About food in Japan

Traveling in Japan - 日本を旅する

Our life is becoming back to normal day by day in Tokyo, while some countries issue travel warning to some parts in Japan. Now the tourism and hospitality industries in Japan observe decrease of both domestic and international tourists. The restaurant industry is also seeing sales drop by less clients to come. What some people, including me, are aiming at this moment is to get out ourself from depression and to act as normal for economic activities. That contribute to economy of Japan and will bring more energy and support for recovering from the unprecedented damage by the earthquake and tsunami.

It is totally up to you but....If you have a plan to trip to Japan and consider between to go or to cancel, please kindly keep in mind that your consumption while travelling in Japan is surely a way to support and cheer up the country’ industries and indirectly even the people still suffering in Tohoku.

Here I can introduce activities on Twitter and Facebook in this purpose.

#smile_japan project – Accommodation operators and tourists in Japan are uploading photos of their smiling guests/themselves at their properties in order to show they are fine in Japan.

http://www.facebook.com/smilejapanproject

http://twitter.com/keep_smile_jp

 

 外食産業を勝手に応援しよう! (Let’s support the restaurant industry on our own!) – Japanese explantion only though. The site owner is encouraging non-disaster-victims to report dining out experieneces in Japan in order to save the restaurant industry for business recovering.

 http://www.facebook.com/gaishokukyusai

 

This week I had been traveling in Hokuriku (北陸) region, mainly in Kanazawa (金沢) as planned earlier. I had no problem to have sightseeing trip there. From tomorrow I will post what I had and saw in the region as my journey series on this blog.

 

 

French - Ogino (オギノ)

In Tokyo, we still feel, a few times or more in a day, aftershock of the huge natural disaster happened 2 weeks ago. We have another concern about radioactive contamination as my previous posts. However we cannot turn down a chance to visit this restaurant, Ogino. The French restaurant with 20 seats is often featured on gourmet page of magazines and it is so popular that we rarely can find a vacant table even if we try to call for a reservation many times.

Fortunately a few months ago a friend succeeded in making a reservation for dinner on a weekday evening of March. We had been looking forward to being at Ogino since that time. That has not changed for us even after the unexpected very sad event. For all of us, it was the first pleasant gathering or dining out with good friends since 11^th of March. On the way to the restaurant, we found the town of Shibuya seemed to be back to normal and streets were filled with young people as we saw before.

Ogino is located in Ikejiri Ohashi (池尻大橋), just a stop from Shibuya. The owner chef, Mr. Ogino mentions about the restaurant’s concept on its official homepage. It is “bistronomy” (bistro + gastronomy) or a mixture of different category of French dining, bistro, brasserie and gastronomy (luxury). It allows diners to visist the restaurant in different occasions. The quality of meal is as high as like upscale restaurans but the atomosphere is rather casual like bistro. That is what the owner wants himself and he made it in reality.

 

Yes, I agree that Ogino is such a place, as the chef aims, bistronomy.

Let’s see some of what we had that eveinig.

First of all, it was really hard to select one or two plate from the very attractive a la carte menu...

 

Starter

Left: broccoli mouse, scallop and club, jelly of beef consomme

Right: white asparagus orange hollandaise sauce

 

Soup of fish

 

Main dish

Rabit from France, onion confit stuffed

 

The restaurant Ogino offers selection of wine not so much expensive, mainly made after year 2000 but they are interesting ones. 

 

It worth waiting for a few months and I hope that I can visit there again near future.

 

Restaurant name: Ogino

Address: 2-20-9 Ikejiri, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo

Website: http://french-ogino.com

 

 

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