pantsfarm

I like Natto. I think it is delicious.

That said, natto is definitely an acquired taste. When my chef sister first tried it she didn’t think it especially tasty, though allowed that it could have a place in fine Asian cuisine. Another friend of mine on taking her first bite declared that it was “like eating little solid bits of alcohol” (a description I didn’t really understand, though perhaps it was in reference to the somewhat ammoniac taste) along with a facial expression conveying very clear distate.

To what I assume is the typical western palate, natto is unpleasant at best (a funny read, but don’t take it too seriously, it’s not that disgusting). Just today I discovered “The Natto Project” an interesting account of some people who also decided to acquire a taste for natto, and their experience has proven interesting to me to read so far, though I’m only a couple days in at the time of writing.

In the rest of this post I’m going to recount my personal history of acquiring a taste for, as well as where in Beijing one can get, natto.

I think two years ago, maybe even less than that, I had never tried natto before. I had heard of it because it was one of those things that people told me smells bad but tastes good (like some cheeses, or stinky tofu [I like eating those too]). But I had never tried it before because I never even noticed it on a menu at any Japanese restaurants I’d been to up to that point, and having never seen it, didn’t really search for it when going shopping.

A friend of mine was living in Japan for a while and she told me a bit more about natto. I don’t remember anything specific, but she seemed to enjoy it well enough. Maybe she did from her first try? Maybe she too had acquired a taste over time, I don’t know. I think she told me it was supposed to be really healthy (“Natto: the ultimate health food“, it’s even got it’s own funny named enzyme “nattokinase“!), maybe she didn’t but that was the impression I got when I read about it online (mostly that one site and wikipedia probably). Whatever the case, I was curious.

I think about the time I moved to Beijing, I also became really curious about stinky tofu (chou dofu). The first stinky tofu that I can remember eating was at this place next to a market where I used to live in Beijing. Outside the shop stinks, though probably more due to its proximity to a public toilet than the stinky tofu itself. But I tried it, and was in love. That stuff was great. Theirs was pretty mild (I’m told) and the texture was just that of fried tofu, nothing particularly gross about it. I ate a lot of stinky tofu for a while after that and once or twice went and read a bit about it online as well.

After enjoying stinky tofu of a few varieties, and then hearing about some other fermented soy product that was also stinky and supposedly very good for you, I decided that I was going to be a person that likes pretty much whatever fermented soy food I could get my hands on. It occurred to me later that Miso also falls under this categorization, but doesn’t seem to be nearly so off-putting to most people on account of it’s lack of stinkiness. I’m not sure exactly why I was so determined about this, but I had been convinced that eating fermented foods was a really good idea because cultures that ate lots of fermented stuff were healthier or something like that. Eating lots of microbes that were alive and well in my food would give my immune system super powers. Or something. I also noticed that I really like the taste of a lot of things that are the products of fermentation: the sourdough culture I cultivated, kimchi, lots of booze, cheese, and so much more!

That was a long digression, but the essential point is that I decided to like natto, too.

Much time passed and I never really did anything about this because I continued to not notice natto anywhere.

But then one day in Texas of all places, I tried some natto. I was in Austin attending a friend’s wedding and in the days leading up to the big event we went to get lunch at this sushi place near where he lives. Not excellent, but considering our distance from, uh, oceans, not bad. While skimming their menu, I noticed that they had natto rolls, and I remembered my new goals. I ordered some.

It was gross. I don’t know if my memory of this is simply that it was my first time trying natto, I don’t know if it was actually gross Natto at the Japanese restaurant in Texas, I don’t know if it was something else. It was just natto and rice, wrapped up in seaweed, and I did not like it. I ate one, and what I remember thinking was that it tasted weirdly smoky, had a strange texture and that I didn’t want to eat anymore. I forced down the first roll, and later in the meal tried a second, thinking maybe it would be better. It wasn’t. I didn’t actually finish the roll and if you know me, you’ll know that I am not one who takes not finishing what is ordered lightly.

I didn’t give up though. A while later, long enough that I had forgotten the specifics of my first bad encounter with natto, I discovered natto as an appetizer on the menu of my favorite okonomiyaki restaurant in Beijing. I had to get it because maybe it would be better this time, different, palatable even. This time it came in a little bowl, a mound of natto, topped with some pieces of nori, chopped up spring onions, and a raw egg yolk. A bottle of soy sauce (also a fermented soy product!) was brought with it to the table. I wasn’t really sure how to eat this, so I poured in a bit of soy sauce and gave it a vigorous stir with my chopsticks.

This was my first experience with the sticky strands that are part of natto. They looked gross. I touched the sticky mass, and they felt gross. They also stuck to everything. Those strands stretch for a very long time, and they got all over me as I was sitting there playing with my food. I’m sure I looked very silly.

After enough of that though, it was time to give it a try. I worked a bite into my mouth, getting more strands on my face in the process. It was… weird. The texture was still taking some getting used to but this time it didn’t actually taste all that bad. I think having the egg and the soysauce and the onions all together really made a big difference for me because I finished that bowl without a problem.

And since then, I’ve come to really like natto, so much so that at some point I was thinking how I’d really like to have some, but didn’t know where to get it without going out to dinner at a Japanese place. I checked briefly when I went to by groceries a few times but never saw it anywhere, and for a while, I just assumed that it would be too difficult to find so why bother?

Then of course, my want to eat novel foods overtook my inertia and I started actually thinking of where I would get natto in Beijing. After a bit of google handiwork it seemed that my best bet would be to try a grocery store in a Japanese owned mall/building. The places that I found in searching for these were the grocery areas in Scitech plaza, SOGO, and Ito Yokado. I don’t actually know where the latter two are, but I do know where Scitech is (Jianguomen Wai) so I decided to swing by there after work one day.

Success! All sorts of Japanese foodstuffs can be found there, miso paste, natto, a bunch of other weird things I don’t know what they are, and so on.

I read that other places I could try are other big supermarkets such as Carrefour or Walmart and then browse their international foods, and that also the grocery area in Pacific Century Place (on Gongti Beilu) has a lot of Japanese stuff. I’ll have to check out these alternatives as some of them may be a bit more convenient for me. (Update: Sept 20 2009 – Pacific Century Place’s basement does indeed also have Natto, and moreover, there are more different brands there.)
(Update: Dec. 20 2009 – turns out the BHG marketplace supermarket right next to where I work has the cheap brand that I have taken to buying regularly. These supermarkets are all over the place in fancier malls and such! How did I miss this for so long?)

Now I’m curious what other tastes I may decide to try and acquire. Maybe the next thing to try and find is tempeh? I’m also slightly curious to improvise an incubator and make my own natto, but that’s a bit more involved of a project than I think I’m ready to taken on right now.