Not much has changed at Disney's Hollywood Studios except the name. Actually I guess that's not entirely true. We got to the park and upon looking at the show times decided to head over to Star Tours because they had an early morning "Jedi Academy" show. The Jedi Academy show is not supposed to be funny but when kids are involved there is usually some good laughs. There is a line of kids waiting to be Padawans, they take a bunch up on stage and teach them how to use a lightsaber. The guy who played the Jedi Master had an awesome sense of humor and he kept having to tell these two kids to face the audience. He would be teaching and almost every other sentence was "it might work better if you faced this way", or "it might work better if you turned around".. The Jedi Academy show might have been my favorite part of Hollywood Studios because the Jedi Master was just that cool, at one point he made a real bad joke and the audience didn't laugh so he waved his hand and said "you will find my jokes funny" and told the same joke again, of course this time we all laughed... :D
The other new things.. American Idol.. They have auditions in the morning and shows in the afternoon into evening, the audience judges and the winner gets a real American Idol audition. Toy Story ride.. I didn't ride it because the line was too long, it's a shoot 'em up ride where you get guns attached to your cars and have to get points while you drive around. Narnia show and props show.. They bring you into a cave and show you the entire plot to Prince Caspian and then open the doors so you can walk around to see clothes and props from the movie.
I left Hollywood Studios around 4 and went over to Epcot.. Epcot was very crowded and I spend the next few hours doing Kim Possible missions, I've now done missions in Mexico, Norway, China and Germany. While in Germany my locator tab broke, I went back to the booth to get another one and one of the guys who works there came with me to test it and we ended up hanging out while I finished Germany and did China. He had just gotten off work and was looking to hang out for awhile before going home, he was a nice guy but I was kinda glad when he left.
It had been cold all day and I finally caved and bought a new sweatshirt, it's an Epcot one of course but it's different than the one Jessie has. I got over to dinner a little early and they were really crowded, I ended up getting seated just a few minutes later than my appointment. Does cold weather effect Iron or am I looking for excuses?
I was having a real big problem warming up so I decided to get warming food, if you looked over the menu you would probably assume I would get the fish dish which was an entire fish cooked with oil, olives, greens, fennel and other spices. What I got instead was a Cinnamon chicken dish over rice which was good but certainly not Iron, I actually think my cini-maple chicken is better than her dish. My first course was a roasted red pepper and chick-pea soup which was very tasty and really did a good job of warming me up. Next came the chicken and the wine. Cat Cora has a series of signature wines, I had the PinotNior with dinner and every time I would start to think this meal is just eh I would have a sip of wine and be blown away once more, there are more flavors and textures in each sip than there were in the entire meal. I bought two bottles to take home.. For dessert I got doughnuts which came with raspberry and vanilla dipping sauces. I tried each separately which was good and then both together which was better.
So, to sum up.. I would not put her in the same realm as the other Iron Chefs but she is certainly not anywhere near as bad as Nakamura.. I will update my Iron Chef list blog later and rank them.. :)
I was the first one up this morning.. :D Going to Epcot with everyone today.. I thought today was Animal Kingdom but they were wrong when looking at their restaurant reservations.
Long time no blog.. I have been having some issues with my work laptop over the last few weeks, it started when I got home from Duluth. Apparently I got some sort of virus while using the in flight wi-fi. The laptop was running real slow all of a sudden and I went into the services running and saw two CTFMON.exe, I ended them both and ran a scan which found nothing.. I ended up having to run a FULL virus scan (including looking inside all zip files) before it finally found a SpyWare. Ok, lesson learned, is it really that important to have internet on the flight? I don't think so, and if I do that again in the future I will be jacking my security settings before hand.
Spyware - gone.. PC back to normal for a day or two before it just locks up, wtf!! I go to move mouse, bring up task manager, anything and realize that the laptop is REAL hot.. I turn it off and feel bottom which could probably cook an egg.. Turn it back on and it runs.. I was in the airport on the way to Brazil when this happened the first time so not much I can do.. Get to Brazil and find out the IT guy there will not take my laptop apart but suggests I wait till I get back to corporate, in the meantime I grab a little metal frame which will hold the laptop up and make it not overheat as much. Get back to corporate and after a day of fighting with India and our IT group I finally get a local IT guy who cleans out the fans which had collected MASSIVE dust bunnies.
Overheating - gone.. So, you know how when things run hot it can have adverse effects on the long term life of your parts? Well, although the laptop has no more dust bunnies it still is overheating? Bad mother board? Probably, I have an appointment with IT to bring it on Monday because of the holiday weekend. What to do in the meantime? My friend happens to have an extra Dell D630 which he brings over and we swap the hard drive..
Overheating II - gone.. Now to relax and resume normal PC operation.. Not so fast, overheating PC = crashed operating system.. Hard booting crashed operating system = corrupt files! My laptop is going to need to be re-imaged because anytime I load things like Chrome, Java, Flash the PC hangs. Not that overheating kind of hang, but the operating system dying kind of hang. Well, I uninstall Chrome and re-install to try and fix the issue.. Now it only does it when I close Chrome.. Switch to IE.. Same problem.. Ugh.. Back to re-image idea.. Well, as you may or may not know I've been wanting to replace my work laptop with a lighter smaller netbook. As it turns out Radio Shack has the Acer Netbook I want on sale for $250 on Black Friday.. 5am journey to the store yields favorable results amid the crazy shoppers..
So, I wake up on Black Friday at 5am, throw some clothes on and head over to the Shack.. They open at 5:30 and can't really be that busy right? I know it's Black Friday, but they are Radio Shack not Walmart. Speaking of Walmart, I drove by them and found their parking lot and all the nearby parking lots filled! On to Radio Shack, I got there around 5:15 and there was a pretty decent sized mob hovering around the door. By the time the store opened I would say there were just under 50 people waiting, they were shaking the doors and yelling for the Shack employees to let them in early.. When the doors were finally opened at 5:30 much pushing and shoving ensued, luckily for me I was standing near some big dudes and followed them as they pushed their way through. This little maneuver made me the 2nd person to the counter and the 2nd person to get a Netbook. They only had three which I knew going into it so I feel pretty lucky..
One of the deciding factors to me buying this Netbook was that, although it came with Vista, it got a free upgrade to Windows 7. So, first thing I do is go to Acer's website and register for my free upgrade only to find out that this netbook is NOT eligible for the upgrade! I call Acer customer service who informs me that:
1 - the website does indeed say the AO751h is eligible for the upgrade but only if
2 - the netbook came pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium and that
3 - this netbook came with Vista Home Basic and therefore
4 - it is not eligible
Odd, ok.. Do any of the AO751h configurations come with Vista Home Premium? No! That is not a valid operating system choice for this netbook! What are your valid choices you ask? XP Home and Vista Home Basic. You really have to love false advertising! Oh, and even if it was eligible for the upgrade I found out that I would have gotten Windows 7 Starter which is not even a full version of Windows 7!
