AROUND TOKYO: TSUKIJI MARKET BEFORE IT COMES TO AN END

Earlier this year, I heard from a friend that they were closing down Tokyo's famous Tsukiji Market, one of the world's largest fish markets, to transfer it to a more suitable location in tome for the 2020 Summer Olympics which the city is hosting.

According to its website,  the market, which started as an Uogashi or a riverside fish market in the  16th century Edo period, is open for 24 hours because of the early morning fish auction. I wanted to catch that but coming from a long day of walking and riding rollercoasters, the hubby and I resolved to just get a taste of the fisher later in the day. That was not a good decision.

At 10:00 AM, the best sashimi places (according to most online reviews), Sushi Dai and Daiwa Sushi, had lines snaking out to the corner of the street. The attendants were already politely turning away clientele explaining that they only had a limited amount of fresh seafood for the sashimi.

I had just come from a month-long bout of seafood allergy. I am now a walking  seafood freshness detector. When fish is not fresh, I break into hives all over (even my hair and nails would itch) and would need shots to counter the swelling. This did not deter me from queueing in one of the sushi restaurants that still had open waiting lines.

We had to wait for about an hour, taking turns to secure our place in the line and going around the market. Looking at souvenirs and pasalubong. I cheated a little and had a few sticks of Edomaki, rolled omelette mixed with fish paste. Tasted like fishy thin pancakes which was weird for me because I like my pancakes sweet, not salty.

When we got in, the place was cramped, with only a long counter good for about 12 people. The choices were limited but I think it works that way so the get to serve the fresh inventory by the end of the lunch service.

The hubby, who is not a fan of raw fish, ordered the safest selection- sushi platter. The slices of raw fish, rolled at the center of rice wrapped nori (seaweed) were fresh. The platter also came with tamago (egg) and tobiko (flying fish egg roe).

I had Chirashidon, vinegared sushi rice topped with an assortment of pickled garnishes and sashimi that included tuna, salmon, uni (sea urchin) and tobiko. My chirashidon came with snow crabs, shrimp, squid and scallops. It had strips of nori as toppings and the wasabi was freshly grated. Yes, I was pushing the limits. Luckily for me, everything was fresh and I had only very minor itching after finishing the bowl in record time.

After the meal, one has to traverse the narrow walkway to the exit on the other end of the restaurant.

It was a truly Japanese dining experience that I would not be able to do again because the 23-hectare Tsukiji raket will be transferred to a 40-hectare site in Toyosu in the reclaimed area of Koto starting November 2016. The new market will be a more modern version. I'm sure it will have its own attractions but will probably lack the old-world charm of Tsukiji. I'm glad to have experienced this centuries-old market before it becomes an entry in the pages of Japanese food history.

HUNGRY IN OSAKA- MEMORIES OF JAPAN (PART 3)

Another great memory of Osaka was the seemingly provident chance encounter with Helena, the gracious owner of Kyong Ju Restaurant, right beside the Family Owl Cafe in Tenjinbashi.

We had spent the whole afternoon walking the Tenjibashisuji Shotengai (Shopping Street) and we need to rest our feet. We were at the end of our wits and nearing the end of the 2.6 kilometer length of the shopping area when we spotted our destination but it was still closed. 

We decided to get a drink at Helena's restaurant because it had pretty cranes sculptures by the entrance. It was empty, except for Helena and a food server. She asked us if we wanted to have early dinner. We replied that we were only there for a drink as we were going to the Owl Cafe.  She served us a couple of sodas and offered to have us pay for the drinks after we got back from the Owl Cafe if we promised to have dinner at her restaurant after. It was so sweet of her, so we agreed.

The crane sculptures are made by her brother

It would have been so easy to run away from the offer. After all, a couple of Cokes wouldn't cost her much (In my very Pinoy mind, it was also possible that this was some sort of a trap to charge us with an overpriced dinner). When we went back to the restaurant, Helena was graciously thankful for the small business we were giving her that night. The restaurant was still empty.  She wasn't expecting much weekend dinner patrons as her clientele are mainly locals during lunch hour. (By this time,  guilt crept in... I did think about of leeching her for 2 sodas!)

She recommended several items, mostly dishes with vegetables, which the hubby, a professed carnivore, secretly balked at. She shared that she was Korean who got married to a Japanese. Her recipes are a mix of Japanese and Korean style of cooking which she developed as a home cook in her kitchen.

