By Adam Brownstein — Tokyo, Japan — March 15, 2026
Tokyo is the world’s best food city. A bold claim, but it has the data and the sentiment to back it up. Its 195 Michelin star restaurants sits comfortably ahead of Paris’s 123. The reason can be traced to variety (84 of the establishments are something other than Japanese cuisine) and passion. Passion in that many chefs who serve up pillowy gnocchi and confit du canard honed their craft in the likes of Apulia and Miramont-de-Guyenne. Mr. Saito, a dutiful chef I met when I first moved to Japan, was ashamed of how short his apprenticeship in Avignon was. Only 10 years.
Beyond fine dining there are thousands of hidden gems that offer tacos made with hand-forged tortillas, burgers oozing with Stolwickr cheese and crisp-a-licious tonkatsu flanked by piles of thinly shaved cabbage. Yesterday I enjoyed a quick prix fix lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood Italian joints. An espresso cup hit of radish soup and goose pate to start followed by perfectly plated bottarga linguine finished by a ristretto and biscotti. The bottarga and biscotti were made in house, of course, and the whole meal set me back a whopping $12.52.
And then there are the cheap treats that bring a smile to your face in exchange for a few coins at the bottom of your pocket. One of my all time favorites is kaki-gori, the Japanese version of shaved ice. A staple of the warmer months, it can be found in bakeries, parks, and street corners in flavors like Blue Hawaii, Melon Soda and Suica (watermelon). I go for cherry most of the time. I love it for the same reason why I loved the cherry Jolly Ranchers that Mr. Moore used to hand out on Fridays during eighth grade social studies class. It brings me back to my childhood, and I was lucky to have a happy one.
My happy childhood featured kaki-gori, but back then we called it a “snow cone”. THE place to score a snow cone was the snack bar at Rinconada Park. There was nothing like the experience of rolling up on my Mongoose BMX bike (all shiny and chrome) on a summer’s day and plopping down a quarter counter in exchange for a cherry snow cone. An additional dime got you extra fruit flavoring, guaranteeing a sustained sugar high and a very, very red tongue.
One summer afternoon I remember coming back from Rinconada Park and encountering my Grandpa Bert. He and my Grandma Lucille habitually visited us in July, escaping schvitzy North Miami Beach for the dry air of the Golden State. The scarlet hue of my lips and tongue gave him cause for concern.
“What on earth have you been eating, Adam?” he catechized.
“A cherry snow cone, Grandpa Bert,” I retorted. “It’s pretty much my favorite thing in the world!”
“Cherry, huh?” he mused. “Don’t they have orange flavor?”
Grandpa Bert loved oranges. During “Christmas Breaks” in the late 1970’s we would visit Grandma Lu and Grandpa Bert at their one bedroom flat in the Canongate Building on Ives Dairy Road off of I-95. Every morning featured a big bowl of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and several glasses of Florida orange juice. Grandpa Bert was not given to smiling much, but he would grin ear to ear whenever he had a glass of OJ.
I thought about my grandfather during a plane ride in January. I was flying back home to Tokyo from New York, and I got absorbed in “A Real Pain”. The story follows two mildly estranged cousins—David and Benji —who reunite to take a guided Jewish heritage tour through Poland. The trip is funded by their recently deceased grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, with the ultimate goal of visiting her childhood home in Krasnystaw. It’s an at once sweet and sober tale written and directed by the ever-skittish Jesse Eisenberg (who portrays David) and featuring a masterful turn by Kieren Culkin as Benji, the cousin you have to love and hate all at once. While the backdrop of the Shoah looms large and dark in the background, it’s the feisty banter between the cousins and brightness of modern day Poland that captures our attention.