Well, there are some amazing deals on Windows 7 right now, you can get Home Premium for $29.99 if you're a student or an educator at a university. The only thing you need is a .edu email address.. If you have a .edu look it up because I can't imagine you will get a better deal.. Oh, well, maybe.. Worcester State College is selling Windows 7 Professional for $39.99! Speaking of .edu, I really think EMC should have .edu email addresses for people who work in education. The Microsoft deal will work for both students and teachers but I can't prove I'm a teacher.. Either a .edu or some form of EMCU ID, I'll be bringing this up next time I'm at work.
Next time I'll be at work will be Dec 23rd.. I have an ass-ton of vacation left for the year so I am (as of last Wednesday) on vacation. I'll be heading down to Florida in a few days (probably leaving on Thursday) and will return around the 19th. I do actually return to work on Dec 21st but I will be teaching a TTT via Centra at 5am on the 21st and 22nd so I won't be going into the office.
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So, short story long is I'm typing this blog on my brand new Acer Netbook which is at the moment running Vista but will be upgraded to Windows 7 later today.
Anything else happen? Well.. Last I blogged I was heading out to the Galeria and to meet Luana. The Galeria was indeed open when I got there and pretty crowded since everyone was getting off early on Thursday for the long weekend (Friday was a holiday in Brazil). I wondered around the mall for a few hours and was a bit disappointed honestly, the last time I was in Sao Paulo the mall seemed to have more diversity.. What I mean by that is, more stuff from more bands.. This time it seemed that most stores had the same stuff, if not the same stuff it was different stuff for the same bands. Not only did they all seem to have the same bands, but those bands were almost all American bands, they didn't even have any Tuatha De Dannan shirts or dvds this time. I was really hoping for a bootleg concert DVD of theirs and I was trying to find Jessie one of their shirts. Another disappointing thing was the prices.. You may remember that KISS recently released a WalMart exclusive CD (Sonic Boom), they had that CD for over $100! Yes, I mean the "$" sign not the "R$".
After a few hours there I walked over to Augusta St to meet Luana. We meet and went to get some food, I was wanting something healthy since I had not eaten much greens since I was in Brazil so we went to a mall that was up the street. The mall was just like an American mall and we went up into the food court which had things like Subway and Starbucks. She suggested one place which had really good salads and I got a salad/steak combo meal, the steak was ok but the salad was indeed really good. After dinner we walked down to the club she had to do sound check at and after I walked her to the subway before catching a taxi back to the hotel. She is a very nice girl and it's a shame we didn't have more of an opportunity to hang out..
Brazil taxes imports up to 70% depending on the item. They do this to encourage people to buy Brazilian which I guess I understand, but why tax imports when there is no Brazilian counterpart? To make the rich richer right? Only reason I can think of..
Friday I checked out and went to work to hang out with Paulo a bit, we went to a mall for lunch because it was the only thing nearby that was open. We ended up eating at a sushi restaurant which is always a good thing.. It was very good sushi and I was amazed that everyone there, even the little kids, were using chopsticks! I guess it's really just North Americans that can't figure out how to use chopsticks.. After lunch we went to a few stores and looked at TVs, laptops and DVD/Blue Ray discs. I am amazed at how much electronics in general cost in Brazil and I really think they need to relax that stupid import tax on things like TVs and computers. US and Japanese car companies build cars in Brazil and are still taxed with the import tax because they are not Brazilian companies.. I was sorta surprised that some of the mall stores were cheaper than the galeria on heavy metal CDs & DVDs, and I'm not talking a little cheaper either. Paulo convinced me to buy City of Gods on DVD, I have not watched it yet but he says it's quite possibly the best movie ever made in Brazil.
After lunch Paulo took a few calls and then had to leave for a few sites. I hung out a bit more at work and then left for the airport. They say you want to get to the airport early right, well not too early in Brazil.. I arrived around 7pm for my 11pm flight and found out the Continental ticket counter was still closed, there was a big line waiting, I asked the lady where the "elite" line was and was pointed to a MUCH smaller line. In line I met a really cool guy from PA, we ended up chatting for a long time and after we finally got through security we went and got some food together. Turns out he was on the same flight, and not only the same flight but the same row of seats! Certainly made the trip back more enjoyable.
Speaking of enjoyable, I watched "GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra" and "Julie and Julia" on the plane. GI Joe was much better than I expected, I don't know if it was really a good movie or if it was good because my expectations where so low. Either way, I really enjoyed it and would probably watch it again because it's always tough to watch super special effects movies on the little screen on the plane, not to mention that they probably cut some stuff too to make it more family friendly. Julie and Julia was a cute movie and was very well done, they mixed in just the right amount of Julia's life to let you know what her life was like before she became the TV superstar.
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While we are on the subject of TV superstars and cooking for that matter.. I landed Saturday and we decided to go to Bar Americain (Bobby Flay's restaurant in Mohegan Sun). We're not stupid enough to think the place won't be crazy crowded so we call, and call, and call.. Not once did they answer so we figure we will just go down, how long can the wait be? So, funny story.. They were closed for a Private Party on Saturday night! It was apparently the official opening night with the ribbon cutting ceremony and all.. So, Summer Shack it is.. We had a very nice meal at the Summer Shack and then headed home. During the day on Saturday we were trying to convince Christian and Mara to come down, luckily they didn't since the place was closed! Sunday we made attempt number two, once again we called all day and once again there was no answer. We went down somewhat early and were asked if we had a reservation.. How could we have a reservation when you don't answer the phone? Oh, we have the wrong number? Apparently both Bobby Flay's site and Mohegan Sun's site have the wrong phone number.
They sat us anyway after a very short wait and all the hassle was worth it.. I may have mocked Bobby, well, ok, I mocked him a lot.. I will not mock Bobby anymore, he is truly an Iron Chef. When Fuji TV was looking for the first American Iron Chef they turned to Bobby Flay and he showed how American he was by dis-respecting the kitchen and standing on his cutting board after the battle. I guess I never looked past that one moment. What I should have realized is that they picked him to the be the first and, at the time, only American Iron Chef and they obviously had reason to do so. I have now eaten at most of the Iron Chef restaurants, I have Cora, Batali and Garces left, and Bobby is certainly in the top 3 in my mind. The whole meal costs around $130 which is a pretty good deal when it comes to Iron Chef meals and I highly recommend his restaurant if you ever want to eat Iron Chef quality American food!
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This blog is getting out of hand so I am going to start ending it. Here's the quick week in review.. :)
Monday - Dinner with Holly, we went to dinner by her house and then back to her house where I finally met Brutus! I was about to write a big thing about how Brutus is a really cool dog and how I'm really glad we got along but I really don't want this blog to be 100 pages.. Oh, bah.. Nobody ever said you had to read my blog right? I assume if you're hear it's because you want to hear my ramblings so 10 pages or 100 pages it doesn't matter right?
