I almost forgot to post this quick lunch we had during our day in Harajuku. It was our one big Tokyo shopping day (well for me at least), and we'd originally planned to eat at this gyoza spot that my dad went to before. Much to our chagrin, the place was no longer there, so we were left trolling around on Omotesando, looking for a place to eat with 11 people. With huge crowds everywhere, we ended up going inside the new Omotesando Hills shopping center, which had a bunch of little restaurants but also a bunch of people. We picked Mist, a modern looking ramen shop, and figured it would have the quickest turnaround. We sat down in groups of 2-3 at a time, and it was actually surprisingly fast.
From what we could decipher, Mist is an outpost of some gourmet ramen company called Chabuya Japan. The ramen behind the counter came in nice, wooden boxes, and appeared to be the real deal. The website doesn't reveal much more in English.
chashu behind the counter
So we weren't expecting all that much out of this meal. After all, it was a random place inside a mall. We were ready to chalk up the valuable lunch as a loss. Things started to change though when I saw these platters of pork behind the counter in intermediate stages of their preparation. I mean, how bad could the end product of this stuff taste?
shoyu ramen - 1,500 with a drink
Yeah, 1,500 yen is pretty damn expensive for some ramen. We weren't too put off by it though, given the location. Omotesando Hills is a very sleek and fancy mall, sandwiched on the main shopping avenue of Harajuku/Aoyama between a bunch of haute couture stores. The line was out the door anyway - Mist was cheaper than the alternatives next to it, I guess. The ramen itself was delicious. Sure, it's been 3 years now since I went to Sapporo, so I guess it's hard to compare... but this ramen definitely held its own. Noodles, which are hidden under the rest of the stuff, had a nice firm texture. The chashu was indeed fatty, flavorful, and extremely satisfying. The broth had a deep, hearty taste. And the beautifully soft-boiled egg is worthy of mention as well - I should have taken a pic of the bright golden gooey center...
So this actually turned out to be a nice quick meal. If ever you need a bite while shopping in Harajuku, Mist might just be the place.
permalink | cuisine - japanese | location - japan | comments (2)
I've told some of you already about how I actually had an Italian meal for one of my dinners in Tokyo. It may sound weird, but Japan actually has excellent western food, Italian in particular. During my food anthro class we actually talked about how Italian food swept Japan in the 90s, and the country sort of developed their own style of it. I was thus quite looking forward to our dinner at Enoteca Norio (couldn't find an English page, but that site is good if you can find some help with translation). Norio-san, an acquaintance of my dad's through friend Nobrin, is a Japanese-born and raised chef who studied Italian cooking. My dad had been hyping up his cooking skills for quite some time.
Enoteca Norio is located far down a dark side street in the district of Shinjuku in Tokyo. To be honest, I have no idea how one might stumble upon it without knowing where to look, so it's good to hear Norio-san has a bigger and more central new location (I think in Ginza). Enoteca Norio is a pretty small, two-floor restaurant. A small bar and a few tables make up the downstairs, while the kitchen and more tables are upstairs. Norio-san was apparently a little nervous about handling our group of 11 in the midst of his move, so he left the whole restaurant to us for the night, a luxury we certainly didn't expect.
Despite all I've heard about the good Italian cooking going on in Japan, it was still quite an interesting sight to see a small Japanese guy like Norio preparing the kind of food we ate. Norio-san has a very noble, altruistic vision - to expose the newer generations of Japanese to great Italian food. This apparently means that he tries to keep his prices as low as possible, to the point that we suspect there's no way he is making any money. The restaurant offers a set-style menu of 5 courses (cold app, hot app, pasta, main dish, dessert), with 4-5 choices for each course. The whole thing is 6,000 yen, which is barely over US$50! That's not much for a meal like this to begin with, but throw in the superb quality of the food and the fact that this is Tokyo, and this becomes an absolute steal. Anyway, here it comes...
caprese salad
I was extremely curious to try this mozzarella/tomato salad because the cheese came from a local Japanese farm. Who knew they were making fresh moz in Japan? The quality was excellent - smooth, creamy, and very clean tasting. The preparation was top notch, with just a bit of olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. The tomatoes were hearty and sweet - I assume they were some kind of Japanese heirloom.