Her version of  Okonomiyaki, a 'pancake' popular in the Kansai and Hiroshima areas, had okra, leeks and bell pepper. This is more akin to the Kansai style of cooking where the ingredients are mixed in (versus the layered style of the Hiroshima region). The batter is a mixture of flour, tororo (grated nagaimo yam), eggs, shredded cabbage and dashi (stock made from kelp and fish shavings). I had never seen the hubby eat so much vegetables!

Okonomiyaki= Okonomi (what you like) + yaki (grilled)

For our main course, we had Beef Yakiniku (grilled meat) with chahan (Japanese fried rice) and a fresh Mizuna (Japanese mustard) salad with Kimchi dressing. Helena cooked the beef for us, sharing stories of her family and life in Japan. Her hospitality made this feel like a home-cooked dinner.

Beef Yakiniku

Chahan

Mizuna Salad with Kimchi dressing

KYONG JU RESTAURANT
Address: 1-13-4  Tenjinbashi, Kita-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Telephone: +81 6-6242-8751

TASTED: ST. MARC CAFÉ

It's been a while since I've been to SM Megamall. Went to the newest wing to get me something cold at St. Marc Cafe, right across Tim Ho Wan, where people are lined up (crazily, 'til now) for the buns.

To entice passers by, the cafe has a fantastic sampuru display of its sundaes, pancakes drinks and sandwiches. Sampuru (derived from the English word "sample") are realistic food replicas usually made from wax or polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Making fake-food has been a business in Japan since the 1930s and now, what with Japanese restaurants being franchised globally, has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Having these eye-candy on display makes good business sense. No sample food to waste, no paper menus to print and most of all, it's the effective foot traffic advertisement.

For diner, though, it can be a boon or a bane. While one is spared the task of having to  imagine what the food you're about to order is going to look like, one has to contend with the variety of choices which may take some time. Inevitably, the diner holds up the line.

Which is what happened to me at St. Marc Cafe. 

Eventually, with some help from the food attendant, I chose the Choco Berry Celebration. 

This is what arrived. Not an exact replica but not a far cry either. Fair enough.

Spot the difference

The thing with fantastic sampuru displays is that you elevate the expectation of the diner. So I put a bit of everything on my spoon, expecting some celebratory sparks (not even fireworks) but none came. It was ice cream with custard and bits of fruit in it. Pretty but average. Even the disappointment I felt was neither here nor there.

After the first few spoonfuls,  my thoughts were on the macha-flavored ice cream sundaes. Maybe, I should have gotten those. Next time, probably.

BIG IN JAPAN: KONAPUN

This is a bowl of ramen.

Not really.

It's konapun, an inedible food toy "cooked" in this awesomely cute miniature kitchen.

Manufactured by giant Japanese toy maker Bandai, konapun are miniature food "cooking" sets  that allow you to create mini, realistic food items with  (mostly) the aid of powdered sodium alginate, a brown seaweed extract used as a stabilizer for dairy products.

Kona, as I Googled it, means either  "flour," "meal" or "powder".

Konapun are labeled as inedible because you have to mix the powdered seaweed extract with additives and coloring to achieve the realistic color and textures of the food you want to recreate.

Like parfait.

Click on the pic to see how these were made!

Burger and fries.

Click on the pic to see how these were fried!

Curry and rice.

Click on the pic to see how this meal was made!

If you watched the burger and fries video above (which, as I write this,  is at 15 Million views) you might have noticed that the burger patty and fries were fried. This is because the "oil" actually contains citric acid,  which  reacts to the sodium alginate by forming miniscule bubbles, making it look like it was "frying."  For many enthusiasts, the fun is in the cooking.

Here is a one crazy video that uses real egg to make a konapun breakfast.

Click on the pic to see the video.

Now that's cooking in really small spaces!

IT'S A HOOT! OWL FAMILY CAFE IN OSAKA- MEMORIES OF JAPAN (Part 2)

In the busy streets of Osaka, you can have coffee and commune with one of nature's wisest creatures at the Owl Family Cafe.

This cafe is proof that the Japanese love to embrace the quirky and bizarre. It could be hard to find as it is located in one of the side streets at the end of one of the longest shopping districts of Osaka,  Tenjinbashi.

The place is a low structured building with simple signs on the door and windows. For about ¥1,000,   guests are ushered in batches at hourly intervals by young, friendly Japanese women. Apparently, the owls mingle in rotation, to allow the creatures some rest in between petting and picture taking with curious tourists. 