So, after dinner we went back to her house.. First she let Ruca out, I met Ruca before and we seemed to get along so let's start easy.. Ruca came out and seemed to remember me which was good. We bonded a bit and then I held her leash and gave her a dried bull penis to keep her busy while Holly let Brutus out. Brutus came out and seemed surprised to see someone in the house, he was not upset, just surprised. He turned the corner into the living room and just stopped. Brutus is a much bigger dog then Ruca and I think he is the kind of dog who does not realize how big and strong he is. After some time, tricks and treats Holly brought him over to smell me, after a few minutes he was eating out of my hand. He is very gentle when taking food out of your hand, it could be the most gentle I've ever seen a dog take food from a person actually. After a little while I tried to give him his bull penis but unfortunately Ruca finished hers too quick so now she wanted his too. Brutus was let outside, then put away while Ruca was let out. Then Ruca was put away and Brutus came back out to hang out a bit more, I gave him his bull penis (I really just like saying bull penis) and we got along well. After a bit more he was put away and Ruca let back out with no leash while we played some Wii.
Tuesday - Dinner.. We had our own little Thanksgiving celebration with Turkey Burgers, stuffing, sweet potatoes and egg nog. I made Brazilian pizza with Catipuri, ham, onions and egg. I know, it's not very Thanksgiving, but it was in honor of Sao Paulo.
Wednesday - Played and lost the OOTP World Series.. Caught up on lots of TV..
Thursday - Thanksgiving at my mom's house.. Lots of food, lots of fixing computers and lots of good times..
Friday - Radio Shack (see above) and Joe's birthday party. Joe's party was zombie themed and most of the food was in the shape of brains.. He boarded up his front window and put caution tape up which made the house look really cool from the outside.
Saturday - Anja's birthday party, hung out with Dagmar again.. She is really cool and we need to get her to Tuesday dinners.. Me and Jessie caught up on more TV and played Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. That game is really not very good, the song choices are pretty bad and the sound mixing makes it hard to play. We have to keep reminding ourselves it came out between Guitar Hero III and IV, they obviously rushed it out.. Saturday night Kevin and Sarah came over and we played MULE, troubleshoot his PC (bad video card) and watched most of Red Dwarf Season 1.
Things to do in Japan: 1. Eat Sushi - check 2. Go to a Giants game - check 3. Go to the Tokyo Tower - check 4. Eat some odd unidentifiable animal - check 5. Get "Russianroulette" dinner - check 6. Eat Tempura - check 7. Make it Sontory Time - check 8. Climb Mount Fuji - nope 9. Eat at Iron Chef Sakai's restaurant - check 10. Eat at Iron Chef Chen's restaurant - check 11. Eat at Iron Chef Kobe's restaurant - check 12. Take part in Bukkake (extra credit if you are the bowl) - nope 13. ...
Ok, I'm stopping that now, I really just wanted to throw in some bukkake reference while I was here.. :D
---- Today I went with some co-workers to lunch and I had a tempura platter.. It was good, it had some white fish, shrimp and various vegetables. The view from the restaurant was amazing, you could see a lot of the city from the restaurant, Kato said in the winter you can see as far as Mount Fuji. After lunch I played with my facebook page for a long time, I uploaded a bunch of pictures over there in my 2008 photo album. I also in general cleaned up the page so go check it out..
---- Got out of work and headed over to RestoranteMassa. I was a bit concerned tonight after last nights showing by Nakamura, then I started to remember that Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe never lost two consecutive battles and he also never lost a battle after another Iron Chef lost, I guess you could call him the stopper.
The short review of tonight, he restored my faith in the title of Iron Chef. Obviously Nakamura was a fluke. The restaurant was really hard to find, I had 18:00 reservations so I arrived at 17:30 to make sure I could find it with no problems. Good thing I did too because it is really out of the way and hidden in a back alley. I think the Iron Chefs (or the good ones anyway) are playing a game to see who can hide their restaurant better. Sakai's restaurant is on the 32nd floor of an office building, but he does have a sign at the entrance of the building and one at the elevator doors. Chen's is on the 3rd floor of a hotel stuck in the back behind the conference rooms but again he has a sign at the hotel entrance and it even has his picture. Nakamura's restaurant is in a mall attached to a food court, he has no sign anywhere and the mall directory is in Kanji only. He does have a sign at his door with his picture. Kobe won this battle, his restaurant has no sign and you have to know to turn down the back alley, check out the pic I took once I finally realized it was the place. There is actually a blue shield that says MASSA on it as you can see in the picture.
Go in and sit down, the waitress brings me the drink menu and the menu of choices. Basically it's a fixed menu, but each course has 2 choices so you can customize your meal a little bit. I put my order in and about a minute later Kobe comes out to make sure I understood what the squid/oyster dish was, I told him I was and it sounded wonderful (I'll get there later). He thanked me and asked if I wanted to take a picture, of course I did! He really looks young, I know he is the youngest of the Iron Chefs but still, I guess I didn't expect him to look that young.
Course 1 - Pickled Onions with Parmesan Cheese. This was really a nice clean crisp starting dish , it made my mouth feel all clean.
Course 2 - Chilled FoieGras with Apples and a Blackberry sauce. Oh yummm, chilled foiegras is so good! It was served raw and chilled, apparently you need to eat this kinda quick because if it warms up to much it gets real mushy so you need to eat it while it's still kinda firm. The nice thing is that when you put it in your mouth it warms up and gets all nice and mushy! Worked really well with the blackberry sauce, dipped the apples in it too. I knew at the first bite of this dish that Kobe was not going to make me leave Japan on a down chapter in the book of Iron Chefs.
Course 3 - Oyster and Squid Saute. So, imagine if you will.. Take a squid and cut off the head, inside that head put a raw oyster, not a little one mind you but a big one, big enough to fill the squid head. Now take the squid and steam it over pasta sauce! Oh, the rest of the squid, you should cut that up and saute it in some garlic and pasta sauce! This is Italian food at it's finest, two knock out dishes in a row! The rest of the food probably could have sucked and I would have been happy enough with just these two!
Course 4 - Abalone Pasta. This was slices of Abalone tossed in spaghetti in a clam sauce. The abalone adds a nice layer to the clam sauce. I am actually thinking of trying this one back home if I can get some good abalone.
Course 5 - Pumpkin Tortellini - Kobe's speciality was always making pasta out of odd ingredients so I could not try pumpkin pasta? It was very good but the pumpkin flavor was over powered most of the time by the cheese in the tortellini. If you ate a piece of the pasta with no cheese you could really taste the pumpkin and it was amazing, but overall it was too cheesy.
Course 6 - Abalone Steak with some veggies and Sauteed FoieGras! I figured I would push my limits with abalone, having an entire steak was probably not the greatest idea, it was great if I cut it up into small slices, but trying to eat it like I would eat a steak it was too chewy. I know your going to say that I shouldn't eat my food in big bites anyway, but so's your face. Oh, burn... bet you didn't see that coming.. You were reading along just having a good old time and BAM there went a "so's your face".. The Sauteed FoieGras does not even need a review, I am running out words for holy jesus that was amazing!
