That beef (let alone Salisbury steak) is eaten at all in Japan can be traced to an afternoon in 1872 when Emperor Meiji had meat for his lunch and, in doing so, reversed a ban on eating beef that had lasted 1,200 years.

   • 2013 December 6, Kwan Weng Kin, “UNESCO names Japan's cuisine a cultural asset”, in The Straits Times, Singapore, Top of the News:

     Traditional Japanese food, or “washoku”, has been designated an intangible cultural asset, making Japan’s national cuisine only the second after France’s to be so honoured.

   • 2016 January 25, Danielle Demetriou, “No more soggy sushi – Japan to teach UK the way of washoku”, in The Daily Telegraph, page 3:

     Akemi Yokoyama, a London-based Japanese chef and washoku teacher, said: “Fundamentally, sushi has to be prepared fresh. The problem with the supermarket sushi is the shelf life.” […] Washoku has edicts on everything from the angle of a chef’s hand as it moulds a piece of sushi rice, to the adornment of seasonal sprigs of foliage – all part of a quest for harmony and balance in flavours, colours and presentation.

Japanese

Romanization

washoku

1. Rōmaji transcription of わしょく