tripa alla fiorentina
Another classic Italian dish, this tripe in tomato sauce was just mouthwatering. The steaming hot, simmered tripe was supremely tender, and the sauce had a wonderful sweetness balanced by just a bit of tang. It'd been a while since I'd had this dish, and this version has made me want to eat it regularly. Luckily, we found a very good preparation here in SF at Florio. :)
smoked unagi pasta with fava beans and tomatoes
Now this is what I was looking for in Japanese-style Italian food. Where else would you find unagi in a pasta dish? The noodles were a fresh pasta (something pretty close to tagliolini) and cooked perfectly. The whole dish had a great, strong, smoky flavor. In fact, it was actually reminiscent of the smoked eels I tried while visiting the van Berkels in Holland.
spaghetti with uni
Sorry bout the blurry picture on this one. Pretty much everyone at the table ordered this uni spaghetti, and I thought it was quite picture-worthy. I wanted it too, actually, but I couldn't let our whole group not have anyone ordering the unagi pasta. Plus, I have seen uni pasta in the US (Taranta in Boston comes to mind). Anyway, I only tried a couple bites of this, but I remember the uni flavor being actually a bit more subtle than the overwhelming orange color would indicate. The creaminess of urchin sure makes for a great pasta sauce base though.
steak
Awesome description there huh? The menus were all in Japanese, so Norio-san was giving us basic translations for all of the options. This steak was some kind of sliced rib, and simply superb. The beef had some great marbling going on, which you can partly see. It was also dressed with some kind of vinaigrette that was also on the salad and tomatoes. Oh, those tomatoes... they were every bit as good as the heirlooms you find during peak season here in SF, and matched surprisingly well with the meat. Yummy.
I had to jet early to go meet my Yokohama-based friend Yui who I hadn't seen for years for a drink. I missed the included dessert, but it got the rest of the Che family's seal of approval.
So my first proper Western meal in Tokyo was an astounding success. You could plop Enoteca Norio in the middle of SF or Boston and it would compete with each city's best Italian joints. I wish I could help more with the directions and whatnot - Norio-san is a great chef and I hope you can check him out if you're in Tokyo. Let me know if you need more details on his new bigger and badder digs, and I'll... uh.. ask my dad or something.
permalink | cuisine - italian | location - japan | comments (0)
Alright, it's been a long time coming. I apologize, and I hope it's worth it. If it's any consolation, I'm experimenting on this post with some YouTube videos. Next up is dinner at Sazanka, the teppanyaki restaurant on the 11th floor of the Hotel Okura, Tokyo. This place has a legendary reputation, and is considered by many to be one of the best teppanyaki restaurants in Japan. This was the 3rd trip in my life to Sazanka, making me one of the luckiest little boys on this side of the Pacific. It is my personal opinion that teppanyaki is still ultimately the best way to enjoy good Kobe beef. To me, a meal at Sazanka means ultra high-grade Japanese beef in its greatest form. And to be honest with you, this third meal there was better than the ones I remember from before. It seems like each time it just gets better. I suspect this has more to do with the enhancement of my own palette in between trips to Japan, and a consistently growing appreciation of how much better Japanese food in Japan really is.
Our group of 11 was joined by Arthur Hungry inspiration and Tokyo resident Nobrin (her much more punctual, Japanese post on this meal can be found here), which meant enough people to fill a private room with a big long table and 2 Japanese grillmasters. Anyone who's been to Benihana will know what these rooms feel like, but the chefs at Sazanka are generally a lot less flashy than their Americanized counterparts. I guess when you're using the highest grade A5 Japanese cattle there is, you can forego the little spatula flips and stuff. Needless to say, the service is friendly and professional. The place also has a relatively casual atmosphere. It feels totally comfortable to be dressed casually here, but it'd be just as comfortable to have a business meal too. The fixed menus start from around 10,000 yen (US$100 or so), but once you start adding expensive cuts of beef and fresh seasonal seafood to the mix, that price can absolutely skyrocket. A base Kobe beef meal starts somewhere in the $200s, and with all the bells and whistles you can break $400 per head. We went all out and got in the $400 range when you factor in all the food and drink, making this probably the most expensive Japanese meal you can find if you exclude high-end kaiseki.