Course 7 - Chocolate Tartlett, a Rice Dumpling and assorted fruits. The Rice Dumpling is apparently a traditional Japanese dessert? I never had it till tonight, I've never had Natto but I think this is what natto would taste and feel like.. Good thing there was a chocolate tartlett and it was very good. Fruits are good, they helped cleanse the palette and left my mouth feeling very clean again.
When I got up to leave Kobe came out of the kitchen and said goodnight and bowed, he even opened the door for me as I was leaving and bowed again..
I would certainly go back. Sakai, Kobe, Chen and Michiba are all truly Iron Chefs! - Don't feel that I am poo-pooing Morimoto, his restaurant in Philly was amazing and I would certainly love to go there again. I would put him in a class with these guys, but I would not put him in the same cuisine as Michiba. They probably should have been: Chen - Chinese Sakai - French Kobe - Italian Michiba - Japanese Morimoto - Neo-Japanese
These 5 men are the masters of their art and it's no wonder why Kitchen Stadium was always in shock whenever one of these men lost a battle.
Can the new breed of Iron Chef compete with these guys? I think so.. Ok, well maybe not Wolfgang Puck, but he is not around anymore.. He would probably beat up Nakamura, but none of the others. Michael Symon is a true master of mediterranean cuisine and I would have no problem listing him in the ranks of the true Iron Chefs. I have not tried Bobby Flay or Mario Batali, after having Kobe's food tonight Mario Batali is going to have to do something pretty amazing to live up to the name Iron Chef Italian.
---- Heading to bed everyone. I leave tomorrow at 4:45pm so chances are the next time I blog I will be back on US soil.
KoumeiNakamura is an Iron Chef in title only. This was the first of the Iron Chef restaurants to disappoint. Don't get me wrong, the food was good, just not Iron Chef quality. If I were walking down a random street and happened to walk into KoumeiAriake I probably would have been happy with the food but I would not go back nor would I recommend it to anyone. They spent so much time on presentation they forgot that you need more than just a pretty plate, and not to sound like an American or anything but the portion sizes were so small I was still sorta hungry after eating eight courses!
Even though the food was not great I did end up having a really good night.. Got out of work and took the Yamanote Line from Shinjuku to Osaki and caught the Rinkai Line over to Kokusai-Tenjijo station. The Rinkai Line is a monorail and the cars are very different from the normal JR trains, it was the first time I had seen a "women only" car but people at work tell me most trains have one. The problem is that during rush hour guys will grope women on the trains because everyone is so crowded in that there is no way to stop them.
Got out of the train and was on Tokyo Bay which is a beautiful area. The restaurant is about 2 blocks away from the water, unfortunately there was no view of the water from the restaurant.
Nakamura was there, I saw him in the kitchen but he didn't come out. So, what did I have you ask?
Course 1 - Scallop in a spicy duck sauce with ginko beans. This was the first course and I was very happy with it. The sauce was very nice and the mix of scallop and duck really went well together. This dish had one small scallop an two ginko beans. You can see from the picture how big the scallop based on the size of the ginko beans.
Course 2 - Abalone sushi with lime, roe flavored with orange, deep fried bean patty with hot peppers, passion fruit, and some unidentified meat (they don't have an English name for it?) wrapped in pork fat. The presentation on this dish was awesome, they put a bunch of twigs and tied them together to make sort of a screen to cover the dish. Each thing was in it's own little plate on the bigger plate. I don't think there is ever a reason to mess with roe, I don't like the fact that the roe was sitting in an orange juice like sauce. It totally killed the roe for me. The Abalone sushi was what I would call a mini-sushi. It was probably about 1/3 the size of a normal sushi roll, the piece of mint between the abalone and the rice was a surprise and totally over powered the taste of the abalone. Cup of passion fruit is just that. The deep fried bean patty was really good, certainly the best thing on this plate, it was deep fried in a corn meal batter and the peppers made it have a nice spice. The unidentified meat will continue to be so, I could not tell what it was when I ate it, because it was wrapped in pork fat it tasted like pork fat. If you're looking at the picture the meat is that thing on the toothpick and no, that's not a giant tooth pick.
Course 3 - Crab and Potato Soup. This soup was good, it had two small pieces of crab meat in it and 1 potato. The broth tasted like pea soup so that was an interesting and good combo of crab meat in pea soup. I should have put my hand next to it so you could see the size of that bowl.
Course 4 - Sashimi, 3 pieces of tuna, 2 pieces of eel, 2 pieces of mackerel and 2 pieces of apple served with a Soy stomach mixed with the stomach of an Eel. When they brought this out I said, a bowl of ice? After looking closer and past the garnish I saw the fish, see the apple slices? Now look at how big the fish pieces are next to it. It's also the first and only place I've ever seen leave the skin on tuna sashimi. The eel stomach soy sauce was very good but this is the point where I was really getting upset at the portion sizes. If you took all 3 pieces of tuna and put them together they would not be as big as 1 piece of tuna sashimi at a normal restaurant.
Course 5 - Boiled Turnip. Take a turnip, cut into 6 pieces and then boil it in sugary water. Now take 2 pieces and put it in a bowl and call it a course. It was seriously 1/3 of a turnip in some sugary water. At this point I was getting a bit upset with the food but I knew that Kobe Beef was coming up..
Course 6 - Kobe Beef with a carmelized tomato, zucchini, turnip, broccoli, potato and mushroom. The Kobe beef was awesome as expected, it was cooked in a thick tomato/soy sauce. The caramelized tomato on the top might have been the best thing in the entire dinner (aside from the kobe beef). On the side it had 1 mushroom cap, 1/6 of a small potato (the kind I use in my chili), 1 twig head of broccoli, a slice of turnip and a piece of zucchini that was just as big as the piece of potato.
Course 7 - Mushroom rice and Miso soup. The mushroom rice was nice but the miso soup in my hotel is better than their miso soup. This also came with some pickled stuffs..
Course 8 - Walnut Ice Cream and some dry yellow cake. Umm, I seriously have no idea what that cake was, it was so dry.. The Ice Cream was great.
When I got out of dinner I saw that there was also a small La Rochelle Bistro in the same building, I almost went in for a snack but decided against it. After dinner I walked along the ocean and past 'Tokyo Big View" which is a really cool looking building that you can go up into a see the Tokyo skyline and ocean, unfortunately it was closed so I just got to take cool pictures of the outside of the building. I have to tell you how odd it is to have the pacific ocean on your east. Anyway, I walked along the ocean to the big ferris wheel that is in my pictures. Next to the ferris wheel Toyota had a 2 story show room. I went in and looked around in their new hybrid section, they have 5-6 hybrids out right now in Japan. I took a picture of the Mark X which is a hatchback with three rows of seats.
Went back over to Shinjuku and met up with some co-workers for a few drinks. I ended up having some tuna sashimi and two beers. We hung out for a few hours and chatted, it was a very good time.