As the credits rolled on A Real Pain, I was struck by an intense feeling to take action. I had a European business trip coming up that would afford an open weekend in between work stuff in Amsterdam and Paris. While conventional wisdom would advise a cultural, gastronomic tour of Paris, I dismissed that in favor of a jaunt to Poland. The movie had stoked something inside of me; Grandpa Bert had spent his early childhood in a farming shtetl outside of the city of Kielce. He departed Poland in 1910 at the age of seven along with his mother, Sura (Sarah) and sisters Mulka and Chana. They came to the Promised Land of America on the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm to escape economic repression and the occasional equestrian attack by the local Kossacks. As far as I knew, no member of my family had ever returned to Poland.
It had taken months of planning, a good chunk of their life’s savings and stamped, sealed travel documents for Grandpa Bert’s family to escape to Chicago. It had taken me 27 minutes on my hand phone to arrange flights, lodging, tours and meals for a 36 hour jaunt back to Poland. All that progress in only 116 years.
On a frigid Friday afternoon in late January of this year, I boarded a modern LOT Polish regional jet in Schipol. The banter was a heady mix of languid French (tourists) and woodsy Polish (business folk). Gazing at the cloud cover on the short flight I drifted into a deep, end-of-week sleep. I awoke just in time for the descent above the serene barley fields and forests of Southern Poland that surrounded John Paul II Kraków Balice International Airport. A short while later I was sipping a mug of piping hot peppermint tea in the pleasant confines of the Holiday Inn Krakow, gazing out at frigid street below, fixing my plan for the evening.
I shuffled along the icy streets of the Kazimierz, the old Jewish Quarter of Krakow, managing to fall flat on my ass only twice. As I rose the second time, I gazed up at my breath fading up into the wintery blackness above the Synagoga Stara, the oldest shul in Krakow. Sore and only mildly embarrassed I hobbled into the cozy Kazie Bistro just off the main square of the Jewish Quarter. The joint was charming and staffed by what seemed to be teenagers (now that I am in my late mid-50’s people in their late 20’s seem like they are in their mid-teens). I sat enjoying my roast duck, house-made pickles and Orle i Łowisko Orle cab, my smile inviting questions from the young folk working their shift.
“What brings you to Krakow in the middle of winter?” posited the waitress wearing beaten up Jack Purcells.
“My grandfather, Bert, “Berko” in Polish. He grew up in Kielce in Central Poland,” I explained. “I guess I’m here to honor him and to see his path.”
“That’s great!” chortled the waitress. “We’re so glad you’ve come back!”
The stubble faced bartender provided me with a dram of complimentary Śliwowica (aka Slivowitz; if you know you know). He went on to share highlights of Jewish life in Poland dating back more than a millennia.
The first documented account of Jewish tidings in Poland can be attributed to a chap named Ibrahim ibn Yaqub who had made his way from Spain to Poland way back in 966. From its founding in 1025, the Kingdom of Poland exhibited tolerance and appreciation of Jews. Jews were “pushed” away from Germany and France, having been blamed for the Black Plague and being persecuted during the First Crusade. And they were “pulled” into Poland by benevolent rules like Bolesław the Pious (Statute of Kalisz, 1264) and Casimir the Great. These and other rules offered Jews unprecedented autonomy, economic opportunity and safety for more than 500 years, and by the 16th century about 80% of the world’s Jewish population lived in Poland.
These conditions gave rise to The Council of Four Lands, a sophisticated codex of self government unique for Jews in Poland. It allowed for taxes, civil dispute resolution and a flourishing centers of spirituality and intellect. It famously produced Yisroel ben Eliezar, better known as The Bal Shem Tov, the founder of Hassidism.
I came to know that neither the waitress nor the bartender were Jewish, and so I asked why in the world did they know all of these fun facts.
“We all learn it in school. At least our generation,” explained the bartender. “Jewish history is very important for us to understand.’
“VERY important,” echoed the waitress. “We hope we can have more of it in the future.”
Steadied by the sliwowica and sernik (Krakow’s epically scrumptious cheesecake), I glided back to the Holiday Inn (falling not once!). As I drifted off to sleep it occurred to me that this frigid land of pickles, plum liquor, old town squares, dumplings and duck dishes had been a pretty awesome home to the Jews for a long, long time.
