Store Design, Musicals, Chemical Seasonings and Oishinbo: Ryuji's Conversation at Horiemon's "Dashi to Monja"

Ryuji opens with "Today we're at Wagyu Mafia," and Horie stops him with "No, no." Wagyu Mafia is another restaurant Horie is involved with, and Ryuji had apparently once let slip that it was "not good." Horie cuts him off with "Stop it, it makes this awkward to talk about," and this kind of mutual teasing sets the tone for the episode.

Among the lemon sours for the toast is one made with Iyoshi Cola, a Japanese craft cola. This lemon sour was created by "Toba-san," who oversees the restaurant's food.

Horie revealed that he cooks using Ryuji's recipes. The one he makes most is the "Ippudo bean sprouts," which he says goes over very well when he serves it. Horie's take is that it comes together quickly, so it's good to serve first. He also made the ramen recipe called "Generic Ichiran," but frankly says of it that "it's quicker to just buy cup ramen."

Horie says he only cooks for other people. That's why he actually never wanted to run a restaurant—restaurants are hard work. But, he says, "I've already stuck my foot in once, so there's nothing I can do now."

The restaurant offers about ten kinds of lemon sour. According to Horie, the aim is clear: people eat monja at a leisurely pace, so he wants them to order plenty of alcohol. With ten kinds, people want to try them all. Ryuji called this "good business sense."

On why he teamed up with Toba-san, Horie explains that their first collaboration was bread. At a bakery particular about its wheat, they served a curry bread using Toba-san's keema curry. This curry bread reportedly won a gold award at the Curry Bread Grand Prix. Later in the episode, the group tasted the curry itself, and Ryuji described it as "a little fruity, on the sweet side, with a solid flavor."

The monja is cooked by staff each time. Of a monja made with shrimp crushed shell and all, Ryuji said the seafood flavor came through right away. Beef tongue that had been prepped once and then cooked with olive oil was also well received. A monja using an ingredient called "Shiaccho" (as written in the subtitles) was especially highly rated. Horie says it's an ingredient that is "surprisingly little known," and Ryuji, surprised at how well it paired with the dashi, called it "a bit of a shock," recommending that they "should make it a recommended item" and saying "it'll catch on."

What Ryuji focused on was the amount of flour. Normal monja would contain more wheat flour, but this restaurant's had almost none, making it light. Instead, the dashi does the work. When Ryuji pointed this out, Horie responded, "Sharp." The fact that it ends up lower in calories also came up.

Other dishes and drinks served included the following:

• Baby shiitake: Shiitake that haven't fully grown, turned into a product. They were cooked like a mustard stir-fry. Ryuji said "the flavor is shiitake but the texture is different, it feels like something else entirely"
• Margherita monja: Uses a whole tomato combined with mozzarella cheese. It was well received for becoming like a "healthy pizza" with Tabasco on top
• Udon to finish: An iron rod is reportedly placed in the soup while boiling. It was explained that, on the same principle as an iron kettle, it absorbs excess minerals and makes the flavor mellower
• Chai makgeolli: A drink Horie recommends

Horie says he also chose the background music himself. Ryuji was impressed, saying, "He's more involved in the substance than I expected." His assessment was that many people only handle the business side and leave the substance to others without looking at it much, so being able to explain everything himself is impressive. However, someone at the table also quipped that he "talks about things other people made as if he made them himself."

As the conversation flowed, it turned to the highballs Horie serves elsewhere. He says he created a whisky for highballs together with a liquor store. It's a blended whisky, containing only about 20% single malt, with the rest being grain whisky. Horie explains that it was blended to go down most smoothly when mixed with soda.

Furthermore, instead of aging it in barrels, they add "whisky wood." Barrel aging is costly. It's a method that wouldn't be allowed if you were selling it as single malt, but Horie reasoned, "A highball is a cocktail, and cocktails are things you mix, so it should be fine to add whisky wood." With this method, he says it can be made in about half a year.

Ryuji says he loves monja. He often goes to Tsukishima, and during the year or so he lived in Kinshicho, he frequented the monja restaurants in the area. He says he has only one monja recipe of his own, made in a home frying pan.

Horie said he's been going to Kinshicho a lot lately for musical rehearsals. Horie explains his reason for taking on a musical this way: as AI advances in learning, everyone will end up with free time, so we need to prepare lots of ways to pass the time.

The hardest job he's had so far, he says, was playing a corpse in a suspense drama. It was a corpse role that explains the trick, so he had to memorize the entire script and redo it many times. He thought, "I'll never do that again." On the other hand, one of the others at the table offered the view that dramas are easy because they're cut into small takes.

The script for this musical is by Osamu Suzuki. Since there's no point in making an ordinary musical, he reportedly put a 10-minute monologue by Horie at the beginning. In the production, there is a "Champagne Time" between Act 1 and Act 2. The audience can eat and drink, and a full-course meal is served. It's such an unusual structure that even Horie himself says, "It really makes no sense." Horie's character is the one who gets teased, and he invited Ryuji, saying, "I want you to see the part where I get seriously provoked, too."