---- Going to lunch with some of my co-workers again today and tonight is Kobe's restaurant. I am hoping that finishing off my Japan Iron Chef tour with Iron Chef Italian is a good idea. I do love Italian food and he supposed to be one of the best Italian chefs in the world so I am hopeful that tonight will be a solid rebound after yesterday.
Hiroyuki Sakai won the Iron Chef tournament and was named King of Iron Chefs. I was very upset when that happened because he beat my favorite Iron Chef Chen Kenichi, now I think I know why... Both Chen-san and Sakai-san are masters of their cuisine, I would say Chen's food is the best Chinese food I've ever had and Sakai's food is the best French food I've ever had. I think the difference is that French food has more depth to the flavors then Chinese food.
In Japanese you would put "-san" on the family name to show a sign of respect. One thing I find interesting is that Chen Kenichi is the only Iron Chef to use the Japanese writing of his name. Japanese (and Chinese) names are always listed last name first so on the paperwork here it is Sakai Hiroyuki but in American it is reversed with first name first. Chen Kenichi is listed that way everywhere...
Anyway, back to the point.. I got to La Rochelle wearing my Mets jacket and the head waiter say it and asked if I was from NY. When I said yes he told me that Sakai's son just graduated from Cornell University and was expected back tonight. He then told me to come with him into the bar for a minute before going into the dinning area, once in the bar he told me he was going to get Sakai so he could come talk to me. :D
The bar area was beautiful, the restaurant is on the 32nd floor of an office building and the view of the city was amazing. The bar was red and had glowing lights shining on it making it look almost neon. Behind the bar they had a glass bar with the bottles on it, that bar had blue neon lights under it. Ordered a glass of wine and they brought me some olives and pastry puffs while they went to get Sakai from the kitchen! He came out with an interpreter but we didn't use him, Sakai speaks English but I guess the interpreter was there in case people couldn't understand his accent. We talked for a few minutes about NY and why I was in Japan, I mentioned how I travel for work and that I was going to Australia in Feb. He and Chen are going to Australia to hold a cooking seminar soon, that would be awesome to go to but it's sooner than Feb. After we talked I got my picture with him, he really is an awesome person and is as friendly as he appears to be.
So, onto the dinning area. The dinning floor manager (Vahid Pishkar) is from Iran and has lived in Tokyo for 20 years, as part of his job at La Rochelle he went to Paris for one year and had to learn basic French. He also speaks fluent Japanese, Iranian and English although he didn't know the English for that blue stuff that grows in Blue Cheese, I told him mold and showed how to spell it..
He came and chatted with me between the first few courses, we talked about George Bush, Barak Obama, 9/11, my job, my travels, his travels, our communal dinners, the Mets, American Baseball, Japanese ballplayers and other various topics.. After a few courses he told me that Sakai's son had just arrived and would like to come to talk to me.. Sakai Shingo graduated from Cornell University in the summer and was planning to stay in America and open a restaurant there but his dad asked him to come home so like any Japanese person would do he came home. We talked about NYC, Upstate NY and cold snowy winters. Apparently it does snow in Japan but nothing like in Upstate NY, he had many days where he ended up sleeping in the library because he didn't want to walk back to his dorm.
So, now in between each course I had either Shingo or Vahid coming over and chatting with me. It was awesome, everyone there was amazing. Shingo actually gave me a few pointers on how to cook foie gras and told me that I really should get ahold of some burdock for cooking for one of our communal dinners, he even told me how to cook it so it is not too tough. Speaking of foie gras, we know it's liver but what I didn't know is there are two kinds. The most common and easier to cook is duck liver, the better but much harder to cook is wild goose. Here is the bad thing about it.. There are "farms" that grow ducks for foie gras, those "farms" lock the duck in a very small cage ala Veal and feed it nothing but corn, ducks can't digest corn correctly so it causes the liver to grow to unusual size and they end up dying of liver failure. The liver that it produces is a tough foie gras which means you can over cook it with no fear of screwing it up. Wild goose as the name suggests are not caged animals, they are fed corn but not enough to cause liver failure which means that when the animals are killed the liver is still healthy. The healthy liver is very hard to cook, the trick is to only pan fry each side for a very short amount of time and then put it in the oven covered with some kind of sauce (he recommends something sweet like black truffle sauce) so that the liver almost steams from the sauce. Again, you have to only cook it for a very short amount of time or else it will get overcooked and be very chewy.
What else did I learn tonight? Japanese written language is a bastardization of Chinese and Latin. There are three different Japanese written character sets. The oldest is Kanji which was based on ancient Chinese. Kanji can't be pronounced, they are symbols to project meaning and based on the placement and arrangement they mean something different. You can't just take a Kanji symbol and translate it to a word or words, you need to translate the whole sentence in order to gain it's meaning. The second written character set is Katakana which was also based on Chinese. Katakana came into being when new things were introduced into the Japanese culture such as tomatoes, forks and spoons. The Katakana is usually a one symbol for one word association, for example there is a katakana symbol that literally means tomato. The third and final is Romaji, Romaji a bastardization of latin letters and is pronounceable. They have letters for sounds so Shinjuku would be three romaji letters, one for shin one for ju and one for ku. With the advent of phones and text messages Japanese people are going away from all three of these methods and instead using western spelling of their words which is why in the last 5 years alot of signs have been changing over to english letters. Six years ago Japan was very much the Japan from Lost in Translation with no understandable signs. Because cell phones cant text Kanji, Katakana or Romaji they needed to put road signs and such in a written character set that people could text.
The concern amongst traditionalists is that Kanji, Katakana and Romaji are all going to be a thing of the past in another 10 years or so and that everything in Japanese will be written out with English characters. Iron Chef Michiba is one of these people which is why everything in his restaurant is written only in Kanji, he apparently won't even use Katakana or Romji because he feels they are the first step in Japan losing it's culture.
Anyway, enough lessons.. Back to dinner.. How good is Sakai's food? When Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe got married they had their wedding and reception at La Rochelle.
Without further ado I bring to you a course by course description. :) The names in " " are the way they are listed on the menu.
Course 1 - "Fruit tomale inside crab with 3 kinds of fresh clams" This dish had a shrimp sitting atop of a tomato, inside the tomato was crab and a sauce made of three different types of clams. The sauce on the outside was a clam/pesto which was amazing!
Course 2 - "Foiegras saute with truffle sauce" Do I really need to say anything about this? Holy shit was it good! It was a large piece of wild goose foie gras over a crispy potato with white asparagus and black truffle sauce!
Course 3 - "Organic vegetable salad with consomme jelle" This was a salad of very fresh vegetables, it included zucchini, corn, asparagus and a few others, it was all wrapped in a cucumber and was on top of a honey sauce. Very nice fresh course to balance out the richness of the foie gras.
