As Japan Ages, Menus Adapt to Finding the Gourmet in Purées<br />The day the nursing home group arrived for lunch, Motoko Hirose, the restaurant manager, stood in a corner of the kitchen chopping<br />and putting multiple plates of squid and leek stir-fry through a single food processor.<br />That’s because the staff at the restaurant, Kaze no Oto, had puréed the stir-fry in a food processor<br />and served it to his group, which was from a nearby nursing home.<br />The bulk of Kaze no Oto’s customers are not elderly patients with special eating needs<br />but residents who enjoy the inexpensive lunch specials and dishes like broccoli and beef with oyster sauce or shrimp and beans with chili sauce.<br />The kind of preparation done by the Mutuai nursing home is still too time-consuming for most restaurants, given<br />that relatively few customers with severe swallowing problems go out to eat.<br />Kaze no Oto, in a suburb of Yokohama, is one of a few restaurants in Japan catering to<br />an aging population with meals for those who have difficulty chewing or swallowing.<br />For the residents who have more severe swallowing issues, the staff sent the meal through a food<br />processor, adding a gel powder before cooking the puréed versions in vacuum-sealed plastic bags.
