About food in Japan

Kakiage(かきあげ)

Kakiage(かきあげ、かき揚げ) is a kind of tempra.

Seafood such as shrimp or squid with a few or more kinds of thinly sliced vegetables are mixed and fried together. The big round shape and colors of carrot, leaf vebetables stimulate our appetite. We can enjoy different taste of fresh ingredients in mouth.
In many cases, it is put on a bowl of rice(Kakiage-don) or on top udon/soba(both Japanese noodle).
Otherwise like other tempra menu, we can have it solely with a drop of soy sauce or special tempra sauce.
It is available at supermarkets as prepeared food or ready-to-eat corner.
At Japanese noodle shops, udon or soba with kakiage is one of their popular dishes.

Related story: Tempura (天ぷら）
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2009/05/tempura---ginza.html

Chinese - Momonoki (Michelin *)

Momonoki is a small Chinese restaurant, located in Mita or Tamachi area. It is not far from Keio University Mita campus and Hungary Embassy.
The food is mainly Shanghai or Sicuan style Chinese, cooked with selected fresh and high quality ingredients. I visited on a day of summer holiday season weekend. So several items were not available.

Some of them are familier for Japanese such as dim sum, soured pork and noodles.
Others are ones that we cannot imagine the taste and that we see for the first time.
As the characteristic of the food from the regions, Shanghai and Sicuan, many of them are spicy or hot and are good match with beer or any other alcohol drinks.
It was hard time for us to make a decision for what we would take.
It means that all on the menu are equally very attractinve. 

Finally we had several dishes;

Dim sum

Pork saute with black sour - yes, it is really black!

Mapo-tofu (麻婆豆腐）Momonoki style

The taste is surely worth to awarding Michelin 1 star.
What makes us happy is that many plates of noodles and fried rice are available at much less than YEN 2000. We can try the taste at very reasonable cost even by alone only if a seat is available.  The restaurant has  a small number of tables including  a counter and  it is so popular that all seats are reserved or occupied.

Definitly we will come back here in order to try ones that we cannot have today.

Restaurant name: Momonoki
Address: Aurora Mita build 105, 2-17-29 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0073

Kaiseki Tsujitome(懐石 辻留）

On a hot summer day, I was very lucky to visit a "Kaiseki"(懐石) restaurant and to have lunch there. Kaiseki restaurants are traditionally consiedered as ones for people in high rank and celebrities such as politicians, senior executives etc and the places are far from ordinary people like me. So of course this is the first time for me to go into the world!
Mid-summer is slow season for that kind of luxury restaurants as many of their clientel are taking their vacations and have been out from Tokyo. All tables at the restaurant are in each private room. We can never see other dinners in the restaurant. Only I recognize some voices that seemed to be by other guests.

Kaiseki is a traditional style of serving food in Japan. The origine is from the traditional Japanese tea ceremony way and it has over a few hundreds years of history. The world is too deep to tell everything in a blog.

Tsujitome, the restaurant where I visited, has been a cater for a major school of Japanese tea ceremony in Kyoto for a century. The present chef is the third generation of the restaurant or catering service house.

Kaiseki style course is normally composed of several plates.
Todays our plates were... starter, soup, boild, cold, grilled, soured, rice and soup, pickled vegetables, sweets and green tea, served by waiteress wearing kimono.
All food and the sophisticated presentation never missed to remind us current season "summer".
It is important for Japanese cooks to take seasonal fresh food into the menu.
Particularly in our menu, they were very seasonal dishes which made us pleased the most.

Clear soup with "Hamo" (a kind of conger)
Hamo is expensive fish to eat and available only at luxury restaurants in summer. The meat was very soft and melted in mouth. Obviously it was the best quality one I have ever had...

Grilled "Ayu"(sweetfish) salted with sour source.
The fish was harvested in Kyoto according to the restaurant master.
The cooking is simple but the quality is essential and to grill in a good way requires skills. The fish looks like alive and jumping on the boad!

We sensed the warmest hospitality of the restaurant, the host(cook) and the hostess.
High quaity food in the most sphisticated presentation reminding us the season.
One of the best meal and the nicest experience I have ever had.