Course 4 - "Hokkaido Ezo abalone with hard clam sauce gratin" OK, I'm over my abalone hating officially! There are three different types of abalone, there is Japanese, Australian and American. The Japanese is soft yet firm, it has a little bit of a "crunch" when you bite it but not much of one. The Australian one has no "crunch" and is the softest of them. The American one tends to be "crunchier" and a little harder. There is no definitive answer as to which one is the best, Sakai will only use the Japanese one. Morimoto disagrees and prefers to use the American one because he likes the crunch.. Huh, learn something new every day.. Or in this case lots of things. Oh, my opinion of this? Amazing, the gratin was to die for, I ended up putting the rest of it on my bread! The abalone;s texture was like eating squid, but had more taste than squid does.
Course 5 - "soup" This was a soup made of burdock and some bullion. It was very good and supposedly helps alot with digestion. It tasted alot like Hikama, very earthy.
Course 6 - "Fresh fish from south of Japan" This was a langosteen wrapped in sole cooked in an lobster and crab sauce. It came with a few veggies. This was probably the most disappointing dish, it was great but not as good as the others. I think the lobster and crab sauce reminded me to much of a lobster bisque and that didn't fit right with langosteen and sole.
Course 7 - This was not listed on the menu. After your meal and before dessert they brought a cheese cart by, anything you got off this cart was extra. I got some Sheep Milk Blue Cheese, some beer soaked cheese and some hard cheddar. The cheddar was very good as you would expect, the beer soaked cheese was amazing but the blue cheese stole the show. The blue cheese was so fresh that if you cut a piece and left it on a plate for a few hours the mold would be grown onto the plate! Vahid recommended I eat some with honey and black pepper and holy crap it was so good, I would have never thought of cheese with honey and black pepper but trust me it's worth trying.
Course 8 - "Grand dessert" This was a caramelized peach in a peach and honey sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yummm..
Course 9 - "cafe" They brought out the coffee with a small plate, the plate had two pieces of home made chocolate, two pieces of sugar candy and one piece of marshmallow. The chocolate was still warm and gooey inside so when they say they made it fresh they meant they JUST made it fresh!
Shall we play the guessing game? I will tell you this one was more than yesterday's meal, but since nobody guessed at that one you don't really have a frame of reference do you.. Come on, I want some guesses.. :)
---- Two other things I wanted to share.. One - There was an opera singer in the lobby of my job today during lunch.. She was good, I listened to one song. Two - I went into a Head Shop on the way to La Rochelle today, everything in there was in English. It was like walking into a normal American Head Shop.
Crap it's late.. I am going to get dressed for bed and then start resizing pics. I might not get them up tonight. If not I will get them first thing in the morning..
Tonight I went to Michiba's restaurant Rokusan-Tei. First of all I have to thank Rob and Toni for asking me why I wasn't going to the other Iron Chef's restaurants. I'm also glad I decided to do the tour.. This was the most expensive of the restaurants, after I list what I ate you should guess how much you think it is.. Whoever gets closest gets a prize, extra points if you can guess in Yen.. :D
I arrived at the restaurant and had the manager ask me if there was anything I wouldn't eat. I said no. I was sat and the waitress asked me the same thing, when I said no she added "you know this is real traditional style Japanese food", yes I did thank you.. :D
There is NO menu here, well no alacarte menu anyway. They have one set menu that has two choices, that set menu changes every month. Think of the balls a restaurant has to have to have one menu for the entire month! Choices were (Noodles or Rice) and (Kobe Beef or Fish dish), that's it, nothing else, seriously! By the way Ginza is apparently why people from America freak out about Japan, there was not a single English sign on any buildings, the only non Kanji signs were the road signs.. Not a problem because I had a google map with Kanji written on it so I was able to find the street and restaurant.
So, back to the balls.. This restaurant deserves those balls.. I have never had Japanese food of such quality, sorry Morimoto you having nothing on Michiba. I'm having a hard time believing the reviews that say Nakamura's restaurant is better, but I will see...
So, onto dinner..
Course one - In the middle of the plate is a tomato in jello, going clockwise starting above the tomato is: Fried Okra, Squid Sashimi in a sweet sauce, fried cheese, boiled okra, mackerel in a soy teriyaki sauce, mushroom sushi. The highlight on this dish had to be the tomato with the cheese a close second.
Course two - Michiba's famous soup with a scalloped scallop.. :) They brought the ball over and the waitress started to walk away and turned to ask if I needed a spoon... NO, what kind of self respecting Japanese person would eat soup with a spoon.. Oh, wait.. I'm not Japanese.. :P No spoon here, soup is to be eaten with chopsticks, trust me it is..
Course three - Squid, White Fish and Yellow Tail sashimi (3 pieces each) with real wasabi. Nice thick cuts, very good.
Course four - Eggplant with Bacon cooked in a caper sauce. Yes Jessie I know.. I ate it and you know what, it was great! Next time you cook eggplant with bacon and capers I will be more than happy to try it.. Seriously though, it was amazing, the capers really balanced well with the bacon and the eggplant added a certain something that really kicked it over the top.
Course Five - Shrimp soup with lotus flower pancakes and other herbs. This dish was a nice seafood broth and the lotus flower pancakes had a real interesting texture to them. They brought over some spicy sauce to add to it if I felt the flavor was not strong enough. I didn't add any because I really liked the seafood broth.
Course Six - Steamed potatoes with a Tofu Sesame sauce. The tofu sauce was frikkin great, I would have eaten anything in that sauce. Seriously I wish I knew how they made it because I would make it all the time..
Course Seven - This was the first choice course, I could have gotten either Kobe Beef or another fish course. I chose the Kobe Beef. It came on a little grill with some veggies. The two sauces are ginger sauce and mustard sauce. The ginger sauce is for the meat and the mustard sauce is for the veggies. I don't really think I need to say how much I loved this course right? I mean Kobe Beef in Japan, does life get any better?
Course Eight - Miso Soup. Nothing really special about it, it was tasty and had lots of onions and mushrooms in it. I was actually waiting for it to cool down when course nine finished cooking.
Course Nine - Steamed Rice and Mushrooms with pickles, dicon radish and some other pickled thing (forgot what it was now, if I remember I will edit this). The Rice was brought over in a bowl a few courses ago and left on the table to steam. When the fire went out it was done so they uncovered it and served it while I was waiting on my Miso Soup to cool. The Rice was normal rice but the mushrooms were very nice.
Course Ten - Dessert.. Finally.. The dish on the left is a chocolate cake with Tapioca on it. It was amazing, such rich cake and thankfully it was small. If it was big it would have been overload. The dish on the right is a custard with fruits, very cold and very refreshing to end the meal.
Drinks - I had two glasses of wine and a glass of green tea.
After the meal the manager gave me a wall hanging off Michiba's saying "I am a fish and cooking is my water", a Michiba post card and a hankerchief.
---- After dinner I walked to the Tokyo Tower and took some really nice pictures, it really was pretty. They had a few spots you could stand on glass and look down at the street, it was neat to see everything below you but the pics of that came out like crap. They had a bar at the top of the tower as well if you wanted to have a drink. I just looked around a bunch, took pics and headed out. Didn't feel like having a drink because I was still pretty full.
