"The wrapper is the rice, the filling is the side dish."
Gyoza Suguruya TEXT/YUSUKE TOKOSHIMA, PHOTO/NAOKO TAKAHASHIA red “gyoza” lantern glowing in the corner of a mixed-use building along a Susukino side street marks Gyoza Suguruya, a tiny seven-seat counter shop. Owner Yamada, who runs the place alone, originally worked as a wagashi (Japanese confectionery) craftsman at a major sweets maker. One day, a Chinese chef he met through work taught him a home-style gyoza recipe, and Yamada was so struck by how delicious it was that he began studying gyoza-making entirely on his own. Making gyoza and making wagashi, he says, are surprisingly similar — he shapes the wrappers the same way he once shaped manju skins.
He's never changed his style of making each order by hand from scratch. Nothing is ever made ahead of time and frozen — everything starts with kneading the wrapper dough. It's inefficient, he says, but it's the only way to make truly delicious gyoza. People often say gyoza is delicious because of how much garlic goes in, but Yamada wanted to show, through his own gyoza, that it can be delicious without relying on garlic at all. Suguruya's gyoza doesn't have the dramatic gush of juice that's trendy these days, but bite into one piping hot and the umami of generously cut ingredients, sized so you can feel their texture, spreads through your mouth.
The pan-fried gyoza, 500 yen, uses no garlic at all — the flavor is anchored instead by the spicy fragrance of five-spice powder. The wrapper is a touch thick and chewy, with plenty of substance. Fresh off the pan and steaming, Yamada suggests trying them plain first, before reaching for any sauce. Each plate comes with six, so there's room to experiment — vinegar, pepper, yuzu-kosho with soy sauce, and more. The boiled gyoza, 500 yen, has an irresistibly smooth, slippery texture. The menu is short — just a few kinds of gyoza and a small handful of sides — but the flavor keeps customers coming back without ever getting tired of it. Having left the confectionery factory behind to stand at this counter, Yamada says he's grateful to see every customer's reaction firsthand. "When someone says it's delicious, it really means a lot," he says with a laugh, and in that laugh you can feel just how deeply he cares about making gyoza. After work, or after a night out drinking, why not follow the red lantern and dig into a plate of piping-hot gyoza?
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