Unagi 鰻, the freshwater eel, is one of Japanese cuisine’s oldest loves; the first dedicated unagi houses enter the records as early as 1777. The technique that made it legend is kabayaki 蒲焼: the fish is opened along its length, softened with steam, then grilled while being dipped again and again into a sweet soy-based tare. Every layer deepens the caramel; the result is a smoky, sweet, velvet intensity.

Unagi also keeps a calendar in Japan. On doyō no ushi, held to be the most stifling day of summer, the whole country eats eel; belief says unagi cures summer fatigue. Legend has it the custom was set ablaze in the eighteenth century by a one-line shop sign the scholar Hiraga Gennai wrote for a struggling eel house. The story cannot be proven by any document; but the Japanese are fond of counting it as their history’s first advertising campaign.

We have set that old lacquer in a young frame: rice and the cool cream of avocado outside, the warmth of kabayaki within. Edo’s summer ritual has found a new season under the Mediterranean sun.