Heading to bed.. Send me your price guesses.. To give you some reference, the meal at Chen's was $85.00
I am either really insane or really awesome depending on how you want to look at it..
Tonight I am going to Rokusan-Tei which is RokusaburoMichiba's restaurant. Michiba was the original Iron Chef Japanese, he had the best percentage of any Iron Chef. He had 32 wins, 5 losses and 1 tie for a 86.5% win ratio. He was also in the most battles of any Iron Chef Japanese with 38 battles over his three years as Iron Chef Japanese.
Tomorrow I am going to La Rochelle which is Hiroyuki Sakai's restaurant. Sakai had the most wins in Iron Chef history with 70 wins, he had 15 losses and 1 tie for a 82.4% winning percentage. As Jessie would like to point out his 70 wins are 3 more than Chen Kenichi, and he was named "King of Iron Chefs" when he beat Chen Kenichi in the final tournament. To end the show they had a final tournament, round 1 was Sakai v. Morimoto and Chen v. Kobe, Chen and Sakai each won round 1 and met in the championship battle. He joined Iron Chef in the second season when original Iron Chef French (YutakaIshinabe) left the show.
Wednesday night I go back to Japanese and this time to KoumeiAriake which is KoumeiNakamura's restaurant. Most people, including myself, think of Nakamura as the short lived Iron Chef Japanese gap between Michiba and Morimoto. Nakamura had 24 wins, 11 losses and 1 tie in his 2 years on the show, his 11 losses are the most of any Japanese Iron Chef and he had the lowest winning percentage out of any Iron Chef. Ironically all the reviews I have read online are saying his restaurant is better than Michiba's, which I will be able to have an opinion on now.
Thursday night I finish off my trip with the "the Prince of Pasta", Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe. Kobe was the only Iron Chef Italian, he joined the show for the last two years and saw 23 battles. He lost his first battle which ironically had pasta as the secret ingredient! That loss must have made him try harder because he is the only Iron Chef to never lose consecutive battles and he never lost another battle against an Italian Chef. His final record was 15 wins, 7 losses and 1 tie.
Iron Chef checklist: (Original Iron Chefs in black, ICA Chefs in blue) -Iron Chef Japanese --RokusaburoMichiba - check --KoumeiNakamura - check --MasaharuMorimoto - check --MasaharuMorimoto - check -Iron Chef Chinese --Chen Kenichi - check -Iron Chef French --YutakaIshinabe - no (*) --Hiroyuki Sakai - check -Iron Chef Italian --Masahiko Kobe - check --Mario Batali - no (BabboRistorante and Lupa in NYC) -Iron Chef Southwestern --Bobby Flay - no (Mesa Grill and Bolo Bar in NYC) -Iron Chef Hellasian --Cat Cora - no (**) -Iron Chef Mediterranean --Michael Symon - check -Iron Chef Austrian/German? --Wolfgang Puck - check (***)
* - He only had 8 battles and left the show because of the "stressful nature of the program", he could not deal with the time limit and hated to be judged on National TV. Does that sound like an Iron Chef to you?
** - She has no restaurants! Oh, and she is apparently the first and only homosexual Iron Chef. She lives in Santa Barbara CA with her partner and two children. Hellasian is her term of her cooking, it's apparently a merging of Greek and Asian.
*** - He was Iron Chef for four episodes and had one battle which he won.
---- I am also planning on going over to the Tokyo Tower tonight after dinner. It's about a mile walk from Rokusan-Tei.
---Diversion of the Day The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex. Worried the girl might become pregnant and adversely impact the family's status, she consulted the family doctor. The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He then told her to arrange for her daughter to be put on birth control and until then, talk to her and give her a box of condoms. Later that evening, as her daughter was preparing for a date, the woman told her about the situation and handed her a box of condoms. The girl burst out laughing and reached over to hug her mother saying: 'Oh Mom! You don't have to worry about that! I'm dating Susan!'
---Thought of the Day (yes, it's back) If someone adds you as a friend on a site like Facebook or Myspace and you ignore/reject their friend request why would they friend request again two days later?
Iron Chef Chen Kenichi was called the Sage of Sichuan Cuisine, his father Chen Kemmin is often referred to as the man who invented Sichuan Cuisine. Chen had 67 wins and 22 losses in his six years as Iron Chef Chinese and was the only Iron Chef to be on the show for its entire run. He had a winning streak of 14 straight battles. Chen was often called the Crazy Uncle on Iron Chef and I have to say that Uncle Chen does not disappoint..
Tonight I went to the Shibuya section of Tokyo which is three stops away on the JR Yamanote Line. As the run of Iron Chef was coming to close Hiroyuki Sakai (Iron Chef French) opened a restaurant called La Rochelle in Shibuya and convinced his friend Chen to open up a branch of his famous Szechwan Restaurant a few blocks away. These two restaurants helped to propel Shibuya into an upper class area of Tokyo. Tonight I had myself the pleasure of finally eating Chen's food, granted it was not cooked by him as he was up in his Akasaka location. All of the chefs in this restaurant are personally trained by Chen to make sure they cook up to his standards... They actually have a book at the front desk with all the chefs and their papers signed by Chen.. :) I tried to take a picture but the lady gave me a dirty look so I didn't...
They have four Grand Menus, the cheapest being $85.00 and the most expensive being $215. The difference between them was very small in my opinion. My meal had a Shark Fin soup with crab in it, the next one up replaced the crab with prawn, the next one up replaced it with abalone, the next one replaced it with roe. The only other difference was mine had a pork with red pepper dish, the next one up had chicken, the next one beef, the next one had beef and chicken. I don't think those additions qualified the price difference..
Anyway, enough with the pre-show.. Oh, wait.. I should probably tell you about the journey there.. Well.. It was raining when I got out of work so I grabbed my Mets jacket so I wouldn't get wet, by the time I left the hotel three people stopped me and asked how the Mets did this year.. It was very odd, they would look at me and point to their chest saying 'Mets'o'. I would nod and they would say 'How'd Bob Vay's team do this year?'. I answered 'did ok, they didn't make the playoffs but they finished in 2nd' to which they would reply 'better than his Marines this year'.. Apparently there are a lot of Mets fans here because Bobby Valentine used to be their manager and they all look up to him. I can understand them looking up to him since he is a big part of "fixing" Japanese baseball. This trend didn't stop by the way, people on the train and walking down the street all did the same thing.. :) Makes me glad I brought this jacket, good to hear people talking up about the Mets for a change, most people in America say 'You're a Mets fan, really?'... Where was I... oh Right...
So, Emiu (a girl from work) takes the train over to that section of Tokyo to grab a connecting train home so she asked to show me how to get there, since I had not used the JR lines I accepted her help and was glad for her company since she is pretty cool. We talked a bunch on the train and walk to the restaurant, she said that everyone in the office is so surprised that I have no fear about wandering around the city and that they are all surprised at what I will eat and do. She made a comment that I was not a typical American and that it was good to see someone come over here and enjoy themselves.. :D Funny cause I got a lot of the same comments in Singapore.. Why are Americans afraid of different cultures, don't they know that's what makes the world a great place? So not going to start on that rant...
