For our 2nd trip to
Japan, we intended to try out more of the
Japan's culinary offerings and to seek out more of the cultural and nature side of the things. Of course we were going to eat as much food as possible – hopefully of the more eclectic kind, but we hoped to also go to some of the lesser known places in
Japan. As you may know from our previous posts, we love food (especially beef and seafood, so apologies if there is a mildly disturbing infatuation with restaurants and plates of food).
The Stats: On this 14-day trip, we covered over 1,200km by railway, through 4 cities, staying at 6 hotels, eating 2 different breeds of Wagyu beef, trying 4 different types of crab, super-ham, super-vinegar, lots of patisseries, 1 of the 3 'scenic sights of Japan', encountered 4 UNESCO world heritage sites, visited 6 temples, had over 30 meals and saw some of the best scenery on this side of the planet.
Our planned routing was as follows:
- 1 week in Tokyo
- 1 night driving around Ise
- 2 nights in Kyoto
- 1 night in Amanohashidate
- 3 nights back in Tokyo
Given our longer trip and longer write up, we've picked out a few of the more interesting places we went to, ate or saw which you can click and skip to if you're too lazy to read the whole thing:- Driving in Ise-shi
- Trip to Amanohashidate
- Kyoto Arashiyama
- Kobe Beef Cutlet
- 100 Year Old Balsamic Vinegar
- Jamón Ibérico 1 2
- L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon
- Nobu
- Meiji Shrine NYE
Dec 17:
Arriving in TokyoOur friend Aki was kind enough to take us out to dinner on our first night in town. After a quick check-in at the hotel we headed to Yurakucho 有楽 (the station next to Ginza) and met Aki-san, where she took us to Zarai (坐来) http://www.zarai.co.jp/ a superb restaurant where her brother works which specialises in cuisine from Oita.
Oita (
大分) prefecture is the capital of Kyushu island and is known for its hotsprings, fruits and horse sashimi. We were presented with a set menu featuring an 8 course dinner beginning with a delicious combination of fugu (
ふぐ) (puffer fish) skin salad with saba sushi and these tasty chips made of something we can't remember.
Next up was a daikon seaweed salad followed by a sashimi platter:
The crispy ebi (
海老) (prawn) croquette encrusted with fried noodle:
The food kept coming with an
Oita beef tataki and cheese claypot vegetable:
Perhaps the best part of the meal was the dessert - an o-cha pudding which tasted exactly like tea we were drinking:
Outrageously rich and creamy but yet so fragrant! (Apologies for the over exposure).
The meal was excellent! A great way to start our trip this year!
Dec 18: Tsukiji, Tokyo Midtown, Seryna
Months ago, we had already decided on a trip to Tsukiji again this year to try one of the other sushi restaurants lining the ‘main’ sushi alley. To try and reduce the stress of waking up at 4:30 in the morning, we booked our first night at the Park Hotel in Shiodome again – which helped, but waking up at that time really isn’t our thing..
Nonetheless, a quick 5 minutes cab ride from the hotel got us to the market and this year, we gave Daiwa Sushi's neighbour - Sushi Dai(寿司大) a try. Even at around 5am, we had to queue for a good half an hour to get a table (and we were already 2nd in line!).
Chef at work:
Learning from her experience last year, Leeann opted for ala carte samplings of some ootoro (fatty tuna belly) and some uni (sea urchin) while Kevin went all out with the Omakase set meal again with 11 pieces of sushi covering the usual suspects.
As expected, everything was fresh as can be. The horse mackerel and tiger prawn was notably delicious:
Later that morning, we checked out and headed to our new hotel near Roppongi where we had planned our next 6 days at. Excited about the opening of Tokyo Midtown - a new shopping mall near Roppongi Hills housing the new Ritz Carlton and the Johns Hopkins medical center, Leeann made a dash for it as soon as we checked in for a quick peek at what was on offer there:
The ABC Cooking Studio. It is like a California Fitness for cooking - all these Japanese ladies can buy a booklet of coupons for a 2-3 hour cooking sessions:
Leeann sees food:
Next, we moved quickly to the food hall hungry for some lunch. Kevin found some deep fried oysters from Akkeshi (
厚岸) (a region in the south of Hokkaido) and Leeann found a Tako (octopus) cucumber salad to satisfy our first lunch in Japan for the year:
A string of Dean and Delucas (a famous deli/market/cafe in NY) have opened up around Tokyo and we were curious as to what they had, and I am going to take a stab and say that their NY branches don’t have this kind of stuff:
A bottle of an individually numbered 100-year old balsamic vinegar for JPY53,500 (about USD500) - amazing:
The only true 'balsamic vinegar' comes from Modena or Reggio in Italy and once it has reached 12 years it is already deemed to be of 'silver' grade and 25 years+ gets a gold imagine the flavour of a 100 year bottle. I would love to get my hands on one of those bottles..
and tonnes of Iberico ham (more about that later too)... !!!:
Most of our afternoon was spend exploring the area:
Last year, we went to Mon Cher Ton Ton - a great teppanyaki restaurant at the top of the Sumitomo Bank building in Shinjuku. This time around, we checked out their sister restaurant - a sukiyaki/nabemono restaurant called Seryna, about 10 minutes walk from our hotel in Roppongi. We visited the original branch opened in the 60s and both ordered the “Special Seryna Dinner B” which had some beef shabu shabu and crab.