Restaurant name: Kaiseki Tsujitome
Address: B1 floor Toraya Dai-ni building, 1-5-8 Moto-Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo

****** Our recommendable accommodation around this restaurant *******

ANA InterContinental Hotel

Hotel New Otani Tokyo

The Capitol Hotel Tokyu

the b Akasaka

*************************************************************************

 

 

 

 

Rice(steamed rice) – 米（ご飯） at Seikoan

Steamed rice, it is no doubt a speciality of Japan. The species of rice is not same with what we can find in other parts of world. Japanese rice is short and sticky when it is cooked. Traditionally Japanese have a bowl of rice every days or more than once a day and rice is considered as the staple of the nationality. 

Niigata prefecture is known for the main production region of rice and for the high quality of the harvest. Seikoan is a restaurant operated by Niigata Prefecture exhbition house “N’espace” in Tokyo. There we can find local specialities of Niigata prefecture including rice, seafood, sake, pork and vegetables.
The rice is served by earthen pot and was cooked just for us!

The carefuly boiled by professional and the highest standard of rice is a littele bit sweet and soft. The color is stark white.

A plate of pickeled vegetable is brought and it matches perfectly with rice.

 

 Tofu is pure and also high quality one, of course.

 

Mozuku is a kind of seaweed with vineger.

 

Maitake (mashroom) tempra.

 

We can eat more than one bowl of rice with a variety of nice side dishes here!

 Restaurant name: Seikoan (静香庵）

Address: 4-11-7 Jingu-mae, Shubuya-ku, Tokyo
Website: http://www.nico.or.jp/nespace/tenpo_3.html

Italien cafe - Sol Levante

Sol Levante is a cafe featuring Italian sweets.
It is located in Omodatesando, just a block behind the busy 246 street. In spite of that, the residential area is very calm.

The cafe offers a sweets boutique at the entrance, where we can find various but all traditional Italian sweets such as biscott and Polentina.

Today my purpose to visit here is behind the boutique counter.
The cafe space has ample seats, looking at the pastry kitchen through the glass wall, to taste these Italian sweets on site with Italian style cofee prepared by "barista".

Its special dessrt for summer is a set of three kinds of jelly, which I had.

                           
Left: Jelly of Spumante with berries
Right: Jelly of mango and passion fruites

Right: Jelly of espresso

What is common across three is the richness of taste.
They are not simply jelly of coffee flavor, sparkling wine, fruites but rather they are coffee  itself of loose solid form, pure of fruites or Spumante as well.
These glasses will promise the feeling of satisfaction.

Restaurant name: Sol Levante
Address: 3-10-14 Kita-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0061
Website: http://sollevante.jp

Museum café - SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART

Traditional taste from an old town in Western Japan is available at a museum café in central Tokyo. The café in SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART is operated by a traditional “fu”(麩, wheat gluten cakes) producer, Fumuroya, in Kaga (Kanazawa, the old town in West part of Japan.) The café is decorated accoding to its theme “Japanese modern”.

The café provides Japanese sweets, a few selections of lunch and some local specialities of Kaga region. Here we can discover different ways of serving fu. The traditioanal Japanese food is used for almost all sweets menu. That is not usual for us, people who are not familier with food in Kaga. I ever saw and had fu only as dumplings in clear soup. This is the first time for me to have fu in sweets.

 A few of crisp pieces are on top of ice cream.　Menu: "Fumuroya" parfait

 

 

Sugar coated and dried pieces are served with a cup of tea.

 

 

Only 30 lunch box are ready everyday.

The big soup boul with a lot of fu dipped is of course the feature of the set.

 

SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART does not always offer expositions related Japanese culture, although what we can find there is always high standard collections.

The cafe is accessible even without an entrance ticket of the museum.

It is recommendable not only for the museum visitor but also for  a short break during shopping in  Roppongi Midtown complexe, where the museum is also located.

Cafe address:  SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART Tokyo Midtown,  9-7-4 Akasaka,

                            Minato-ku, Tokyo

Website: http://www.suntory.co.jp/sma/

 

French café – AUX BACCHANALES

AUX BACCHANALES is a real French style café in Tokyo.

We can enjoy only café au lait or French cuisine lunch, dinner, a grass of Perrier, French style sandwiches, whatever with a fresh breeze at the open-air terrace seats. It opens from morning to late evening without a break. So it will be ideal place for late lunch time after shopping or early dinner before going to theaters.

