Food
experience in Japan
Date of Visit: 2nd
– 16th November 2013
Where do I begin on this
wonderful food adventure? Throughout the
trip, we had several meals a day with loads of snacking in between and most of
the food was simply amazing. It would be
impossible for me to remember all the specific places we tried so I won’t even
attempt that but what would be easier is if I give a brief view of the different type
of food that we pigged out on.
Ramen
Ramen shops can be found
everywhere in Japan and being DS’ number one love of food, I had to limit the
number of meals of ramen we had in the trip as he could have easily eaten Ramen
everyday! We tried both local shops as
well as large chains such as Ippudo and every bowl of ramen we had was super
tasty and satisfying and at about £5-£8 a bowl, it was superb value compared to
the recent ramen stores opened in Soho.
Yakitori
There were loads of small
eateries specialising in yakitori close to certain stations with a vast variety
of meat available – from various cuts of chicken to beef and fish. Most of these eateries were filled with suited
and booted businessman around dinnertime as they enjoyed light snacking with
many rounds of sake. I expected yakitori
meat to be tasty in specialised places but they were fairly standard and in
fact most meat did not appear to be marinated for long enough.
Tempura/Katsu
We queued up for over half an
hour for a place recommended for traditional tempura edo style but we were so
disappointed in it – the batter was soaked in sesame oil, limp and not crispy
at all but the queue was constantly long so perhaps others found it tasty? Who
knows but we wouldn’t be the ones recommending it. Having tried several other places for
tempura, we figured tempura in Japan is not how we know tempura in the UK –
don’t expect crispiness but instead expect soft heavy batter.
Katsu on the other hand is fantastic
in Japan if you go to the right places – we had some katsu fried to
perfection.. super crispy and no sign of dripping oil. You can practically get katsu anything..
pork, ebi, chicken, cheese.. you name it!
Sushi/Sashimi
The raw fish in Japan is noticeably
fresh but being traditional, variety was not offered like it is in other areas
of Asia. I mean you get your standard
salmon, tuna, unagi etc. but you won’t find creative sushi like you get in
China or Maki Yaki in Wimbledon, London.
For this reason, we didn’t have too many meals of sushi/sashimi but I
did try the famous fatty tuna and unagi which were lush.
Rice Bowls
If you want to eat on a budget, rice bowls are the way to go
as you can easily find small casual restaurants offering gyu don (beef rice
bowl) or ebi katsu don for about £3 which is often accompanied by miso soup and
you won’t have to compromise on taste at such a small price. You can even get by any language barriers by
ordering from a vending machine which has pictures so you can choose your dish
and pay without saying a word. The most
surprising thing we found was some restaurants offered unlimited rice
portions.. you would top up your rice from a large rice cooker in the corner
(great for “rice buckets”!)
Local Specialities
Osaka: Takoyaki (grilled octopus balls) are a speciality in
Osaka and they can be found everywhere especially amongst street food
vendors. They are essentially a flour
and egg based batter cooked with octopus inside and served with Takoyaki
sauce. I would say it’s definitely worth
a try but really nothing special.
Okonomiyaki is also a speciality which can be offered in a number of
styles – it is essentially a pancake like dish with the main ingredient being
shredded cabbage and you can choose the other ingredients like squid, prawn,
octopus or other meat. You will find
that Okonomiyaki are often prepared in front of you on a hot plate at the table
but you won’t have to cook it yourself so just watch in awe and enjoy J. We did have some rather tasty ones but it’s
meant for sharing as having one alone can be quite full on/rich especially with
the sauce that gets squirted on top. Definitely give it a try if you are in
Osaka.
Kushikatsu are battered and deep fried pieces of food on
skewers. Meat and vegetables are the most common ingredients for
kushikatsu, but some restaurants also have more exotic varieties such as
strawberries on their menus. Shinsekai is the best place to enjoy
kushikatsu in a nostalgic Osaka atmosphere but once we tried it once, we
weren’t in a rush to try it again. I
found they lacked flavour and I got pretty bored of the batter after a few
sticks.
Shabu Shabu
I was looking forward to a proper shabu shabu
since I had the misconception that it would be much tastier than “Da Bin Lo”
(Chinese hot pot). When I asked DS what
the difference was between Japanese shabu shabu and Chinese hot pot was, he
replied confidently with a similar response to “it’s the soup base… shabu shabu
soup base is meant to be more flavoursome”.
How wrong could he be? The one and only shabu shabu meal we had was so
disappointing as the pot came with plain boiled water as the soup based.. what
the hell? At least the soup base of the Chinese style hotpot has flavour, be it
mooli or spicy flavoured? The worst
thing is that shabu shabu isn’t cheap if you choose decent cuts of meat but
when everything is tasteless, it’s little use when you have nice meat. Not
recommended by moi.
Kobe Wagyu Beef
This is on the totally opposite side of the spectrum… Kobe
Wagyu beef is absolutely divine! I’ve always known it to be expensive but it
definitely is a MUST TRY. It definitely was worth every penny and we wished we
splashed out on in earlier in the trip as we would have definitely had more
meals which included Wagyu Beef. I’ve
never come across such tender, melt in the mouth beef before – a different
league to the quality of beef that we’re used to in the UK. Yes, there are places in the UK where you
find Wagyu beef on the menu but is it up to standard? I’d like to compare it
one day.
Desserts
Hmm where do I start with desserts? Well as one can expect,
you can find a variety of things in matcha/ green tea flavoured and many things
containing azuki beans (red beans) with the most famous being Dorayaki
(basically two scotch like pancakes with a filling sandwiched in between).
We tried all sorts of cakes, pastries, ice cream etc. but my
favourites were matcha choux pastry (similar to those at Beard Papa) and fresh
black sesame mocha.
Drinks
You will find complimentary green tea served in many
restaurants but if you want something more fancy, drinks in restaurants tend to
be stupidly expensive compared to the food prices and the price of alcohol
wasn’t far off soft drinks. For this
reason, we tried various flavours of Sochu and plum wines – some were really
refreshing. We also tried the sake but
we couldn’t’ imagine ourselves drinking sake as if it was water like the locals
tend to do.
Conversely, drinks from vending machines which could be found
on most streets were pretty cheap averaging about 100-150 yen each (approx.
60p-90p). The vending machines were
fantastic; super convenient and loads of different varieties, from cold drinks
to hot drinks. We tried loads of
different things but nothing beats an iced cold coffee on the go.
The drink I miss the most from Japan has to be an iced matcha latte.. I bought some instant stuff back but regret not buying more boxes (one box only had 5 sachets in) L
Here's some other food pics from Japan for you all to drool over...
