About food in Japan

Tunisian restaurant Illissa

The Tunisian restaurant, Illissa is in residential area of Tokyo, called Musashi-Koyama.
It is situated on a narrow street just behind the vigorous shopping arcade of Musashi-Koyama.

The sliding door entrance and couter seats that we face just after stepping in the small dining remind us that the place was a former noodle shop.

It is very casual space where the friendly owner chef works around, solely and hard.
We foud a brochure produced by Tunisian Tourism Board on the table so guets, even who do not know well about the country, can learn some ideas about it.
On the menu, only couscous is relatively familier for Japanese and other plates are the unknown world for us.

Here a part of what we had today, to understand what Tunisian foods are like.

*Salad Horia (carrott, olive, sardines and eggs)

*Bread and Harissa(hot chili paste)

 

*Brique(potate and egg pie)
This is what we cannot miss here... A half-boild egg is in triangle shaped pie.
It matches well with Japanese taste.

*Tajin(potate omlette with vegetables)
Egg cake and vegetable stew... I would not have been surprised if I were told that this is Japanese menu. It looks like grandmum's cooking.

*HirgmaBakri (tomato stew with beef shin)
It contains a lot of "collagen"that makes beauty-conscious Japanese girls happy.
In addition the dish made us get warm. It must be good to have in the winter particularly.

The Islamic restaurant serves only non-alcohol drinks.
We enjoyed fruit juice and Tunisian mint tea at the end as well.

Restaurant name: Illissa
Address: 3-19-5 Koyama, Shinagawa, Tokyo
Website: http://illissa.jp/

Omrice オムライス

Omrice(or Omurice, omerice?) is a Japanese-English or Japanese-French word. It is "omelette with rice" then is called "omrice" in Japan.

It was invented in Japan in early days of 1900's. The traditional version is chicken rice with tomato ketchup and wrapped by thin egg crepe.
The sweet ketchup flavor well harmonizes with egg cake. This is one of my favorite menu.

Omrice is available at family restaurant chain unites, Western style restaurants rather than Japanese restaurants. Each of them makes some unique arrangemet. For example, cream, demiglace or tomato source on top of the rolls, ingredient fried with rice - seafood, mushroom etc.
Let's try different combination of Omrice tastes at different resaurants!

Moon cake? No, "Moon burger"(Tsukimi burger, 月見バーガー)!

Today is the day of enjoying full moon in the sky. (tsukimi, 月見, moon-watching)
Chinese people have moon cakes as their local speciality of the season on the day.
In Japan, the American hamburger chain, McDonald's provides "Moon burger"(tsukimi burger) at their units across Japan.

A round-shaped fried egg, which implies the full moon, and a slice of bacon are on top of a piece of hamburg as fillings. This year the hamburger chain offers three types of tsukimi burger; normal, cheese and double burger.

If you feel that it is exactly what is called "bacon egg burger" in all other parts of the world or at other hamburger shops. Yes it could be so.
But never mind! Anyway, enjoy the full moon !!

Tsukimi burger is available at McDonald's in Japan until 2nd October 2008.

Festival of sanma(さんま、秋刀魚、saury)

Sanma(saury) is a seasonal icon of Autumn. In Japanese, the name is expressed as "秋刀魚", fish of autumn sword, from the linear shape.
The best way of enjoying the seasonal delicacy is simply to grill and put salt and juice of sudachi(a kind of green citrus in Japan).

The festival of sanma is taken place on September in Meguro-ku Tokyo every year since 1996.
A traditional comedy story of Rakugo tells about a shogun(General) in Edo era who was fascinated by grilled sanma in Meguro. Just remind you, Meguro is 30km away from the sea and there is no port in the area. So the fish was caught somewhere elese obviously. The fact makes the story funny and interesting. The festival of sanma in Meguro come from the famous comedy story.

Today it is one of the festival dates. Thousands of sanma were grilled by local people and served to visitors at free. So the festival receives a lot of visitors who filled the main road of Meguro. They have to make a long que for getting a plate of sanma.
To get the best seasonal dish is not always easy!