My favorite menu there is “Steak tartare”(raw beef steak) with fried potato. Japanese people are familiar with raw fish but not with raw meat. Because of that, the menu is hardly found at other restaurants in Japan, even if they are called French café, restaurant or brasseries. So the café staff always ask the client who orders Steak Tartare “Raw meat of beef will be served. Is that ok for you?” Then I reply “Yes, of course!”

I can never miss the good combination between soft fresh meat and spices mixed with French fries.

 

AUX BACCANALES is located in Ginza and other major spots in Tokyo; Shinagawa, Akasaka.

Restaurant name: AUX BACCHANALES (Ginza)

Address: Gallery Center build. 1F 6-3-2 Ginza, Chu--ku, Tokyo

Website: http://www.auxbacchanales.com

 

Unagi(うなぎ、鰻） eel - Matsukawa

The rainy season was ended in Japan and now hot summer has arrived!

It is very important to take care of what we eat and drink during summer in order to keep the best health condition through this hard season, because the heat and humidity of Japanese summer are likely to make us have littele appetite.

Unagi(eel, うなぎ、鰻）is traditionally known to be one of the foods that make people more energetic by taking.
"Doyo no ushinohi" is set on the last half of July according to Japanese old almanac and the date has been recognized for hundreds years in Japan on which people take Unagi menu to be ready for comming hot summer. In 2008, it is the 24th of July.

I enjoyed the menu a little bit earlier than the tradition at a restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Unajyu(うな重）is a typical and traditional menu of Unagi. A few pieces of grilled eel dipped in special sweet sauce are on rice and they are neatly put on a square box.

Not only the quality of eel(some are from Japanese ports and others are from Chinese or farm-raised), but also the special sauce are keys to be a good plate(or box?) or not. Traditional Unagi restaurants have each own receipe for the sauce inheritated generation by generation.

A clear soup with a small piece of eel liver is likely to be served with Unajyu.

Unagi restaurant Matsukawa is located very closed to Shibuya station. It is even surprising that we can find such a traditional dinning just a few seconds after going through the most busiest and noiziest intersection in the world(I guess), Shibuya Hachiko Crossing.

Restaurant name: Matsukawa
Website: http://www.unagi-matsukawa.co.jp
Address: 22-1 Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

Edamame(枝豆） - a good nibble in summer

The green soybean, called "edamame"(枝豆）, is one of the most popular nibbles in summer for Japanese. No one can deny the perfect combination with a plate of edamame and a glass of cool beer.

Hulled beans are cooked for several minutes in salted boild water.
It is quite simple serving way but that is enough to enjoy it.
The typical beer snack can be seen at home every evening during summer as well as at every casual Japanese restaurants or izakayas in this country. In most cases, it would be a starter menu with the first glass of beer to chill out and to recover from a sweltering summer day.

The beans are served with the hulls on a plate. Diners have to take them out from the hulls by pushing a side of the hull body. Before a bean drops, you have to bring it to  your mouth quietly.  Is it a hard job? Tens of beans are on a plate. So you will have  a lot of  chances for the training there!

Japanese flavor ice cream from Haagen-Dazs

Summer is just around the corner in Tokyo.

To cool down, eating a cup of ice cream is an good idea here too.
The global ice cream maker, Haagen-Dazs produces Japanese flavor ones as well as standard taste such as Vanilla, Chocolate.

*KOKUTOU & KUROMITSU
Brown sugar and brown syrup.
What is intresting is that it is expressed as "brown" in English but is done as "black" in Japanese. "KOKU" and "KURO" both represents black color(黒）.
"Kokutou", the Japanese traditional edulcorant, has become more popular ingredient and has been paid more attentions for a few years, since it was found by health consious people that Kokutou contains minerals such as calcium and iron.
"Kuromitsu" has taste like honey or maple syrup, but it is made of sugar and water.
It is often used for making Japanese traditional sweets.

*GREEN TEA
Needless to say, green tea is one of the best-known Japanese traditional drink.
It is not only the big ice cream maker which offers green tea flavor.
Personally I could not distinguish ice cream flavor of green tea from one of pistachio...

It will be a nice experience to try Japanese flavor ice cream with Japanese traditional hot tea in Summer