Starting off with our appetizer - a cold uni (sea urchin) chawanmushi:
Half a boiled Kegani (
けがに) (horsehair) crab from the Pacific Ocean:
Baked stuffed crab shell:
The main event of the evening,
Kobe beef shabu-shabu:
The AMAZING udon made from the soup of the shabu shabu:
Dec 19: Ippudo, Maisen
For lunch, we headed to Ippudo (一風堂) (http://www.ippudo.com/), a famous ramen shop hailing from Fukuoka (福岡) known for an extremely rich and flavourful Tonkotsu (pork based) ramen. There were 4 main choices: light soup and a richer soup (each with a more meaty variant as well as an 'original' flavour).
The menu:
Leeann's light soup:
Kevin's richer soup:
Dinner took us to Maisen (
まい泉) http://members.aol.com/maisenpr/ is a restaurant known for its tonkatsu (deep friend pork cutlet) made from kurobuta pigs (black-haired pigs).
These pigs come from Kagoshima (
鹿儿岛) and are considered the Kobe beef of pigs:
An amuse bouche:
The starters were delicious - lots of strange parts of fish and pigs:
Leeann's steamed pork dish:
Kevin's kurobuta tonkatsu set:
Dec 20: Kimura, Sunfruits, Mochicream, Muji, Kobe Misono
We met up with Aki-san for lunch near her office in Ginza at a place which I believe is called Kimura. A popular lunch restaurant which has a pretty good deal - with sashimi sets going for about US$9!
After lunch we came across this fruit juice place called Sun Fruits http://www.sunfruits.co.jp/ ...a juice parlour in Mitsukoshi. Their Blueberry juice was to die for... They put nothing but blueberries and blended it to make this:
Nearby was Mochi Cream
http://www.mochicream.com/ where Leeann found some green-tea mochis:
Leeann and peko:
Icecream with truffles in Yuurakucho right next to a newly opened Krispy Kreme:
The Muji flagship store in Yuurakucho. 2 Floors of Muji everything (including a Muji restaurant):
We went to check out what was new in Roppongi Hills this year:
Our love for Kobe beef brought us to a restaurant called Kobe Misono, a unique restaurant tucked away near a side street in Toranomon (
虎ノ門) / Shimbashi (
新橋) which we stumbled upon through reading a copy of Brutus. It was a little hard to find (especially as they seem to have moved down the street), and perhaps it was because of this fact that there was only 1 other occupied table on the 1
st floor:
Nonetheless, we went in. Their Japanese only menu consists solely of Bifukatsu (
Kobe beef katsu), deep fried (no more fried food after this!) melt-in-your-mouth piece of heaven. The set menu we both ordered started with a
Kobe beef sashimi salad:
Followed by this piece of heaven:
Highly, highly recommended for anyone who loves wagyu beef as much as we do…
Perhaps the best part of the meal was the dessert - an o-cha pudding which tasted exactly like tea we were drinking:
Learning from her experience last year, Leeann opted for ala carte samplings of some ootoro (fatty tuna belly) and some uni (sea urchin) while Kevin went all out with the Omakase set meal again with 11 pieces of sushi covering the usual suspects.
The ABC Cooking Studio. It is like a California Fitness for cooking - all these Japanese ladies can buy a booklet of coupons for a 2-3 hour cooking sessions:
A string of Dean and Delucas (a famous deli/market/cafe in NY) have opened up around Tokyo and we were curious as to what they had, and I am going to take a stab and say that their NY branches don’t have this kind of stuff:
A bottle of an individually numbered 100-year old balsamic vinegar for JPY53,500 (about USD500) - amazing:
Last year, we went to Mon Cher Ton Ton - a great teppanyaki restaurant at the top of the Sumitomo Bank building in Shinjuku. This time around, we checked out their sister restaurant - a sukiyaki/nabemono restaurant called Seryna, about 10 minutes walk from our hotel in Roppongi. We visited the original branch opened in the 60s and both ordered the “Special Seryna Dinner B” which had some beef shabu shabu and crab.
Half a boiled Kegani (けがに) (horsehair) crab from the Pacific Ocean:
Baked stuffed crab shell:
The AMAZING udon made from the soup of the shabu shabu:
The menu:
Leeann's light soup:
Nearby was Mochi Cream http://www.mochicream.com/ where Leeann found some green-tea mochis:
Leeann and peko:
The Muji flagship store in Yuurakucho. 2 Floors of Muji everything (including a Muji restaurant):
We went to check out what was new in Roppongi Hills this year:
Followed by this piece of heaven:
