Tempura and Sushi

Here's my third gastronomic report. Who could have guessed that I would write three blogs about food? The others can be found at:
Chris Becomes a Food Critic
The Dining Experience

Tempura

We have now had the best of Japan.

My seat mate on the flight to Japan gave me several restaurant recommendations, saying we must eat at these restaurants. All of them were outstanding, but we left Tokyo before we could eat at one of the places that specialized in Tempura (batter-coated fish and then deep-fried.) Luckily, it's part of a chain that has a restaurant in Kyoto. We found it in an upscale department store (like a Nordstroms.) The prices were high ($35) but we put our trust in my friend and went for it.

(Yes, that's the moon.)

We sat at the counter where the two chefs worked. That was the perfect choice, not just because we could watch them work, but we interacted with them throughout the meal.

Our "personal" chef placed each piece of fish directly on our plate and told us how to eat it, whether we should dip it in the sauce or in salt or in powdered green tea. That part of the experience was priceless. And we could eat the food less than a minute after it came out of the fryer.

Sea salt, powdered green tea and other spices

It might not be to everyone's taste to see the fish before it's cooked. We began with prawns. Our chef reached into an aquarium and pulled out a prawn, prepared it and served us just a couple of minutes later. You can't get any fresher than that.

The menu:

The Giant Tiger Prawn was probably my favorite:

This is the complete prawn, including the head on the right. Knowing what it was, I still ate it, and it was great. It was crunchy and the "antennae" (or whatever they are) provided great "mouth-feel."

The main course was conger-eel, before...

...and after, cut into bite-sized pieces:

The last item on the menu offered a choice of three items. Ann looked in the phrase book and asked the chef, "Which would you recommend?" He laughed. Of course, he would know. He served Ann "a bowl of rice with tea and shrimp ball."

He poured green tea on top of the rice and put the shrimp ball on top. We wouldn't have guessed that's what the menu meant!

With our chef

Afterwards, we bowed to the chef (and he bowed back) and everyone said "thank you" many, many times.

Sushi

While in Tokyo, Ann had eaten some ultra-fresh sushi (bite-sized fish served on rice) so while in Kyoto we went in search of sushi. Our first choice would have been fun: it's called kaiten-zushi or "conveyor-belt sushi." You guessed it: the sushi goes around on a conveyor belt and you pick what you want. But it was not convenient and so we found a Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant in, of all places, the train station in Kyoto.

Atrium of Kyoto Station

(The station is 11-stories tall with a department store, hotel, convention center and open-air atrium and dozens of restaurants. Not an American-style train station.)

Once again, we sat at the counter with a bunch of locals, watching the chefs at work.

Five chefs prepared the food for the restaurant (which had a line out the door.) We chose a "set" menu so that we didn't have to choose the dishes. The food was right in front of us, in a glass ice box on the counter:

Our chef picked the fish out of the cooler and molded it onto a bed of sticky rice, then placing it in front of us.

On the right is ginger, which we ate between each course to "cleanse our palates."

Sometimes the sushi was wrapped in black seaweed.

The idea is to pick up the sushi, dip it in soy sauce, and eat it all in one bite. That made for quite a mouthful, but it was an amazing combination of flavors.

I had a hard time picking it up with chopsticks, but I found that I was not alone. The Japanese woman sitting next to us assured us that it was okay to pick it up with their fingers, which is what she was doing.

Our chef

I can honestly say that the five best meals of my life were meals I ate in Japan. I would never have predicted that. In the future I'm sure that I will eat my share of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate-chip cookies, but I was truly amazed by the food in Japan.