In our latest cultural culinary exchange, she took me to this small house on the river
that I've walked by every week on my way to my Tuesday school, and that I pass by on a bus every other week on my way to my Friday academic school. It sits on the edge of the street and the riverbank, with support structure on the wall below it. It looks really really old on the outside, like one of those houses that's well lived in, but not necessarily well maintained. Outside is a red lantern (the only indication that it's a restaurant and not only a private home) that the owner lights up at night.
The owner is this lovely old woman who runs the whole place by herself. She buys, preps, cooks, and serves everything herself in her ridiculously tiny kitchen. Like seriously, if you only count the stove area and the sink, my kitchen is about the same size. To be fair though, she has a nice amount of counter and prep space, making it a pretty decent kitchen for one person to move around in. There's a fridge in the middle, and next to it, a giant TV that sits atop a ledge, which is actually a doorway to the old lady's pantry and extra refrigerator/storage space. It's pretty awesome looking.
The place, she said, is about 42 or 43 years old; it shows on the inside. Everything is that almost yellowish, sepia kind of color on the walls. It has that kind of dirty old Chinese hole in the wall look to it (which, is another indication of how awesome it is). The seats too, at the bar, were these super oldschool red plushy bar stools. There were no menus; only slips of paper with the menu items pasted to the wall. My teacher told me that this was a really good representation of what old restaurants used to look like in Japan, which corroborates my earlier suspicions with the restaurants in Takahashi.
So apparently old restaurants were really small. There was the table we were sitting at, which seated 7 people around it. Maybe 5 seats at the counter. And then there was a private room. That was about it. The whole place was really short as well; some of my taller guy friends might have had to stoop. Also, there were cobwebs EVERYWHERE in this place! There were spiderwebs on the chopsticks at the table we sat down at, a couple barely visable lines running up to the lamp, where they joined a larger web with a spider in it. There were spiders in the windows.
But my teacher insisted that this place had this amazing shake, or salmon, though today she didn't have the sashimi, only the cooked one. I do enjoy eating salmon, though I feel like sometimes it can be pretty hit or miss on how good it tastes.
This salmon though, was a type of rare salmon. It's called 「ときしらず」(toki shirazu) and is translated kind of as "doesn't know the time" due to its irregular migration timing (or, the popular story is that they simply don't care and they just kind of wander around). My teacher said that normally, salmon return to their hatching grounds some time in the autumn. However, these salmon return sometime July through September. Perhaps it was supposed to taste delicious because it was younger (and younger animals do tend to be quite delicious).
Oh, the Internet says they're also called "spring chum" in English, and are of a different variety than the chum you can find on the northern part of the Northern American coast (from Alaska to Oregon).
Seriously though, it was one of the best things I've had during my stay in Japan. Freaking. Amazing. She salted the salmon before cooking it, and it had just the right amount of moistness and saltiness to it. She served it with daikon (which you were supposed to splash soy sauce on). I mean, I'm not even the biggest fan of salmon, or skin in general, but the skin of the salmon was excellent. I'd eat more of it if I could. It was actually soft, with no trace of the scales or anything, nothing to make you remember that it once came off a fish. I wouldn't say it beats out Kobe beef, but you know what, it's right up there with it. So freaking good, from such a tiny hole in the wall place. Definitely not the kind of food I expected from that place. I guess that just goes to show the old adage about assumptions.
It had a bunch of other random things too. Gyoza that was ridiculously delicious. (I'm such a sucker for gyoza). Plus this cut of beef that - I was told - only yields 2 g per cow or something tiny like that. Maybe not 2 grams. Maybe 200 grams. Probably that. I forget what it's called though... something. It was really tasty though.
Also among my favorites was the flower part/stalk bit of wasabi. Hawasabi, it's called. Pretty spicy, in that wasabi kind of sense, but it was also pretty tasty :D Oh, and my second favorite that night was definitely the somen. The somen was handmade; a little bit harder and a little less sweet than normal. It was made by this old dude the shop lady knew. The sauce that she used also used pretty expensive ingredients as well, so the dipping sauce was also really tasty. One of the best somen's I've had. :)
Still though, I think the salmon was the best!
This restaurant, despite its looks, had a bunch of things that were "rare" kind of in Japan/Niimi because the lady told us that she thought of these dishes herself. Like the somen? That was her creation. Kind of inspirational, to hear it from her about how she decided to make all these delicious things!
In exchange, I gave her a little tupperware full of chili. :D I made it in my rice cooker, and oh man, it's pretty freaking tasty. :) I added a dash of vinegar and A1 sauce, which made it a bit tangier, and ohhhh that was just the right thing it needed.
I almost didn't want to give it to her since it was so tasty hahaha. I had it today as chili cheese nachos. Nom.
What a way to celebrate the (extended) fourth of July! Nachooooos and no bean chili.
I swear I'll post about something that's not food or bug related sometime. Soon. Maybe.
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