One of the other things she told me was that La Rochelle has a regular sit down restaurant right around the corner from Szechwan, she is going to show me on the map tomorrow at work and get me it's phone number so I can try and get there next week.. So this means I will have eaten at Morimoto, Chen and Sakai's restaurants. Does this mean I should look up Kobe's restaurant? He always was the lame Iron Chef.. I guess I can figure that out next week, part of me wants to just so I can say I ate there, but part of me just does not care about him..
So, finally... The food revue.. :D The first course was "Chinese Appetizer" which was three small dishes, one was a wok fried fish, one was a spinach roll, and the third was a chicken in spicy peanut sauce. The spinach roll was not spicy at all, it was chopped up spinach wrapped in some dough. It was very tasty, sorta like a spinach and feta taste.. The fish was wok fried with a spicy sichuan sauce, very very good - I probably could have eaten a whole meal of just that. The last one was the Chicken in spicy peanut sauce served over a tomato, the spice came on strong and by the time I was done eating that small portion my lips were tingly.. I love peanut sauce so it was very good..
The next course was "Stir-fried shrimp and vegetables with Yuzu pepper sauce", this was slightly spicier than the chicken and remember that my lips were already a bit tingly. It had four big shrimp (tails removed) over mushrooms, scallions, onions, and some other unknown vegetables. It was great, the bad thing was I was already starting to get full but I couldn't stop myself from eating it all.. At this time I had no sinus problems. You know how some spicy foods kick you in the mouth when you first eat it and how some the spice grows as you eat it. Well this was the kind that kicked you and then grew..
Onto the third course.. "Shark fin soup with crab meat and Yuba".. Shark fin is one of those food items that I was a little intimidated by, I've never really eaten shark fin that was not massively deep fried and I was afraid of how it would taste and feel. Well, I should not have worried, it tastes just like a shark steak but it's got a jelly like consistency which works well in soup. When you see the picture (on the japanpics page) you will see that this soup looks like an egg drop soup, it does indeed look and have the feel of an egg drop soup, it even sort of tastes like one. Well one if you mixed it with the spiciest hot and sour soup you've ever had. I was sweating by the time I finished this one and was getting nervous because each dish was getting progressivelyspicier and I had two more to go...
Fourth course was "Stir-fried pork with red pepper". This dish should have been called slightly cooked hot fucking peppers with a little bit of pork to balance the heat.. You know those peppers I cut up and put in my chili? This had those kind of peppers but they were whole, when you bit into them it was an explosion of heat in your mouth. Maybe it was because the dishes were getting progressivelyspicier but I didn't mind the spice in this dish because the flavor was great and the pork was cooked perfectly.
So, the fifth course was a choice.. You could have either "tofu with minced meat & hot chili sauce" or "Chen's original famous spicy noodle".. I went with the noodle since it's one of his signature dishes.. Speaking of Chen's signature things... X-O Hot Bean Paste! I love that stuff and ever since Iron Chef I have added it when I cook Chinese Style dishes. Remember that dish I cooked for Sara's house? I put about one tablespoon of X-O Hot Bean Paste in that and that was for a bunch of tofu and veggies and rice which fed a small army. This noodle soup had a lump about that big in the middle of it which I got to stir around and watch dissolve into this little bowl of soup. What an amazing taste but what an amazing burn. My fear was right that every dish was going to get hotter and this dish was certainly hot, hot, hotter than hell... I don't like spice when there is no flavor behind it, but there is reason this is one of his signature dishes.. It was so good, the waitress brought over a new wet napkin for me to wipe my forehead with... Apparently they do that for most people who eat this dish.. Phew... I was looking for the waiver that I apparently forgot to sign...
Finally dessert... The last course was called "Chinese dessert", it was a chocolate pocky, scoop of blackberry ice cream and two pieces of fruit. The ice cream and fruit helped quell the spice rage.
During this meal I had one glass of wine, one bottle of water and one glass of chinese tea.
---- After dinner I walked around Shibuya and found a LUSH, I went in and took a picture of Tramp soap which has Kanji lettering on the bottle.. I also saw a sign for American Spirit cigarettes which I thought was totally bizarre so I took a picture of that too.
One thing I forgot to mention.. I got a "Suica" card which is their version of the Oyster card so now I'm armed with a real train ticket.. Going to get much use out of next week.. Actually I am going to use the JR line to get to the Tokyo Dome, Disney Sea and Studio Ghibli so I will be a pro come Monday morning..
I'm not going to get around to posting pics tonight.. I have to get to bed... I have a bunch I want to post and I will post them in the morning.. For tonight you just get a blog and I get some sleep..
Chen Kenichi has three restaurants. His original restaurant (Szechwan Restaurant) is in Akasaka. A few years ago (when Iron Chef stopped filming) he opened up a Tokyo branch of Szechwan Restaurant. The Toyko restaurant serves the same food as his Akasaka restaurant, from what I read Chen spends most of his time at the Akasaka location but has been known to show up at the Tokyo one from time to time. He has a third restaurant that (ShisenHanten) opened even more recently, ShisenHanten is a very fancy restaurant that only accepts reservations for two or more people and they have a $60.00 minimum order per person at the table. Unless I can find someone to go with me I will not be going to ShisenHanten.
I do have reservations at Szechwan tonight for 7:30pm. I had a co-worker print me out maps and information and she mentioned an easier way to get there.. I was going to take the Keio Line from Shinjuku to Meidai-mae and switch to another Keio Line from Meidai-mae to Shibuya. She mentioned the Yamanote Line which is a JR line, this line connects Shinjuku to Shibuya directly and is only two stops from one to the other!! This is the way she goes home so the plan is for her to leave with me and guide me over to the restaurant.
By the way, if you want to see a crazy train map check out the JR line map. Remember from the other day that the JR line is the commuter rail and the Keio lines are the subways. Oh yeah bitches, I just linked my own blog in my blog!!
---- I went to the sushi restaurant again today. I got the same thing I got yesterday but today it had TORO as one of the pieces of sushi!! I almost crapped myself... $14.00 for 10 pieces of nigri sushi, 1 maki roll and miso soup. For that $14.00 one of the 10 pieces was toro! Toro in American is more that $14.00 in itself! The ten pieces were salmon, tuna, abalone, egg, roe, squid, eel, toro, mackerel and shrimp. The Abalone was really good by the way, I think it was cut too thick at Nobu.
When I walked into the sushi restaurant today the three chefs and the waitress yelled "welcome" and one of the sushi chefs pointed to a chair for me to sit in. The first two times I went there the waitress met me at the door and walked me to a seat, it felt pretty good to be welcomed like that today.. :D Will be going back tomorrow.. Good sushi everyday for lunch makes me happy.. :D
