Negimaki — United States

Negimaki is a dish of beef rolled around scallions (negi) and finished in a teriyaki glaze of soy sauce, sugar and mirin, then sliced into rounds. In the United States it is best known as a starter on Japanese-American restaurant menus. The dish is reported to have been created in the 1960s at the Nippon Restaurant in Manhattan, New York, after the New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne suggested that the fish-focused restaurant needed a beef dish to draw American customers. Its inventor, Nobuyoshi Kuraoka, is said to have adapted it from an existing tuna-based dish, and it went on to become a standard item on Japanese restaurant menus across the country. Thin beef slices are pounded flatter, seasoned, and rolled tightly around trimmed scallion stalks. The rolls are seared in a hot pan and then simmered briefly in a teriyaki glaze — soy sauce, sugar, mirin and sake reduced until glossy — before being sliced into rounds that show the beef-and-scallion spiral. This dish is referenced in two countries on AllGastronomy — Japan and the United States — with each version recorded on its own page and neither set above the other. The United States version tends to appear as a restaurant starter, often plated with the rounds fanned out and a little extra glaze spooned over.