Izu black abalone
Sazanka always carries whatever luxurious seafood there is in season. We happened to be there at just the right time for these gorgeous black abalones from Izu. Here's a video of them still moving, if I got it to work properly:
Just testing this stuff out. Let me know if you guys like it or not, and maybe I'll start posting more videos. In this one, you get to hear my dad and my uncle Jack having a deep discussion of these abalones' origins.
abalone chillin' on the grill
They always serve the seafood as a sort of appetizer, so as soon as the grill was hot the cooking began. The teppanyaki grilling table probably looks familiar to most of you. Do not click on the following if you're scared of slimey looking moving things.
I know I'm not gonna score any brownie points with PETA for posting this one. Check out the one on the bottom left. It totally started spazzing out. Not that we doubted its freshness... Anyway, there's more random Che family banter - some Cantonese, some dad on the phone, and some play by play by yours truly.
grilled abalone
Finally, the finished product. With just a nice grill and some light seasoning, the subtle abalone flavor really came out. Each piece was perfectly tender as well.
abalone liver
And now for something a little more exotic: abalone liver. Apparently, this is truly a rare delicacy. The livers from these black abalones are only edible during a very short period of time during the season. Usually, the liver has too many toxins built up inside, but we happened to be there during the 2 weeks where it was still alright. This was some of the strongest livery/foie-y tasting stuff I've ever had, and I don't think most people would enjoy it. I actually liked it quite a bit - it was like an intense, dense, concentrated ankimo. Very interesting stuff.
grilled broccolini, mushroom, onion, eggplant, pepper
I guess for the sake of thoroughness I should include these grilled veggies. They were quite delicious, actually, with a nice char to them. Obviously they're not the main event though.
grade A5 Kobe sirloin and filet, pre-cooking
BAM. As you can imagine our jaws dropped when they brought out this baby. I guess the picture says more than anything I can really type here... the marbling on this stuff was incredible. They have both sirloin and filet cuts - as you might expect, we opted to have a higher proportion of the sirloin.
filet on the grill
Here's a shot of the filet cooking. It's grilled very lightly, with a nice sear on the outside.
filet as served
And the finished product, with some fried garlic chips on the side. Notice the slight glistening. This had a meatier texture than the sirloin, but was more tender than anything stateside. Nice, even marbling and good fatty flavor.
sirloin on the grill
Here is our expert chef chopping up the sirloin into more manageable pieces. Just looking at the white lines of fat on this make my mouth water. It's really an awesome sight.
another shot of the sirloin sliced up
At this point, I'm thinking this beef must be pretty impossible to screw up. Just look at that color! Now for the finishing touch:
Sazanka can hold its own in the showtime department, as you can see. Luckily we had a big table that had 2 sets of beef cooking, because I missed the first round. Nothing like some hard liquor to finish off that beef.
sirloin as served
And this is it: absolute beef heaven. Each bite of this sirloin is like a dose of bovine perfection. There are those who say that beef can be too marbled or too fatty, and to those people I say NAY. The deliciousness of beef only goes up with marbling, and Sazanka is here to prove it. Entourage fans: What if I were to tell you that this beef is more tender than any meat you've ever had, and literally melts in your mouth? Is that something you might be interested in?
bean sprouts and Japanese greens
Another quick break from the meat overload - a break I didn't really need. I didn't eat much of this, but luckily Nobrin, who can't quite eat as much as me, was happy to trade me her beef for my bean sprouts. I say yes to that deal every time.
Kobe fat trimmings for fried rice
This is gonna gross out some of you out there who aren't fat-loving carnivores like me. In teppanyaki, when you've got really high grade brief, the standard practice is to use the trimmed fat from the meat and use it for fried rice. The chef will chop it up into little bits and use it as the oil base. Here's another vid:
That looks pretty gross I guess, but keep in mind that it's for a huge amount of fried rice.
huge pile of rice!
A teppanyaki style fried rice is one of my favorite forms of the simple dish. Usually they'll just throw on a mountain of rice, some egg, some seasoning, and the fat trimmings. This leads to an amazingly flavorful, beefy fried rice.
our chef serving the fried rice
And still, out of the monstrous stack of rice and oozing pile of fat, the Japanese manage to make it all look clean and presentable. Funny how that works, isn't it?
teppanyaki fried rice with Kobe trimmings
And here is a closeup of the final product, served simply with a few shreds of pickles. The beef has done a thorough job of imparting it's marbled flavor throughout the entire bowl.
miso soup, pickles
And of course, at the end of the meal, you get some soup and pickles to go with your rice. This miso had a nice variety of mushrooms inside. Very soothing after eating so much meat.
honey dew melon
They also throw in some incredibly sweet honey dew. I've talked about the melons before, and this is just more of the same. Sweet and juicy beyond belief.
chocolate ice cream
Of course it'd be more stereotypical to go with some green tea ice cream, but I like to buck trends. I got chocolate. That's right; you heard correctly. I like to live dangerously.
