Excerpt on the margin of print: Tiny epiphanies: the chicken's suppleness, the egg's slickness, the reassuring tug of rice on your teeth.
Note:
(a) Oyakodon 親子丼 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyakodon
(i) 丼 means both porcelain rice bowl and, starting in late 19th century, "bowl of meat, fish, etc served over rice." Jim Breen's online English-Japanese dictionary.
(ii) 親 and 子 have respective Japanese pronunciation of oya and ko.
(b) "to top those [rice] grains with ingredients simmered in dashi and soy sauce, before they're set into a bowl and sprinkled with scallions and shichimi, culminating in delicious donburi * * * And while there are many possibilities, some all-stars make repeat appearances: simmered beef in gyudon, tempura in tentamadon and raw salmon in hokkaidon."
(i) dashi 出汁 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashi
(ii) shichimi is short for shichimi tōgarashi 七味唐辛子 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shichimi
, where shichi, mi, tō are, respectively, Chinese pronunciation of kanji 七, 味, and 唐.
Japanese-English dictionary:
* karashi 《辛子[P]; 芥子[oK]》 (n): "mustard"
^ karashi-na 《からし菜; 芥子菜; 芥菜》 【からしな】 (n): "Indian mustard (Brassica juncea); Chinese mustard"
^ 唐辛子 tōgarashi is something different: chili pepper that originated from South America.
(iii) all-star (adj; n): "a member of an all-star team" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/all-star
(iv) gyūdon 牛丼 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyūdon
(v) Note (b) talks about tentamadon 天玉丼. Note (c) below, about tendon 天丼. The difference between the two is the latter includes egg, which is 卵[P]; 玉子 in Japan (both pronounced as tamago). See donburi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donburi
(c) "With its smoking eel just slightly grilled and settled over rice, every bowl of unadon I've eaten at Kuromon Market in Osaka, tanked in the mornings after cartwheeling with the gays through the city's Doyama district [Japanese: 堂山町 Dōyamachō], has been the closest I've found myself to divinity. And no matter how sleepy or hung over or hangry it found me, each bowl of tendon that I've scarfed, standing cross-legged in a train station, has been just ethereal enough to carry me to wherever I'm going. Even just watching the glistening bowls of animated katsudon — fried pork loins, simmered in eggs — in animated episodes of 'Yuri!!! on Ice' is cause enough to wonder what I sacrificed in a past life to warrant such decadence in this one."
(i) unadon (うな丼,鰻丼) is short for unagi-don, where unagi is Japanese pronunciation of kanji 鰻 (Chinese pronunciation: man or ban).
(ii) cartwheel (gymnastics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartwheel_(gymnastics)
(iii) Bryan Washington, the writer, is black (American) and gay (ie, homosexual).
(iv) Kuromon Market https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4031.html
("stretches around 600 meters parallel to Sakaisujidori Street")
in English is 黒門市場 Kuromon Ichiba in Japanese.
(v) Sakaisujidori 堺筋通 (通 means a street). Officially the name is 堺筋, a thoroughfare https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/堺筋
(photo)
(A) Sakai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakai
(section 1 Geography: "Sakai is located in southern Osaka Prefecture, on the edge of Osaka Bay and directly south of the city of Osaka")
is a city presently (堺市: pronunciation: Sakai-shi). But it was a place, whose name was derived from the intersection on the northeastern corner of Osaka Bay. See the top map (labeled as "Sakay") in 堺 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/堺
, which is the Japanese Wikipedia\s page for the same city. This ja.wikipedia.org states, "地名は、方違神社付近がかつて摂津国・河内国・和泉国の3国の「境（さかい）」であったことに由来する。"
my translation: The place name came from area NEARBY 方違神社, which were next to the territories of three provinces: 摂津国・河内国・和泉国. Click each of the provinces and view map, you will appreciate the place is where the three provinces joined.
(B) The kanji 筋 means the same as in Chinese: sinew, tendon (the two English words mean the same in English).
(vi) "tanked in the mornings"
(A) Here the tanked is past participle.
(B) tank up (phrasal verb): "US, informal : to fill a vehicle with fuel" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tank%20up
(C) tank up (on something): "to eat or drink (something) until one is full" https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/tank
(vii) Googling "standing cross-legged" and you will see what it means. One surely can SIT cross-legged.
(viii) katsudon カツ丼: "pork cutlet served on top of a bowl of rice"
, where katsu is short for tonkatsu 豚カツ: pork cutlet in English (katsu comes from cutlet).
(ix) Yuri on Ice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_on_Ice
(2016- ; Japanese: ユーリ!!! on ICE (the Japanese title does not have Japanese word); two figure-skating gay men: 23-year-old Japanese KATSUKI Yūri 勝生 勇利 and 25-year-old Russian Victor Nikiforov)