パルテノがこんなにおいしいってみな知ってたのか…？！平野のこの夏おいしかった食べ物

Autumn's Melancholy, and How Food Saves the Body

Episode 279 opens with the recording well into autumn. Hirano Sakiko talks about "the pointless slump that autumn brings," noting that in traditional Chinese medicine, the season's associated emotions are grief and melancholy: dry autumn air damages the lungs, and when the lungs suffer, the flow of qi stagnates. She describes attending a small-scale Chinese food and tea event hosted by a cook, where spring rolls and a seasonal anmitsu dessert lifted her spirits. She closes the opening with a quietly tender appeal: "When you fall into a slump, don't just sit in it — find your own way back."

The Biggest Obsession of the Summer: Partheno with Honey

First on her list is Morinaga Milk Industry's Greek yogurt Partheno with Honey (パルテノ 蜂蜜付き). The product has been on shelves since 2011 — fifteen years — and yet this summer was her first real encounter with it. "Why did no one tell me?" she says.

The initial purchase was almost accidental: she was looking for plain yogurt to use as a raita alongside the much-talked-about Seven-Eleven biryani (supervised by Inada-san, the Eric South version). She picked up Partheno on a whim, took one taste, and froze: "What is this incredibly rich, smooth texture?"

She went back to a supermarket and bought it properly on its own. Her breakdown of what makes it work: an exceptionally rich and smooth texture; a deep, lingering umami; a clean, sharp fermentation-driven acidity that cuts through the richness and resets the palate; and honey poured on top, which adds its own viscosity and lets you move between a plain zone and a sweet zone so you never get bored. Add 8.2g of protein and the fact that it's a fermented food, and she declares, "If I'd known a snack this good existed, I never would have thought about starting a pastry shop." She now buys four at a time, reliably in stock. She notes with feeling that there is zero sponsorship from Morinaga — this is entirely her own money talking.

Le Bourguignon: Ten Years Later

At the end of July, a sudden craving for "summer French food" hit Hirano. That same evening, on the off chance, she called Le Bourguignon in Roppongi — a restaurant open for over 25 years that has produced chefs who went on to lead celebrated establishments including Florilège and Anis. A seat happened to be free.

She describes the experience, beginning with a summer ayu risotto, as leaving her "no room whatsoever to wonder why." Every element — ingredient, technique, plating — felt inevitable, the product of decades of accumulated craft. She had previously said on the show that she loves food that "requires no thought," citing french fries. This meal made her identify a different category: food so thoroughly worked-through that it removes any need for the diner to think at all. After dinner, the chef saw her off with an unaffected smile and a simple "I'm glad you enjoyed it." She walked home all the way from Roppongi in flip-flops she'd swapped for her heels, listening to music on Spotify — "a restaurant blessed by the gods of food, warm yellow light and all."

An Ayu Gathering and What She Still Didn't Know

The ayu risotto at Le Bourguignon leads her to another memory: a dedicated ayu dinner she attended after being invited by a veteran food journalist in their 70s. At the table were enthusiasts who could identify the river a fish came from just by looking at it. Watching them, Hirano felt the gap between "knowing something as information" and "knowing it from the inside." She came away humbled: "I understood nothing about ayu." The level these people inhabit, she says, is one where "ayu is the memory of its river." She resolved to keep eating ayu every summer.

Yakushima: Shiseidodō and Yukigoke-ya

For the first time in five or six years, Hirano visited Yakushima in Kagoshima Prefecture. The main purpose of the trip was a long-awaited visit to the Chinese restaurant Shiseidodō (資生堂々), originally based in Itoshima and now relocated to the island. She ate a course meal in a room where mountains and sky filled the windows and two resident cats wandered freely.

Dishes she singles out: deep-fried loofah with basil and yulin sauce, its moisture bursting at the first bite; butternut squash shupin (スーピン) — a delicate Tianjin-style pastry whose flaky shell gives way to warm sweet steam; a collaboration of bitter melon and local Kuroshima mandarin that turns bitterness into a theme; a smooth aori squid dish; and a sesame eel (ゴマウナギ) that the chef had trap-caught in the river outside the night before. The eel had zero fishiness and a texture unlike anything she had words for — she approximates it as "gyuing-gyin." Her phrase for the cooking philosophy across all the dishes: "catching fireflies gently with both hands — never muddying what the ingredient already is." She quotes a poet who lived on Yakushima: "A lifetime, two lifetimes, ten rebirths — and you still could not learn everything in this small island within a 100-kilometer radius," and hears the chef's approach in those words.

Also on Yakushima, she stopped at a café called Yukigoke-ya (雪ごけ屋), read a book at the counter overlooking green forest, and had tea and sweets. A small quantity of cookies she bought there were outstanding — no online shop, no restock — and she is still furious at herself for not buying more.

Postscript: The Spherical Sweet-and-Sour Pork at Chazenko

Already wrapping up, Hirano adds one more: Chinese restaurant Chazenko in Nishiazabu. A single bite-sized spherical sweet-and-sour pork arrived alone on the plate. Told to eat it in one bite, she did — and a cherry hidden inside burst. "In my head, Sailor Moon's transformation sequence started up instantly — light, ribbons, outer space." She said nothing to the people at the table, certain they wouldn't understand. She had been waiting for the right place to say it out loud. This podcast, finally, was it.