Hey everyone! Turns out, my husband loves the glory and pretend fame he gets from guest posting (you may have read his posts about beef jerky and how to grill pizzas). Since I'm traveling a bit this month, and busy with some other things as well, I figured I would take him up on his offer to share all of the foodie fun he had on a recent trip to Japan in a two-part series (read part 1 here). Here's Jeff:
While I enjoyed my first couple of meals in Utsunomiya, a dinner with my coworkers was by far
the best. As a closure to my three days
in Utsunomiya, my Japanese coworkers decided to take me to a fancy dinner in the
financial district of the city. We
showed up at a rather unassuming doorway – think the opposite of a Bahama
Breeze, which boldly and tackily announces its intentions. This place barely looked like a restaurant
from the outside, but I was assured that delicacies lied within.
We ascended nearly 7
separate little flights of stairs. Each
landing was attached to a room with a bamboo door, that served as an isolated
table for guests to enjoy a quiet, conversation-filled meal in privacy. There was a little bell to notify the servers
that you were ready to order. And there
were no sounds of other guests’ obnoxious conversations. It was really all about the food, the drink,
and the company. I really appreciated
this simple fact about the Japanese culture – everything is done with courtesy
in mind.
The meal we ate here
was one of the best of my life. For the
first round, we had a salad of mixed greens, lemon vinaigrette, and sashimi-grade fish that was amazing. This came
with sushi-style scrambled eggs that had a side of ground ginger, ground
radish, and soy sauce. This combo was,
at the same time, sweet and bitter. We
also had edamame – those little cooked pods you
suck the beans out of. We also had this
odd pairing of raw squid and cream cheese – this was oddly yummy as it was a
strange combination of salty and funky.
I fell asleep, as you
can imagine, exhausted from both the quantity of food and the jet lag. The next day it was off to meetings and then
a quick train ride to Tokyo. Fun fact #1
about Tokyo - it has the world’s largest antenna, called Sky Tree, which was
actually celebrating its one-year anniversary of its erecting. Fun fact #2 – there is an exact, albeit
slightly shorter, replica of the Eiffel Tower because Japanese culture believes
that imitation is the ultimate form of flattery.
But the real draw of
Tokyo, again, was the food. We had
dinner directly across from the world-renown fish market. You have probably seen it while watching a
special on Food Network about sushi or the documentary that Lori and I watched a few months back, Jiro Dreams Of Sushi. And, surprise, the meal we had
centered around sushi (which is actually different from sashimi in that it is
placed on rice with a little application of wasabi paste and soy sauce).
We started with a very
simple but well-executed platter of cooked clams. These came in a delightful and delicate
lemony, salty, chive-filled broth. You
could tell that the clams were fresh – probably having been procured earlier in
the day from the famous fish market across the street. We finished with a plate of sashimi fit for a
king – fatty tuna, lean tuna, whitefish, salmon, and saltwater eel. I was told that saltwater eel is very
difficult to prepare for a serving like this because it needs to be flash-cooked in order to release some of the natural poison without being overcooked
to the point of falling apart. Having
never eaten it, it certainly didn’t disappoint. Especially when paired with an
ice-cold sake.
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