Meguro Pike/Origin

Origin
Meguro Pike (Meguro no sanma) is a piece of rakugo comedy. It is a story about a samurai lord in the Edo Period who fell in love with the taste of pike, the fish that was considered humble fare for peasants and others on the lower rungs of Japan’s social ladder.

In the story, the lord and his men are starving while hunting in an area now occupied by modern Meguro and decided to eat pike grilled in a coarse manner by peasants in a desperate bid to end their hunger. But the taste was so spectacular the lord repeatedly ordered the fish after returning to his castle.

But the pike, cooked in a refined manner by servants, never tasted as good, the story goes. Eventually, the lord came to believe that only Meguro’s pike was good, although there was hardly a way to get fresh fish in the inland district of Meguro.