Until one day when it wasn’t.
The next morning I woke up just after 5:00 AM. My bus tour to Auschwitz was departing in 20 minutes, affording a quick shower and a mug of Nescafe. As I headed out into the darkness of Wielopole Street I was met immediately by hundreds of other humans bundled up in boots and snorkel parkas. I could discern Spanish, Cockney English, French and Germany mixing in with the humming of eight large touring buses. As I boarded Bus #6 the dim lights within revealed faces both old and young. All these people. All of these ages. All of these nationalities. All of them, for whatever reason, wanted to see the world’s most infamous death camp.
The bus lurched west away from the light of the rising winter sun, and in 45 minutes we were in the parking lot. A group of twenty of us from Bus #6 gathered in the cold to meet our guide, Ziggy. A heavy set man in his 60’s, he wore a weathered snorkel parka, a mean set of crooked teeth and a serious demeanor. He addressed us as “ladies and gentlemen”, and told us to keep up. We would have a lot to see.
We wended through a series of tunnels fashioned of light grey concrete. The walls were spare and reflected a monotone sound emanating from a hidden system of speakers. One after another names of some of the more than one million innocents who were murdered were read aloud. After a few short minutes we emerged from the tunnels into the grounds of Auschwitz, standing before the gate with the haunting words “Arbeit macht frei” in its latticework.
Ziggy led us for the next three hours in a way that was both powerful and delicate. He noted the cold calculating efficiency of how Zyklon B was developed and “optimized for scale”. He took us through halls with piles and piles of human hair and mounds and mounds of spectacles. He shared stories of valour like that of Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a married man with children. He was slowly starved and then killed with a painful lethal injection.
At one point on the tour I paused in front of a familiar artifact. It was a small, brown jacket fashioned of weathered corduroy. The size and mass of it were instantly familiar; it would fit my six year old son perfectly. What had happened to the young boy who had donned it last? God only knows.
Later that afternoon, after a meditative walk around the glorious old town square of central Krakow, I made my way to the train station to catch the PKP Intercity High Speed 15:15 up to Warsaw. My sanguine mood was interrupted when two sweet and mildly confused Japanese women in their 70’s hovered over me.
“Kippu misette ii desuka,” I inquired, asking to kindly see their ticket.
“Hai, douzo,” they responded, showing me their credentials.
“Ah! Wakkata! Anata tachi ha tsugi no kuruma desukedo,” I explained pointing to the next car where their seats and complimentary cup of tea was waiting for them.
It somehow did not seem odd to them, in Krakow of all places, they would encounter a mildly good samaritan with an aptitude for train seating and the Japanese language. Sometimes life is strange that way.
The next morning I rose at 3:30 AM from a good night’s rest at the Hampton Inn adjacent to Warsaw Chopin International Airport. As I prepared my particulars I thought about what it had been like on Grandpa Bert’s last morning in his family’s modest schtibl in the village outside of Chęciny outside of Kielce. Had they had a last portion of cholent before putting out the last kerosene lamp? What was it like for this seven year boy and son of the village tailor to take one last look?
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On one of my many childhood trips to Florida to visit him I once asked my grandfather why he liked oranges so much. He asked me to sit down opposite him, and began to speak. He told me about a day aboard the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm. Like most aspiring immigrants he was hunkered down in steerage class, just like Leonardo before the meet cute with Kate. A well-to-do patron high above decks met eyes with my grandfather and dropped down a fresh orange. He had never seen one before, and it took him some time to discern that it could be eaten. Once he tried it his life changed forever.
At the conclusion of his story, Grandpa Bert issued a rare and telling smile. And then he took sip of orange juice.
This post is dedicated in loving memory to my grandfather, Bert “Berko” Osney, who’s yahrzeit we are observing this month.
The Tokyo Yenta 