So that's it. The best Kobe beef you can eat anywhere. I know it will be impossible to convince many of you that $400 isn't a total ripoff, but I will try. If you really want to experience a meal that is absolutely best in class and unlike anything else in the world, a top-shelf teppanyaki restaurant really fits the bill. There are no Benihana gimmicks here, just amazing food using exquisite ingredients. Eating here changed my perception of beef as a whole, just like Kyubey changed my perception of sushi. I urge you to try Sazanka if you get the chance.
permalink | cuisine - japanese | location - japan | comments (10)
For years, my dad has been telling about this legendary omurice he has sometimes in Tokyo. A pretty typical Japanese dish, omurice is basically an omelet with fried rice inside. People make it at home and casual restaurants serve it regularly. You can find it at some places in the US too. At domPierre in Kyobashi (their site is only in Japanese - here's the ghetto Babelfish translation), they serve a special version of omurice using Matsuzaka beef, an ultra high grade of Japanese cattle. It's not as well known as Kobe, but it's easily comparable, if not better. The restaurant itself is a very small, simple place serving a mix of Western dishes, curries, and rice dishes. domPierre's varied yet surprisingly small menu is the type East-West product I would only expect to find in Japan - they have curry, omurice, escargots, foie gras, and grilled fish, among other things. The setting and service are decidedly Western, though. Although a lot of stuff on the menu sounded pretty interesting, I was there to eat Matsuzaka omelet rice.
Note that the omelet rice is only available AFTER 1pm, Monday-Friday. My dad said he once asked them why such a strange rule, and the answer was something about limited kitchen space during the lunch rush (I guess it takes all the burners to make the omelet rice).
fried croquette with creamy gratin and crabmeat - 950
I gasped in horror thinking that my beautiful appetizer had been tainted by ketchup, but luckily the red sauce is actually Real Tomato Sauce. The croquette was wonderfully crisp on the outside, and extremely rich and creamy on the inside. The amount of actual crabmeat was surprisingly adequate too, giving the cream a nice flavor.
fried rice and Matsuzaka beef omelet with soy sauce - 2,625
Here: the omurice in all its glory. I'm putting up the cut-open shot so you can see some of its delicious insides. Keep in mind that 2,625 (about US$25) is pretty obscenely expensive for omelet rice, which usually runs for a couple bucks. It's worth it though. The beef is marbled and tender, and there is actually a ton of it inside. A typical omurice uses, for example, chicken fried rice, and has a dollop of ketchup on top, which is really gross to me. This version eschews the ketchup in favor of a light soy mixed with oily goodness from the Matsuzaka beef. The result is a very well-executed fried rice, buttery meat, and a perfectly cooked casing of scrambled egg. This is, without a doubt, some of the best fried rice I've ever tried.
domPierre is sure to become a regular lunch stop for all my future trips to Tokyo (let's hope there are many). It's in a convenient spot just near the main Ginza strip. I've also since heard their curry is pretty famous, so I wouldn't mind trying it, but it'll be hard not to order the omurice again.
permalink | cuisine - japanese | location - japan | comments (7)
Our second dinner in Tokyo was one of my most anticipated meals of the trip. It was at Kyubey Ginza (another info page here), one of Japan's most famous and arguably best sushi restaurants. (Based on my very limited knowledge of Japanese romanization and my vague memory, I thought it was spelled Kyubei, but their little pamphlet said Kyubey, so whatever.) It has a few shops now in Tokyo, but the Ginza location is the original, established in 1936. Kyubey supposedly also invented gunkan sushi, the technique of rolling a layer of seaweed around sushi rice and placing Good Stuff on top, which is the way you usually find uni or ikura served. I went to Kyubey once many years ago as a young teenager, and it was the most defining and epiphanic sushi meal of my life. It was at that point that sushi became my favorite food group, and my interest in all things gastronomic started to take off. To that very first Kyubey negitoromaki, I owe muc