Monday, September 10, 2007

Don’t Play With Your Food: Rob and Kevin’s Culinary Conquest

The distinguished Robert Monaco did me the great favor of visiting for two weeks at the end of August. This adventure could be described in any number of ways, but I think the most appropriate would be as a journey of those culinary delights, and a few horrors, we enjoyed over his stay. There was, as they say, never a dull moment.

Rob arrived exhausted and disheveled around 5pm at Kansai International Airport. I met him at the arrival gate and then we got some beers for the ride home. Yebisu, premium malt. Drinking is okay anywhere in Japan and I enjoy abusing this privilege whenever possible.

We arrived back a little bit late and still more tired, but determined to sleep on a solid night's meal we made our way to the Japanese equivalent of a diner. An izakaya provides all the staples with healthy doses of beer. The joint we were in was of the lower-class sort, so we just ate our fill and left, but a proper izakaya experience is a true treat.

Breakfast the next morning, and most mornings, involved a stop at Circle K, the local konbini (convenient store). Onigiri are rice balls wrapped in seaweed and stuffed with some mystery ingredient. Well, it was always a mystery for Rob because he can't read Japanese. There are basically two types of onigiri that I never stray from: smoked salmon and raw salmon with scallions. Other, more macabre, types exist and Rob the Masochist inadvertently tried them. Chicken-and-Mayo is less offensive, but others include umeboshi (pickled plum), natto (fermented gooey beans), nori (seaweed), and several others. Like I said, I never stray from my fish. Round out two or three of these with C.C. Lemon, a carbonated lemony drink, and you have a konbini breakfast.

That night we went to one of my favorite places, the local yakitori, literally burned chicken, restaurant. I like grill, I like chicken, and I like beer. Yakitori joints have these three things in admirable quantities. You could probably order just about any part of the chicken you wanted, though mostly we didn't want. I think the weirdest thing we order was on the chef's recommendation: we believe it was part or all of the lung. It was soft and mushy, anyway. The best thing we ate, or rather Kevin's favorite, was the curried chicken. I do love me some curry.

The next night we were out on the town in Nagoya and met some friends for good eats. We went to a yakiniku restaurant this time, which specialize in grilled meats, mostly beef. As we were out with some Japanese folk we let them order and hoped for the best. Great Success! Hi-lights included giant mugs of beer, cow tongue, cow stomach and intestines, raw piece of cow, and scallops grilled in their own shells.

From here exact dates become murky, but I'll still give you a delectable rundown of key events. There was a kaiten-sushi binge at the local dollar sushi place, Kappa Brother Sushi. Before you all wretch your stomachs at the thought of sushi that only costs a dollar, just remember this is the homeland of sushi and a dollar of raw fish in Japan goes significantly farther and at significantly better quality than it does back home. Also, it comes on a frickin conveyor belt! How could anyone disagree with food that brings itself to you? On top of that, at any point you can order anything from your table via computer and a few minutes later it trolleys out to on a shinkansen (bullet train). Those wily Kappa brothers thought of everything. I stuck to my usual fishy fare, though I managed to convince Rob that trying the crab brains was a good idea. I know he had some other weird stuff too, of his own volition, that I'm sure he'd be happy to fill you in on. In retribution, he got me to try some raw mackerel. Fishy indeed.

We went to a fireworks festival and so got a chance to try all sorts of weird carnival foods. Squid-on-a-stick, its all in the name. Takoyaki are little balls of fried octopus in dough with some herbs. Yakisoba is fried noodles with beef and pickled ginger. All this mention of pickled this-and-thats, by the way, are so prevalent because they supposedly aid in the digestion of all that raw food the Japanese fancy. I'm not how true this actually is, but I haven't suffered any food poisoning yet.

My favorite discovery of the trip was this little izakaya named Sandals that we ran into randomly while biking around. We entered on a whim one night and it turned out to be the best decision ever. Sandals is a hole-in-the-wall place run by a nice 40-something couple. I stuck my head in to make sure they were actually open, and the kind woman ushered us in excitedly. I think its safe to say we were their first foreigner customers. As a small place, the regular menu was pretty sparse but the today's specials were all unique and exquisite. We ordered a pork bowl with scallions and ponzu sauce and also a grilled aji, or horse mackerel. I mean she really took the whole fish, grilled it up, slapped it on a plate and dinner was served. Yum. We had already ordered to capacity, but as I asked the chef about his menu I noticed that one of the items was kujira sashimi, or raw whale. Not just whale, but raw whale. I can tell many of you are cringing again, but I'd already unwittingly had whale once before, albeit deep fried, and it was delicious. Rob and I were considerably fascinated, but as the daily budget was spent we decided to come back another day.

Mos Burger offers the best, and perhaps only worthwhile, burger in Japan. As their motto suggests, it's a Mos Burger Life. All Mos Burgers come in open pouches rather than wraps like their golden arch brothers. This is because Mos Burgers are sloppy affairs with the burger contents often seeking liberty of their own accord, usually to the detriment of the handler's fingers. We both enjoyed the Classic Mos with Cheese, and especially sloppy burger which most likely spurred the pouch format to begin with. Its mostly a standard cheese burger, only with patties of something real-tasting and the Mos Sauce, something akin to sloppy joes. In addition, Rob had a Teriyaki Burger which he held in great esteem, and I had a limited-time-only Chicken Curry burger. Boy is crazy for his curry.

