Tokyo: Last Looks

 

We know our readers like pictures of food. We have a lot of photos that just never made it into a blog post, so we'd like to share them here, in no particular order:

Takoyaki - grilled octopus balls


Matt is actually not a big fan of Takoyaki

Soba


This platter was served at an Onsen in the Tokyo suburbs. The soba noodles are dipped into the sauce and then eaten. In fact the bottom of the noodle platter is actually slotted. A lot of people make the mistake of pouring the sauce over the noodles and flooding the tray.


One of our last meals in Tokyo was this soba at a highly recommended soba restaurant. Our takeaway? Soba is good but not our favorite.

Yakitori - grilled skewers


These are the mystery skewers from our blooper reel post. We tried to ask what kind of meat it was using only pantomime. Some we liked, others not so much.


The avocado skewers were a surprise hit. We later went to a highly recommended gourmet yakitori place. It was tasty and Matt could see himself having the occasional craving for yakitori.

Miso Many Ways


So you think you know miso? At a market on top of the Toyosu Fish Market, this vendor was selling 12 types of miso paste from all over Japan.

Okonomiyaki


This is a popular kind of savory loaded fried pancake that we've seen in Korea and the US. They're good, but Matt doesn't like the traditional okonomiyaki sauce, which is like a sweet, tangy bbq sauce.

Monjayaki

Monjayaki was one of our big discoveries. It is apparently a specialty of certain Tokyo neighborhoods. We ate it in Asakusa. That big pink thing is cod roe. The rest of the bowl is filled with cabbage and batter. The smaller bowl has cheese.


Unlike okonomiyaki, the batter is thin and runny. The cod roe and cabbage is chopped and mixed with the batter, which spreads out into a thin bubbly layer to cook. You scoop it up with tiny spatulas.


Monjamiyaki doesn't seem very popular or well-known outside of Japan, which is weird because it's delicious. One theory is that it just doesn't look very appetizing. Some have likened it to a puddle of vomit.


We also got a side of garlic on our second visit, when we dragged Matt's sister Kayla to our favorite Monja restaurant.

Chawanmushi


A tasty savory egg pudding

Dessert


As some of our readers may know, for Karen's birthday in 2023 we made chocolate, starting with cacao fruit, fermenting, drying, and roasting the cocoa beans at home. Karen followed the instructions in a book by the founders of Dandelion Chocolate, a single origin bean-to-bar chocolate company in SF. It turns out Dandelion has a second location in Tokyo, and we read that the menu had been specially tweaked for the Japanese palette. Here we have one classic hot chocolate, one hojicha (roasted tea) hot chocolate, and a brownie flight made with chocolate from three different regions.


These "mont blanc" desserts were very popular while we were in Japan- sweetened chestnut puree is extruded and piled high on top of ice cream and other desserts.


Karen's friend insisted we try warabi mochi. Unlike regular mochi (made from rice flour), warabi mochi is made from bracken starch. It is softer than rice mochi. It is traditionally served coated in toasted soybean flour and drizzled with a dark sugar syrup. The mochi only has a very light flavor of its own, and a funny, slippery texture.


A tasty sweet potato cake

Dried Scallops


These dried scallops were sold everywhere and can be added to soups to add a punch of flavor.

Seafood


For 18,000 yen ($120) you can try sea urchin from all over the world, apparently in almost all the colors of the rainbow. We didn't eat here, but Karen and Kayla were definitely tempted.


These oysters aren't so spectacular, but we saw some the size of an adult's hand.


Just some fried fish




Kaitenzushi, or conveyor belt sushi, was a big discovery. We thought that it was less expensive because you're limited to the sushi on the conveyor belt. In fact, the sushi chef makes the sushi for the belt right in front of you and you can request anything you want to be made fresh. So while something must have explained the low prices - the training of the chefs maybe, or the quality of the fish - we couldn't taste the difference, and ate excellent sushi for about $10 each.


At kaitenzushi the color of each plate determines its price and the stack of plates is used to figure out the total cost at the end.

Vegetables


On the hunt for some vegetables, we splurged for this vegetable tempura, which was more expensive than the seafood tempura platter.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I think we're in Spain now...

Image
Our first dinner out in Madrid: fried sardines and grilled vegetables Lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood spots  For those of you who know I Think We're Alone Now by Tommy James & The Shondells, this song has been stuck in my head since we landed in Madrid, only with the chorus as "I   Think We're in Spain Now."  For those who don't know it, have a listen here .  It's really not a great parallel for our experience other than the fact that socially, we are actually quite alone now compared with the strong ties we have in the Bay Area.  All that to say, we are trying to get out and meet more people and blogging inside, alone has been less of a priority. In no particular order, here are some things that have caught our attention in these first weeks in Madrid that make us pause and say, "Huh, I think we're in Spain now." 1. Churros and Chocolate (of course!) Karen with a porra Churros and chocolate are a way of life here. Fun fact: at mos...
Read more

Hualien

Image
      We spent two weeks in Taiwan, and most of that time we were in Taipei. We did go on one excursion, to Hualien, a city on the east coast of the island. The main attraction in Hualien is the Taroko Gorge. But our trip surprised and delighted as soon as we got on the train- when we bought tickets, we saw an option to add a bento box meal for about $2.50 (bento boxes are a legacy from when the Japanese colonized Formosa). We didn't know what to expect, but when it arrived it was much tastier than we had dared to hope! It included rice, a stewed egg, chicken, and some veggies. Unfortunately, the bentos can only be added at the time of ticket purchase, so we weren't able to order more for the ride back! Yum!     Once we debarked the train in Hualien, we made our way to the Shining Forest Hostel. On the way, we stopped for a boba tea- it was the worst boba we've ever had , and the only bad boba we had in Taiwan! Fortunately the hostel did not disappoint- the...
Read more

Piso Perfect (and more!)

Image
Having just done some serious apartment, or "piso," hunting, you'll notice this is what's been on our minds :) 1) The days are long, but the pillows are longer Everyone knows that Spaniards like to stay out late. A meal can last over three hours, and a night out might go until 4:30AM. But it might surprise our readers - it certainly surprised us! - that the pillows are just as long. We recently moved into a long-term apartment, and our landlord provided new pillows for the guest bed. Or I should say, he provided one new pillow, that runs across the entire double-sized bed. An interesting choice! At first we suspected that maybe it was a particular quirk of his, but during a stay in an AirBnB in Granada we found that each and every bed (four in total) came complete with a lengthy head cushion that ran from one side to the other.  We're currently using the long pillow as a cushion on our sofa.  IKEA is also loaded with "long format" pillows here.   This al...
Read more