Culinary Japan

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

14h07

I dedicate this post to my my roommate who's constantly nagging me with questions about the stuff I eat everywhere I go.

Given that I just had one of the most perfect meals of my life and given that I have been living in a country that indisputably has one of the top cuisines of the world, with the most 5-star restaurants listed in the prestigious Michelin guides, it just seems fitting that I write something about my experience with food in Japan.

In earlier days I described how perfectly manicured gardens are in this country. Japanese dishes are just like little gardens on a plate. It seems as though one’s meal experience starts with the presentation and the whole visual aspect of the dish and, upon looking at it, you certainly feel like eating it with your eyes.

I also think that a very important concept in Japanese cuisine is balance. You rarely see a huge item on your plate outweighing all the other smaller vegetables or whatever they use as side dishes. Things are never too sweet or too salty – in fact, you seldom see salt and pepper shakers on the table. Of course there are “soupy” dishes, like the übertraditional miso soup, as well as udon and ramen – different types of noodles, but in general food items are never too wet or too dry. Also, I really like the balance of colours: in almost every meal you have a bowl of pristine-white rice; then you have some bright, lively colours like the pink of tuna fish and salmon or the orange of salmon roe; and finally you have your dose of vegetables: yellow squash, gray japanese potato, green peppers and cucumbers… just beautiful.

Today for lunch, I decided to treat myself since I have been working way too much and I had my presentation yesterday at Kobe U (thanks, PP, for the suggestion… I will charge you for half the price of my meal when I get back!). I asked some locals in Kobe where I could have the worldwide-famous local specialty, Kobe beef, and they told me to go to Mouriya. I can just say it was an excellent choice. They had beef lunch menus starting from 2,000 yen (about 20 dollars) but I decided to get their supreme tenderloin (10,000 yen! Ouch!) to truly taste a top-notch chunk of beef.

What was immediately apparent is that I was not paying only for my steak and all the sides… I was also paying for the ridiculously outstanding service. I had at least one waiter, who was kind of hiding a couple of metres behind me, at all times, and as soon as I finished my soup, he will come and take away my bowl – always asking very politely if I had finished. My water glass was full at all times and, when I ordered wine, it came in less than a minute. But more than that, I also had one of their chefs at my service. He cooked the entire meal in front of me: I saw how he meticulously prepared the vegetables (Japanese potatoes, green peppers, tomatoes, toasted garlic, ginger, zucchini... and some other pickled things) as I had my exquisite cold corn soup and a very tasty, fresh, and crisp small salad bowl. Then he started preparing the beef steak, which he cut in small pieces for me… but the amazing thing is that he didn’t cook it all at once. He would put them on this 24mm-thick metal plate for a few seconds, then he would put it back on a cutting board, while he did something else with the fat and meat juices that the beef had released. And he would put only one portion of the steak on the hot plate, then serve it on my plate, and then wait until I was almost finished to start preparing the next portion. That way the items on my plate were always hot and “just-made.”

And like this, I have had just too many good meals. I’m surprised that I’ve never been to Japanese restaurants in the U.S. that serve things other than sushi, sashimi, and your typical fish dishes – even those at very fancy places. What I mean is that there’s such abundance of different types of local dishes here, that I’m surprised I haven’t seen those elsewhere. For example, there’s this dish called kamameshi, which is a wooden/steel deep bowl covered with a wooden lid, with okoge or “burned” rice that sticks to the sides of the bowl, and a mixture of seafood things in the middle, which you mix with the rice little by little, but always trying to eat from the middle and moving things to the side of the bowl. So you help yourself and then cover the bowl again so that things keep cooking and the rice keeps “burning” while you are eating a small portion of it. It’s like a little paellita, and it is very tasty. Then they have the ubiquitous okonomiyaki. I first had that on my very first day when I visited K. Basically the tables at the restaurant all had a hot plate in the middle, and there they cook a mixture of some sort of dough and egg with a bunch of things inside, anything from vegetables to seafood (actually, the name literally means "cook anything you want" or something like that, isn't it awesome?). Then they fold it and you cut a piece and eat it while the rest keeps cooking. This is also very popular street food. Another street food item that I found all over the place and which K’s mom made for dessert or late-night snack is takoyaki. This is octopus inside a fried? dough ball, perhaps with other vegetables, and a creamy sauce on top. Quite tasty and they were selling them literally everywhere during the Gion Matsuri festival in Kyoto. Other delicious dishes I tried were sukiyaki, which is a mixture of vegetables and raw meat that you put in a pan for a few seconds, then dip in raw egg right before putting it in your mouth... and shabu-shabu, which is basically like a fondue bourgignonne or meat fondue, but instead of dipping the raw meat in boiling oil, you dip it in a boiling water-based soup with lots of vegetables, Japanese mushrooms, and tofu. Quite yummy.

By far my most memorable sushi meal ever I had at Fukuzushi, a sushi institution in Tokyo, just behind the Hard Rock Café in Roppongi. Alex and I went there for dinner and, even though it looked like a very popular place, we didn’t really go all out and decided to order carefully – not because we were afraid of the quality of the food, but because they didn’t provide a list of prices since prices were according to “today’s fish market value.” I must say that this was the best sushi I’ve had in my life: the freshest ingredients, the juiciest fish… even the ginger and the wasabi was noticeably far superior than what you have at your standard sushi place. And by the way, I should say that “fresh wasabi” is nothing like the wasabi we normally eat in the U.S. or even at your standard sushi stall in Japan. The popular version is spicier by means of some added chemicals or whatever… but fresh wasabi is such a delicacy, quite more subtle and sweeter than the regular kind. Anyway, as if the quality of the food was not enough, something that will make this dining out experience one for the ages is the hostess that greeted us as we walked into the restaurant and who later took our order. Whenever people arrived, she would sing to them in a very operistic fashion to welcome them and lead them to their table. Then she would sing to the kitchen staff or the other waiters to say that such and such table had been taken, etc. It was hilarious. And finally, something that will certainly make us remember this meal is the exorbitant price we paid: we ordered each about 7 sushi pieces and one drink, and paid over 70 dollars per person. Ouch. However, if you ever go to Tokyo, by all means go to this place – it’s worth it.