Diplomatic Cookbook

In the early 2000s, I wrote a monthly column for an English language newspaper in Tokyo, Japan. The topic was foreign cuisine. The purpose of this column was to highlight national dishes of foreign countries and introduce them to the Japanese public. The newspaper asked me to contact embassies and arrange interviews with the ambassador who would be, obviously, an authority on his country and his country’s cuisine.

This was a daunting and time consuming task. Ambassadors don’t sit around with their wives (or husbands) in the morning and make plans, “Well honey, what should we do today?” Ambassadors are extremely busy people. Their main roles are to facilitate diplomatic relations with the host country and promote foreign policy strategies. This is your textbook answer, but they also promote trade and economics as well as culture. This is where cuisine comes in. Cuisine is a very big part of a country’s culture.

It took weeks, sometimes months, to arrange interviews; but, through a lot of persistence, embassies eventually found the time to help me with my project. After all, any positive press from the media is good for their country and good for their embassy. When it came time for the interview, the diplomats were very gracious and hospitable.

I requested that they prepare dishes that I could photograph and also to provide recipes that I could include in the column. Again, the purpose of this project was to highlight their country’s national dishes and to encourage Japanese people to try to cook these dishes at home. Unfortunately, there was no place to offer feedback in the newspaper column so I don’t know how successful this was.

Over a period of about three years, I managed to collect recipes from over thirty countries. Most embassies prepared at least two dishes and often they included a dessert. And, of course, the best part of this project: I got to sample all of the dishes. Ambassadors certainly live the highlife. They live in the most beautiful houses; they travel around in chauffeur driven cars and they have the best chefs in the world. In my next life, I’m definitely going to join the foreign service.

So now I’m going to share my articles, recipes and photos with you through Medium. I’m planning to start off slow and upload one story per week.