Tokyo Grazing Jan 2003 final part 3

It’s Friday night and time to relax. The last meal is with my personal staff: just the seven of us for a night out in Shinjuku. This is what regular ‘salary man’ guys and gals do in Tokyo. We decided to go for a time-based prix fixe meal. The price is per diner, which gets you a set course dinner and 2 hours of free-flow drink from a house drinks list. So the scene is set: finish work, troop to the restaurant, eat and drink your fill at demon speed and head home on the train while the alcohol level rises in your bloodstream. What more could a worker want? We had a private tatami room but here is a picture of Chef’s kitchen and counter Beverages: Draft beer and warm house sake. THE SET COURSES: Start with a gas cooker. Chige-nabe. Nabe is the word for hot-pot. The stock contains kimchee base which is borrowed from Korean cuisine. From 12 o’clock, we have crab, mushrooms, shallot greens, cabbage, leek, celery, pork, oysters and fish. This is simmered and eaten from a communal pot. While waiting for the nabe to cook, try these: L to R: Fried Seaweed, Fishcake and Gluten cakes. The gluten cakes are dipped in miso (soybean) sauce. Prawn fritters on a salad of seaweed, lettuce and peppers. Duo of white and green konyaku with miso sauce. Konyaku is a firm jelly from a plant called Devil's Tongue. Tataki (seared tuna) slices on the side. Fried prawns, octopus and chikuwa (fishcake rolls). Steamed meat dumplings and boneless chicken rolls. Nothing left; end of chige-nabe?……not quite. Add rice and egg… For a delicious rice-broth to fill out nooks and crannies of your stomach. Imagine all the flavours of seafood, meat and vegetable concentrated for a final satisfying slurp. Fruit cocktail and almond gelee. EXTRA SIDE ORDERS: What's this yellow thing with red pickled ginger and brown "Bulldog" sauce? Omo-soba (omelette wrapped fried buckwheat noodles): a conjoined word for a Western and Japanese concoction. Mixed sushi. Yaki-tori (grilled bird) Chicken and leek skewers and Asparubekon (grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon). Tsukune (grilled chicken meatballs) chicken donner kebabs. Spaghetti men-tai-ko (cod roe). The pink sauce is salted preserved roe sauce...amazing simple dish using the produce of Fukuoka. Imagine spicy caviar. The after-dinner sake-crawl Most of the diners have left; some will take 1 or 2 hours by train to get home. You know we just can’t leave Tokyo without one final amble down the sake path. My buddy and I went back to one of our favourite sake bars Ama-no-gawa (The Milky Way) which in Kanji writing reads as "Heaven’s River" (our Oriental forumners will understand the Chinese characters “tien” and “sen” ). It is located in the basement of the Keio Plaza Intercontinental Hotel in Shinjuku. New upmarket sake bars like this have sprouted up in recent years. The wait-staff wear bow-ties and the manager is in a tuxedo. Small snacks accompany the sake. The bar counter is made from a SINGLE plank of wood probably hewn from cedar. The roots of a tree are displayed on a wall. A traditional sign signifying, “Good sake served here.” Sake called Kokuryu (Black Dragon) from Fukui Prefecture. Dai-gin-jo grade. Medium dry with short tail (finish). Sake called So-me-ya (Dye Shop) from Miyagi Prefecture. Jun-mai grade. Dry and very clean taste. The clean taste of this sake is it’s distinctive attribute. Short and taut tail (finish.). Ren-kon senbei (lotus root senbei fritters). Sayonara from Tokyo and goodbye to a yokozuna grand sumo champion; Takanohana retires and Japan has no native yokozuna left. The country goes into mourning... MTF ThePuristS.com Wine and Food Discussion Forum  |  ThePuristS.com Home Page We welcome comments, suggestions, and corrections. Copyright 2002-2003 - MTF and ThePuristS.com - all rights reserved