In our travels to Kyoto we discovered a number of classy and not-so-classy joints in which to eat our fill. The first night we stopped at one place mostly because they had an English menu on the door. It all worked out for the best because their yakiudon (like yakisoba, but with different noodles) and okonomiyaki were to die for. I believe we ordered octopus in the yakiudon and squid in the okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is described variably as the Japanese pancake or the Japanese pizza. Pizza is the more honest of the two, though in reality it bears little resemblance beyond being a round dinner food. Okonomiyaki is basically a batter bottom with veggies, noodles, designated meat product, and an egg all fried up together, flattened, covered in sauce and divided for ease of consumption. Probably the most charming part of this meal is that when I say it is covered in sauce, that is actually the best description I can give you; the bottles this sauce comes in are vexingly labeled "sauce". It could be worse, I suppose, if it wasn't good. Thankfully it is.

Also in Kyoto was a tabehodai, or all-you-can-eat, restaurant of self-prepared fried foods. We found this place after a 12-hour bike journey around hilly Kyoto. We ate like only gluttonous tired Americans can. There was a 2-hour limit that seemed like more of a kind suggestion than an actual rule. Well really, how much fried food can the body really endure? We decided to push the envelop and find out. A surprised waitress came over to warn us fifteen minutes before time ran out. Our response was to shuffle over to the soft-serve ice dispenser, load up on strawberry sauce, and stubbornly force feed ourselves for another 900 seconds. 901 seconds later we proudly slapped our money down, belched loudly, and went home with chests puffed and noses high.

We had some traditional kakekori, or shaved ice, at Kiyomizu Temple. The bowl of shaved ice is covered in syrup, in this case maccha flavor, the traditional green tea, and with ample helpings of anko, sweet bean sauce.

Back in Nagoya we took a day-trip to the Asahi Brewery, home of Asahi beers. We arrived without a reservation and the lovely ladies that operate reception were scrambling to deal with us. We were on a tight schedule because I had to get back in time for work, so when they said we could either do the tour or do a 30-minute quality-assurance taste test, we opted to drink. They had two brews on tap, pilsner and stout, and a basket full of beer finger foods. I had one pilsner, one stout, and one black-and-white combo. Rob enjoyed an equal number of beers plus one he tapped himself when those lovely ladies foolishly left us alone in the dining hall. Asahi is doing a promo in conjunction with Lowenbrau in September, so I imagine I'll be back again rather soon.

When we weren't eating out, we were eating in. We hit my new supermarket, Max Value, for regular servings of self-made sushi bowls which have since become a regular fixture in my diet. Max Value puts out sashimi-grade fish at 9am and 5pm, so usually after work we'd roll over and pick up some of the afternoon's catch. There was maguro, hamachi, katsuo, and aji in abundance. We also enjoyed some self-made unagi bowls, or barbecued eel over rice. Unagi is one of the priciest items in Japan, which is sad because it's also one of my favorites. Unagi supposedly contains of summertime rejuvenation. I don't know about that, but its always delicious and that makes me feel better.

On the beverage front, there was always the aforementioned C.C. Lemon and Asahi beer. Other favorites included Tantakatan, a brand of sho-chu (Japanese rice liquor), and chu-hais, the Japanese cousin of the wine cooler (good for a headache and little else). There was plenty of mugi-cha, wheat tea, and let us not forget good old-fashioned and ever-present o-cha, green tea. We sampled, perhaps at my unwise insistence, a variety of sake and a bottle of yuzu liquor, yuzu being some unpleasantly bitter relative of the citrus family.

There were two regrettable, if necessary, adventures as well. One involved a mandatory trip to Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is the Japanese answer to McDonald's, and all the love-hate-but-mostly-hate that such a comparison entails. Yoshinoya is infamous home of the beef bowl, ample at 5am after the club when all your senses are dull and useless anyway. Any other time is a stern lesson is the dangers of poor dietary choices. We went of our own volition, and received our due recompense. We had to go home and eat something else just to settle our stomachs. Well, Yoshinoya is about the experience, not the food.

The second regrettable adventure was our return to Sandals. We had hyped ourselves up for kujira sashimi all week and when we finally arrived… it was no longer on the menu! Whales of the world you have escaped, for now. Your day will come. Not to be completely foiled in our quest for strange, we ordered wafu beef (raw) and snails. The snails, um, well let's say I'm not sure if they were cooked at all and even if they had been I'm not sure that would have helped them agree with my palate anyway. The wafu beef, on the other hand, was extraordinary. The meat was as fresh as could be, bright red and marbled beautifully with veins of fat. It basically dissolved in your mouth. Whales escaped that evening, but that night we got the better of a different large lumbering mammal. Top it all off with a bowl of the most amazing fried rice and we were content despite our initial loss.

Then it was time to go home. We had a final hoorah at the yakitori joint again. This email simply wouldn't be complete without the image of Rob chowing down on some raw chicken breast. No, I could not be convinced partake. Japan is nuts. There were also chicken joints, chicken gullet, chicken liver, and chicken feet… I made one of those four up, but I bet you're hard pressed to determine which one. On that note, its now six o'clock and I've got to go make some dinner. Curry, of course.