Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx
Many of my favorites listed there (especially tako and awabi).... also a barbequed fresh water eel (Unagi), here in the States they usually prepare it with a blowtorch  and then stroke it with a thick sweet sauce. |
That's sad and my not so humble opinion, it's blasphemy against traditional culinary art.(although I suspect that Japanese started it first.)
Preparing Unagi is almost art from removing the bone, steaming it then BBQ it over charcoal brings out that mouth desolving taste.Especially the sauce, plunging the eel into the sauce pot so that the excess fat actually drips into the pot letting the sauce ripen with the fat enrichens the taste.
=Edit=
There is an interesting story about an Unagi restaurant that actually evacuated Tokyo with the sauce pot filled with the sauce during WW2 so he can protect the traditional taste passed down through generations saying the flavor would be lost forever since he can not replicate the taste by just mixing soy sauce and Mirin.