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| Searching for places to eat was half the fun… sometimes hinting at what is served behind the typical curtains. |
After all those garden tours we were predictably hungry. I’ve made some mention that the food was remarkable, so, as would be expected we made a full cart of food porn. We enjoyed some fancy fine dining yet there were also so many noteworthy casual meals… like this one offered near the palaces… simply satisfying.
There is a story we never heard about the symbolism of lanterns outside bars & restaurants…
We nosed out one favorite meal in one of the back streets of Kyota’s Ginza
I bought these boxes of typical fast food in a train terminal for one leg of travel… perfectly tasty!
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| I do not know what the leaves were… ‘didn’t taste like shiso… |
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| Before all meals a moist, usually warm, napkin was presented on a tray. In fast-food places they were pre-packaged in plastic. |
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| The chopsticks are always presented on a decorative a rest right in front… |
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| Our phones or cameras somehow seemed to become part of the service… |
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| There had been something quite tasty in that carefully cut lime shell… |
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| & a ginkgo berry on that little forked bamboo pick… |
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| A little pastry purse filled with… mushrooms, I think… |
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| A menu for one of the meals served in our room at Yoyokaku. |
Since tea was always served with breakfast, we were offered coffee afterwards in the library lobby…
Shabu-Shabu is richly veined beef with vegetables… cooked at the table in a slow dance resulting in a delicious broth to sip at the end…
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| Stevie likes! |
An extraordinary lunch had been set-up for us by edict from Terry-san at a pristine sushi restaurant with only six seats… which we had to ourselves. There was nothing extraneous to the gorgeous slabs of wood on which the morsels were created & served individually in front of each place. The chef, with bleached hair & ears with big piercings never spoke. He minced & obsessively wiped the wood surfaces at ever turn. This became fascinating theater!
His first act was to vigorously grate fresh wasabi into a fluffy mass, sett aside next to a container of rice. This process required several wiping rituals, sometimes of surfaces which had hardly recovered from the last time!
Carefully lifting a covered tin containing a single fillet of a precious fish from a refrigerator beneath, he artfully sliced two thin slices Then, wiping both the top of the lid & the bottom of that container, replaced it. Deftly he sculpted a lump of rice tickled with a bit of wasabi & topped with a slice of the fish, laid side by side to be picked up as a pair to be gently brushed with a glaze of soy sauce before being presented to us. We learned later we were expected to pick them up with our own fingers instead of the chopsticks we used.
This became the form for a dozen courses, each from another tin, wiped top & bottom, sliced & assembled
Our last meal at Yoyokaku featured hand-made calligraphic place mats by our host’s wife…
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| The meat case at the restaurant where we ate the last night in Tokyo before flying home… |
Returning to Tokyo for one last night before flying home, we met friends of Terry-san for our fourth meal of the fantastic Kobe beef… this time as Sukiyaki… seared in an iron pot with a sauce. We were given the richest eggs