Horie proposed doing a food version of "REAL VALUE," a show he appears on. The format would have major food manufacturers and convenience stores participate and decide whether to adopt challengers' dishes as new menu items. Horie's vision is that this way, even an amateur with nothing could take on the challenge with a single recipe.

Ryuji immediately replied, "I'll pass." According to Ryuji, his viewers are very strict, and the moment Horie appears in a thumbnail, lots of ill-intentioned people show up, and comments flood in asking "Why are you collaborating with this guy?" Someone at the table pointed out that on another channel, the performers properly make fun of Horie, so the comments are warm. Everyone is happy when Horie gets teased. Conversely, the comment section would likely blow up if Horie came across as arrogant—that was their read.

Horie says Toba-san works so fast that a new menu item is finished while they're still doing a YouTube conversation. He wasn't originally a chef; he was apparently a teacher. Horie first met him at an acquaintance's wedding. Toba-san was in charge of the food at that wedding, and Horie was introduced to him with "This person is a genius."

Ryuji's assessment was favorable. He's someone who does interesting things as cooking, and he can also take a position close to a culinary researcher. He has the flexibility to use mentsuyu despite being a chef, and Ryuji says he "really likes" that about him.

Horie had long said he wanted to talk about chemical seasonings (umami seasonings). Asked why some chefs strongly reject umami seasonings, Ryuji first answered that there must be a difference in position between chefs and everyday home cooking. He then added that rejecting umami seasonings makes it easier to win fans. There are many people who think the same way, so getting them on your side is a quick route—that's his view.

From there, the conversation moved to Oishinbo, which was named as a source of criticism of chemical seasonings. It was framed as a work that took on chemical seasonings in an era with no social media or internet.

Horie says he's close to an editor of Oishinbo and has heard many behind-the-scenes stories. According to Horie, the characters are the personality of the original author, Tetsu Kariya, broken into pieces. Shiro Yamaoka, Yuzan Kaibara, the deputy department head, even Kurita-san—all of them are part of Kariya. Horie explains that Kurita-san shows Kariya's kindness, the deputy department head shows his outrageous side, and the majority is a sense of justice like Yamaoka's and an arrogance like Yuzan's.

What convinced Horie of this was a thick compilation-style volume sold at convenience stores. It contained Kariya's raw writing, criticizing the world in a storm of abuse. It was reportedly almost too much to look at directly. In Horie's view, the manga artist sugarcoated this skillfully, and by making Yuzan the antagonist, it resonated with readers.

Ryuji also says he recently looked at how carbonara is made in the series. It used fresh cream and butter, completely different from the authentic method. Even though it was about 40 years ago, he thought, "That's sloppy."

Horie goes further, saying that Oishinbo is a "far-fetched manga" to begin with. The example he gave was the story of the soft-shelled turtle hot pot restaurant early in the series. It's true that the pots are fired with coke and that only one survives out of 100 fired. But, Horie points out, there's no way the dashi soaks into the pot. Ryuji laughed wryly that he had believed that story and kept using his clay pot. Horie says he too believed it as a child, but thinking about it calmly, it's impossible. Horie described this as closer to an "Ajinomoto conspiracy theory" than to culinary fantasy. When someone at the table called Ryuji part of "the Horie faction," Ryuji hurriedly said, "Please stop, I'll lose work."

Toward the end, one of the others at the table said that although Horie helps many people, a single remark on X (formerly Twitter) ruins everything, and the public knows almost nothing of what Horie actually does. He also mentioned that Horie had recently drawn backlash over subsidies for his rocket business.

Horie explained how conspiracy theories are constructed, using himself as an example. If he doesn't criticize the Ministry of Finance, he's seen as "defending it," and a reason is searched for. So the explanation "it's because he's getting subsidies for rockets" gets created. The reason he opposes a consumption tax cut is searched for in the same way. Facts that have no actual causal relationship get linked together in a simplistic way.

Horie offers a rebuttal to this. The Ministry of Finance drafts the budget, but it's the government and the prime minister who decide; the ministry is like a company's accounting department. The accounting department doesn't have that kind of power. Subsidies are discussed by a third-party committee and proceed through submitting a huge amount of paperwork, and the money doesn't go into his own pocket. But if he denies this, it's taken as "So even Horie can't tell the truth anymore," and the conspiracy-theory beliefs grow even stronger, Horie said.

Asked whether he minds that kind of criticism, Horie answered, "There have to be facts." The conversation also briefly touched on criticism of Ken Noguchi and the mega-solar issue. Someone at the table advised that because Horie comes across as very strong, he should show his "cute" side, drinking and eating.

Finally, Horie left, saying he was moving to the table of the musical's cast members, who were at the same restaurant. The episode ends there. There's no real conclusion; it wraps up with assessments of the restaurant's food and light banter about how Horie is perceived.