"Is 'ordinary' really that bad?"

 

Near Tsukushino Station on the Den-en-toshi Line is "Keitei," a Western-style restaurant run by my childhood friend, who takes great pride in his cooking.

Lately, to attract more customers, he's been experimenting and developing a "Beef Stew" dish he hasn't made much before. The other day, when I stopped by casually after work, he asked for my opinion, and I ended up giving him all sorts of unsolicited advice.

"Why would customers come specifically to this restaurant for beef stew, rather than a long-established famous restaurant or a casual family restaurant? If you had to describe the appeal of this menu item in one word, what would it be?"

"What moves customers is that 'Wow!' moment of discovery. If you don't prepare that key point properly, you'll just get lost in the vast sea of dining options out there."

To this, my childhood friend replied.

"I get it, I really do. But is 'ordinary' really that bad?"

With the help of a little alcohol, I wasn't about to back down either.

"Doing your job seriously and properly is wonderful. But you know... Unfortunately, if the result is just ordinary, the odds of it succeeding are pretty low, right? Lately, there's this boom for 'local Chinese restaurants' – cheap, generous portions, tasty, the kind of ordinary Chinese eateries that've been around since the good old Showa days. But even that's just people enjoying retro as something out of the ordinary, a special experience, right? And even among those, the popular ones are the ones with something distinctive, like rice noodles, offal, or bamboo shoots."

My childhood friend replied again.

"I get it, I really do. You simmer beef brisket and tendon with aromatic vegetables over low heat, then let it cool slowly. Repeat this for a week. The slow cooking draws out the meat's umami and the vegetables' natural sweetness, creating a complex depth of flavor. Textbook, sure, but it's beef stew made by meticulously doing the basics. Ordinary beef stew. Is that really so bad?"

 

Faced with such a direct counterargument, what suddenly popped into my head was the folk art movement exhibition I'd recently visited. Works by Yanagi Muneyoshi, Kawai Kanjiro, Hamada Shoji, and others who discovered a "beauty of utility" in everyday tools crafted by nameless artisans, a beauty rivaling that of fine art. Accompanying these pieces was a quote along the lines of: "Settling down to pursue something (like Mingei) is difficult for modern people who, precisely because things are ordinary, crave the extraordinary."

Honestly, I don't think my argument is fundamentally flawed. A week's worth of effort is admirable, but there are plenty of shops out there with simmering periods of two weeks, or sauces that have been continuously replenished for over half a century since their founding.

If you want to attract many new customers based solely on "the appeal of the product," then yes, a "clear distinguishing feature" is necessary.

At the same time, looking back at my own words, I realized they sounded like something an advertising guy would say. Maybe it's just me dancing to the trends of the modern era, not necessarily tied to human nature.

I might have been a bit disingenuous toward the taste of his beef stew – unpretentious yet essential, grounded, and thoroughly luxurious.

I'll likely keep pursuing "differentiation" from now on, but at the same time, the moment I declare "ordinary just won't cut it," I feel like I might lose something important.

Please, enjoy!