Don't expect fine-dining food, though. After all you're not there to just eat, you're there to get to know the birds of prey better. You can order coffee, tea or hot cocoa and some snack like cookies and bread. And no, you can't share these with the owls. They have their own scheduled feeding sessions. Servings are small, too. But it's okay since you'll spend the first fifteen minutes listening to an introduction to handling owls  (mainly in Japanese) and the next 45 minutes trying to have your photos taken with your new found feathered friends.

The young ladies will introduce you to the owls one at a time, assisting you and making sure that no on gets hurt (those talons and beaks can rip your eyes out if you behaved badly).  We didn't have time to take down the owl names because we found ourselves snapping pics like crazy.

This cute one was perched on my shoulder when it suddenly pooped on  me!

This one was a bit of a snob.

This big momma is fierce!

And this one's just plain creepy!

The whole experience is more akin to visiting a pet shop than a petting zoo, especially after finding out that the owls were for sale (the cheapest at ¥1,000,000.00).  

I probably won't go back to an Owl Cafe next time I'm in Japan. I wonder if I should try the Goat Cafe next?


Address: 1-10-13 Tenjinbashi, Kita-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Telephone: +81 6-6360-6205

 

 

SPOTTED: SPAGHETTI FLAVORED POPSICLES

Yes, You read the title right. That above is Neapolitan spaghetti flavored popsicle from Japanese ice cream maker Gari Gari Kun. The company makes special (read: weird) ice cream flavors seasonally. Last spring it was this tomato sauce-flavored popsicle coating with bits of tomato gelatin.
 

Eating this was a challenging task even for an ice cream lover like me. It tasted of canned tomato paste- processed with a hint of tin. The first bite disconcerts your taste buds and the impulse is to spit it out. If it does get past your tongue,  there is the gag reflex to contend with. I could only take 2 bites before I said  "Sayonara!"

I found these in Tokyo last year. The staff at the grocery store asked if I really wanted to buy this item ast "It taste bad," he sad. I should have listened.

I hope the next time I get a chance to go to Japan, I'll have the chance to taste the Cream Puff popsicle which I've heard is "exquisite."  Did they finally make something we can actually eat? =)

Photo courtesy of Rocketnews

FOUND ONLINE: FOOD YOU CAN PLAY WITH

Image from thiscollosal.com

Toys made of chocolate. Now you can really play with your food.

The cacao-flavored blocks  were designed by Akihiro Mizuuchi, a Japanese illustrator, designer and lecturer at the Shizuoka College of Design and Tokoha Gakuen University of Art. He used molds based on actual Lego blocks and designed each character on his computer so he can calculate how many blocks he needs to make. Sadly, these are not for sale.

Mizuuchi is part of Gunchoco Club, a Facebook community dedicated to re-create Gundam, a popular Japanese anime robot,  out of chocolate. 

The colossal Gundam Robot in Odaiba, Tokyo.

Here's cute and quirky video of Gundam, who may now lay claim to the title, "Creamiest Robot Ever Made."

Click on the pic to get linked to the video

UK graffiti artist Hoakser, known for his custom-designed spray paint cans, has come up with the chocolate nozzles, "Chozzles." These come in dark and milk chocolate flavors and can be bought via his website.

These are the spray paint cans. Not edible.

These are the Chozzles. Highly edible.

Another UK designer, Robert Cooper, a graduate of Central Saint Martins, made chocolate-filled wafer snacks called Cooper's Chocolate Airfix for giant manufacturer Cadbury's.

Photos courtesy of stupiddope.com

While this looks fun, it makes you wonder if anybody has ever finished a plane model without taking a bite.

Meanwhile, Spanish product designer Diego Ramos, has been selling the Mr. Chocolate Moustache through ChocolatFactory, a Barcelona-based workshop owned by Belgian master chocolatier Michel Laline.

Photo courtesy of diegoramos.es

The artist encourages his formerly beardless customers to send their pictures that he can post at the website.

These are definitely food you can play with.

 

Japan! Japan! Okay Sa Tiyan!

Do you ever feel that as you grow old, your circle of friends grows smaller? You lose some to strange diseases, you lose some due to even stranger situations involving the loss of money and trust but most you lose due to distance. With internet technology so accessible these days, I find that it is the emotional distance, not the physical one,  that can turn a friend into a stranger.

