Date Night!

Jonathan and I have made it a point to start going on dates every Thursday evening.  Last night we had a yummy traditional meal at a Japanese restaurant called Sugimoto.

The food was delicious, but my palate is not totally attuned to some of the best loved food textures here in Japan.  You'll see what I mean:

Course 1:  In the little bowl is fish and veggies topped with a seriously delicious black sesame creamy foam.  To the right is some kind of stewed green vegetable with a pumpkin butterfly.  Next, on the right, is crab meat wrapped in thinly shaved stewed radish and topped with an egg yolk sauce.  Next, at the bottom, is stewed wasabi leaves topped with dehydrated fish eggs. And in the middle is a baby octopus leg with some kind of grain and a pink cherry blossom.  All of this was delicious. It tasted really fresh and really simple.

Course 2: This was the sushi course.  As you probably guess, this is the plate where things start to get a little hairy on one hand, but magnificent on the other.  On that far right, that globulous mass is a mound of baby eels topped with a yuzu sherbet.  I can see your looks of horror.  Imagine absolutely clear pieces of linguine with tiny silver eyes.  Next, is giant clam, bluefin tuna, mackerel, and finally a fish that I don't remember topped with Hawaiian sea-salt.  The tuna was my favorite but the mackerel was also really yummy.  The clam was chewy, again, the texture is not one that I necessarily appreciate, but it tasted sweet.  See the green slices of veggies?  They are stems of a lotus plant, and I've decided they are are my new favorite food discovery in Japan so far.

Here are the baby eels close up.  They didn't really seem to change shape when chewed, so I just kind of swallowed them.  They were cold, wet, and slippery.  Not exactly slimy, but definitely hard to hold on to. As I felt them slide down my throat, I couldn't help but imagine them happily swimming along  my digestive tract.  They were most certainly dead, but still. As far as flavor...I'm not sure there was any, but the sherbet was delicious. Baby eels are not on my list of new favorite food discoveries in Japan.

Course 3:  Red snapper dumpling with cabbage foam.

Course 4: Strawberry vinegar sorbet.  Bamboo with a vegetable that is slimy like okra underneath.

Course 5: Clam with plum blossoms.

Course 6: Okara salad (tofu lees), fish with miso sauce, daikon oroshi (grated giant radish), and pickled pepper.

Course 7:  Sea Bream, shitaki, renkon (gummy grated lotus root) in a flavorful broth.

I like to eat food.