You don’t do gyoza unless you know your stuff (or stuffing). There’s nothing worse than a dumpling dumbo. Which is why we’ve been researching gyoza for so long. It’s taken us to some pretty strange places. Like the gyoza capital of Japan, Utsunomiya. In this humble city, 120km north of Tokyo, the residents consume more gyoza per capita than anyone else in Japan. This is the gyoza gastronome’s ground zero. Apparently after World War 2, Japanese soldiers who were stationed in Manchuria returned home to Utsunomiya with a secret Chinese dumpling recipe to which they added a local spin. Today there’s a gyoza statue, a multi-million Yen gyoza economy and the Utsunomiya Gyoza Association’s 70 restaurant gyoza exhibition hall, which we ate our way through last year. It was rude not to. The gyoza in Utsunomiya are heavy on the chives by the way. After dinner dating is optional.