Democracy Dies in Darkness
Dinner in Minutes

No matter how you make it, chicken teriyaki is savory, sweet and sublime

Teriyaki sauce in America has Japanese roots with Hawaiian influences that cooks today can customize to their liking.

By
May 14, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDT
(Scott Suchman for The Washington Post; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky for The Washington Post)
6 min

What is teriyaki? It depends on whom you ask.

First, I asked chef Shota Nakajima of Taku Seattle and Kōbo Pizza. “‘Teri’ means glazed. ‘Yaki’ means grilled,” he said on a phone call during a recent trip to Japan. “So it’s a dish that is getting glazed as it’s grilled. That is the original definition of teriyaki.”