Gourmet Food from Hachinohe Wows Bite of Seattle Fans
By Ryoko Kato NAP Contributor
Translated by Bruce Rutledge NAP General Manager
The Bite of Seattle attendees with a hankering for Japanese food were not disappointed this year. Secret Fort, the popular yakitori restaurant in Wallingford, collaborated with a group from Hachinohe City, Aomori Prefecture, Japan, to deliver a special regional menu at its booth.
The Secret Fort and Hachinohe food booth featured two lines — one to place an order and one to pick up food. People constantly lined up to try the Hachinohe products. Photo credit: Emilie Sheng.
Everything the group brought to the Bite proved to be a hit. A seafood processing company from Hachinohe prepped 350 bentos featuring Aomori’s delicious mackerel and sardines. By day three, they were sold out.
Seattle loves its seafood. The booth’s scallop tasting was very popular.
Photo credit: Emilie Sheng. ▶︎
For dessert, the Hakkoda cheesecake from confectioner Arpajon sold out by noon of the second day. Churros topped with whipped cream and anko (sweet bean paste) from Hachinohe’s long-established Kanego Seian were gobbled up. And attendees washed
all that good stuff down with a rich and satisfying drinkable yogurt from the Shingo
Village Hometown Revitalization Corp.
Our reporter caught up with Kanego Seian President and CEO Tatsuya Nakaibayashi and Yasuki Matsumoto, CEO of Encompass Japan, the Kirkland-based company behind the Hachinohe/Bite of Seattle promotion, as they spent some time at the event.
Bite of Seattle was named Best Food Festival in the U.S. in 2016 and 2017. Photo credit: Emilie Sheng.
Matsumoto said the most important thing when providing business support is “to listen to customers’ voices and opinions, and to always make changes. Bite of Seattle was the perfect place for us to test market Japanese food because we could see the reactions of our customers and learn alot from their discoveries.”
Nakaibayashi said he was heartened by how many attendees at the Bite mentioned that the sweet red beans used to make anko sounded healthy. He has patented a sugar-free anko in a joint research project with Iwate University, and he thinks it might be something that would do well in the American market. “I don’t think the anko sold here needs to be the same as in Japan,” he said. “It would be good to have anko that is unique to the United States. Someday, people will learn more about azuki beans, and anko will appear in their daily lives, which will be kind of cool.”
Nakaibayashi said that just by being at the Bite in Seattle, meeting different people and watching them sample the products from Japan, new business ideas began to percolate for him. “I would like to learn more about Seattle, gather information and think about what kind of products I can supply,” he said.
