AN ORIENTAL DINING ADVENTURE
When the Japanese take you out to lunch it is stepping up your cuisine kudos, and when it’s dinner it moves up yet another notch, writes Diane de Beer
After a trip to Hokkaido earlier this year, three meals remain imprinted on my tastebuds. The first two were restaurants in Asahikawa. Tenkin was our lunch option and the meal was dominated by raw fish and a hotpot with a steaming broth and rice on the side. Shabu-shabu (as hotpot dining is known) is a traditional Japanese way of eating and most often includes thin slices of raw beef dipped in a sesame paste or soy sauce with citrus. Tenkin’s hotpot, however, is uni-shabu, which is the more unique sea urchin shabu — rare and more expensive.
We were also told, once we were finished with the raw fish, that we should add the leftover rice to the broth — apparently a speciality of the restaurant. It’s comfort food deluxe because it tastes like the best chowder ever. With Japanese rice always of such superb quality, one could just wallow in the deliciousness, especially when combined with the sea-urchin broth. Then again, the rest of the meal was also melt-in-the-mouth delightful because the sashimi was simply dipped — once, twice and a third time — to give it a hot edge.
The dinner at Koizushi’s was described as a traditional tasting menu. Some dishes were Western in style to make it easier for guests but, naturally, it was the Japanese cuisine we all found most intriguing.
The appetiser included a cigar kelp roll, a pretty yet peculiar persimmon and butter square and some edible salted sea cabbage.
This was followed by a crab and tofu combo; sashimi comprising the best sweet shrimp, salmon, scallop and tuna; tasty grilled red rockfish; beautifully prepared roast duck with orange sauce, which I suspect is what they thought would please the visitors; tempura (shrimp, Japonica and shishito green pepper) — in a different class with the batter light as air; soba (buckwheat) noodles with herring and finally sushi with medium fatty tuna, yellowtail and salmon roe.
Japanese food at this level is incredible because of the freshness and quality of the fish and the superiority of the produce.
The following day we went to the Canal Restaurant in the coastal town of Otaru. This is viewed as quite a Western-type meal and when a group of Japanese girlfriends go out for a celebratory meal, they will often pick one of these BBQ restaurants.
When we arrived at the communal tables, there were trays packed with fresh fish next to what looked something like a hotplate on which the seafood could be cooked. Plenty of cooked sweet snow crab legs were invitingly displayed, with scissors handy for you to get going immediately.
As if that wasn’t enough, you could also help yourself to noodles of all shapes and sizes, salads, vegetables, edamame beans and meat, including lamb, which is popular in Hokkaido barbeque. It is referred to as Genghis Kahn because of a belief that Mongolian people often eat lamb/mutton.
But how anyone could turn away from the spectacular seafood is a mystery. Usually you would have to choose between seafood or Mongolian BBQ.
All these meals range in price from R400 to R1,000, and most were special menus designed for the group. Setting out on your own cuisine adventure can be a much cheaper but no less delicious affair.
It is not a tough ask because of the many different meal options from ramen, the popular broth and noodle dish, which have many variations including a moreish burnt version, to okonomiyaki, savoury pancakes cooked on a flat grill and described as a meal of leftovers as vegetables make up the bulk of the batter. And then the food is cooked to your taste at the table.
Dumplings, known as gyoza, are usually filled with ground meat and veg. Wrapped in a thin dough, ingredients commonly consist of ground pork, chives, green onion, cabbage, ginger and garlic with soya and sesame oil. There are many different variations as chefs and diners experiment.
Feel like meat? Yakitori are mini skewers which in earlier days were made from chicken but now include pork, beef and fish dipped in a teriyaki sauce. It is seen as fast food and often served with beer or saké. Similarly, tempura is a fast-fried snack but in Japan the batter is something else. Popular ingredients are seafood or veggies served with soy and ginger sauce.
You can’t visit Japan without eating plenty of sushi and sashimi. It’s the quality of the fish, the availability of tuna and yellowtail, for example, but also the precision and the presentation of the sushi.
And if this isn’t your thing, you could try onigiri, Japan’s most popular snack, more familiar to us as rice balls. Sushi aside, the thing with rice balls is that it is cheap, easily available and painless to eat. It can be seen as the poor person’s sushi as it uses similar ingredients: the rice ball is filled with chicken, vegetables, fish or pork and wrapped in seaweed with a few other flavours tossed in. It’s freshly made every day and, like everything in Japan, the quality is excellent. Most of these meals would cost you little more than a R100 a shot and rice balls less than R20.
De Beer was guest of JETRO (The Japan External Trade Organisation)
Food at this level is incredible because of the freshness and quality