Then there are friends whom you don't really lose, they've just decided to seek greener pastures or run away from the hurts of a painful love affair gone wrong. One new found friend decided that the former  is reason enough for him to chew verdant grass growing (probably more like clinging moss) in the concrete jungles of New York.

He is no stranger to working abroad though. Well, I guess no Filipino family is. With 1 out of 10 Filipinos working abroad, the OFW phenomena is not such a strange thing. It is a hard reality that many  of us understand and bear. 

But I digress. In his first few years in the work force, my friend worked in Japan, back in the days when its live entertainment scene was the arena of talented Pinoys and Pinays. There, he learned many new things like not getting lost in translation and that five-toed socks are for construction workers and not cool J-pop celebrities.  When he returned home for good (or so he thought) one of the things he brought back here was his love for Japanese food. 

Now that he's bound for a foreign land again, one of the things he promised me was a meal in a carinderia with a Japanese cook, right in the heart of Tondo. Some sort of unofficial send-off where we could make a new memory he could take with him to warm his heart amidst the cold steel and stone buildings of Manhattan.

Three rainy nights ago, along with A. (with whom my friend shares a peculiar interest for things supernatural), we grabbed a cab to Tondo. At the corner of Hermosa and Clemente Streets, right where an eskayola statue of Mama Mary seeks shelter from the rain in an MMDA-blue riprap grotto, we alighted.

Unlike most carinderias we are familiar with, this one does not have ready-made (or twice-cooked)  food getting stale and cold in aluminum pots or trays. Instead there is a menu, three tables and a cooking area.

My friend introduced us to Mommy Edtitha and her husband Toshi, a cruise liner cook of twenty years who met  Editha in Yamagata when she worked there as a cultural dancer (after a stint as a dancer for Pinyo TV shows like Eat  Bulaga). They are also the parents of Suzuki, a past Survivor Philippines castaway.

Toshi

It has been two years since Toshi has hung his cruise ship cook's apron and decided to put up this carinderia with Mommy Edith.  Joy for us, because we then get to taste authentic Japanese cooking without the frills of high-end restaurants. Here. you won't find the overly soy-sauced dishes of commercially franchised Japanese food chains.

To drive away the cold, we ordered Ebi Ramen.

The soup has a home-cooked appeal to it. Mind you, the scalding hot broth just smelled so good, we dove right into it, not minding if we would be burning our tongues.

We also ordered a tempura platter. This is not as big as you are used to in the more commercial establishments but you have to appreciate that it is cooked right before your eyes. Toshi will slice the vegetable pieces, crush the okra between his palm and the chopping board while Mommy Editha prepares the thin batter.

Mommy Editha also prepared Gyoza, the Japanese dumpling made of minced pork, cabbage and lots of garlic.

 

We still had some room for Ebi (shrimp) fry before the main event.

Being true-blue Pinoys that we are, the grand event for us were the rice meals.

Tonkatsu or deep-fried pork cutlet...

 

Katsudon... pork cutlet with Katsudon sauce

 

Butadon...Pork in simmered in slightly sweet sauce

We ordered mostly pork meals as Toshi said the quality of beef from the market was not very good. He also remarked that beef in the the wet market nearby does not have the same tenderness as Japanese beef.

All meals were served with freshly chopped vegetables.

The rice served was not the sticky long-grained Japanese kind but it doesn't matter. You get your fill and maybe even order a second plate. Traditionally, the rice meals are served in bowls (from the word "don" which means , you guessed it... "bowls"), here they are served in melamine plates and eaten with spoons and forks. Many people in the humble neighborhood eat there, too. They are not astounded by the fact that it's an authentic Japanese meal. Rather, they are just content to eat good food at an affordable price.  Everything we ordered was just billed for P495.

This was truly a dining experience that affirms that you can cook great food even in small spaces,  using only a two-burner stove like the one Toshi brought all the way from Japan.

So,  were you surprised that there were no raw fish and sea creatures wrapped in nori (seaweed)? Toshi wants to use only fresh ingredients and these are served only if they are called in advance by good, loyal customers. They also accept orders for westernized Japanese dishes like Kangkong pasta, Japanese burgers and the egg pizza.

A note to the picky diner-  they only have three wooden tables and you have to buy your softdrinks and ice from the neighboring sari-sari store. There's also no washroom so better pee before you go here. All the worries will be worth your while.