Anyways, back to the real food, was Tokyo a culinary paradise? well....if you are ballin on Arab money, probably it is. But for budget eaters like us....its like walking through a mine field
Here are some Hits & Misses:
Softee Ice Cream on the hills of Hakone.....AWESOMME. Best Ice cream I had in my lyfeee. Whipped with the milk from local farms, it was so tender and chewy that it taste like turkish ice cream (you know the ones with the silly man and the lonngg stretching stick)
Yuck, I didn't even know what this was. I brought it thinking it was mochi dipped in syrup. Turns out the syrup is actually soy sauce, and the balls are made out of..........rubber? I threw it away after first bite.
Wouldn't be in Japan without trying out takoyaki/squid balls. It was some touristy looking shop in 台場(Odaiba), turns out to be....average. The balls were a little too mushy for my liking, I dunno if it was really authentic or just bad cooking skills. I prefer the ones in 築地GINDACO where they fry the outer layer slightly to give it extra texture and crunchiness to the snack.Lesson Learnt: Snacking in Japan needs lots of mulla. :'( Was dead broke and begging on the streets by the 3rd hour on my first day. Learning japanese would help too, at least you know what you are getting into. After a few lessons, I decided to stop snacking and save my money for other good shitz.
So what is really worth eating in Nippon?
Firstly, Wagyu Beef! It's these ridiculiously priced steak straight from the cows of JPN. Why? they claim to be cows that a fed beer and sake, and also daily massages, this is to generate a perfect balance of fat-to-meat ratio. Not a bad life to be a wagyu cow right? These steak could be pan fried or bbq like the photo above. These steak doesn't even need seasoning or cutting utensils. When you put the steak in your mouth, it instantly sublimes into...well....oil and omega explosion of good taste. Ever had a steak melt your mouth? neither have I. My mom said I was silent for five minutes and tears of happyz were streaming down my cheeks when I took my first bite. Exaggeration? well...a little. Wagyu doesn't come cheap too, depending on the quality, you probably need to get a mortgage to pay for a filling meal, mine cost around $80-$100 USD. crazyyyy stuff. At least they give you this for compensation:
It is letter containing a certificate that certifies the bloodline of the beef to be 100% wagyu, they even plotted their graph and other weird measurements to verify its quality and taste. Even a background history of the cow's paternal orgins. No jokes!Second thing to eat? RAMEENNNNNNNN
HK people loooveee ramen, I am no different. For us, its like a tradition to eat ramen in Japan, kinda like seeing the Eiffel Tower when you are in Paris. We are born to conquer every single noodle joint in Japan as a comeback for the Second World War....I guess.Good ramen joints, at least from my experience, typically lie in out of sight alleyways and look inconspicuous to the untrained eye. They are never ever open on main streets and busy roads.
Soup, Noodle, Ingredients. Ranked by the order of importance, makes a perfect bowl of ramen (applies for all soup noodles too). The soup based must be hot and smooth, with a lot of depth and flavor. It can't be too strong nor too weak, a critical factor that could completely change the outcome of the noodle. The noodles itself needs texture. Must be chewy enough for it to 'bounce in every bite'/彈牙, but not too chewy to a point that its hard to bite. The ingredients should be fresh and tender, like the meat or the onions. Now I am starting to sound like as if I worship noodles. -_-Here are the ramens I tried in JPN.
I had this in Odaiba, absolute rubbbish. It was in a shopping mall, where they put six of their so-called 'well-know' ramen chefs side by side each other to compete. This one claims to gave the best soup base of all its competitors, turns out to be average. The noodle was too hard and the pork was a little dry.
The ramen in the previous 2 pictures was from a hidden alleyway around Yokohama, was alot better then the one above. Soup was still too salty for my liking. (btw, Moez! helpz me translate the menu, I honestly didn't know what I got, it just looked good and I pointed at it when I was ordering.
This was amazzinggg, a little joint hidden in Akihabara called jangara ramen, voted the most popular ramen joint in Tokyo Metropoliatian area. A literal hole-in-wall of just bar seats and a litte high table. Barely able to fit 15 people inside. It usually has a enormous line forming outside the resturant for the morning and night time, I fortunately came at late afternoon, manage to squeeze in before dinner rush hour.
Soup base was wonderful, a very thick pork bone flavour. Drinking the soup felt like eating a rack of pork ribs with a spoon. The noodle was tender and they put in amazing ingredents, the egg was half cooked with the egg white boiled but the yolk still watery, yummmm. They also added in a whipping of scrimp egg (the pink pile in the photo) to add a bit of seafood sweetness to the soup base, and a few slab of fatty pork belly that melts in your mouth in first bite. The mix of the soup's aroma, the atomosphere of otaku anime music playing in the background and the crowded elbrow-to-elbrow claustrophobia makes this joint one of the best of its kind.
Another ramen joint hidden in Kabukicho (歌舞伎町) of Shinjuku, this one is where my dad's business client took him on his first visit to tokyo, back when he had more hair and I was still sucking my thumb. This place have been around of decades, or at least it looks like it. It looked shabby on the outside, and we saw a group of stray alleyway cats sneaking into the kitchen. It was fluorescent-lit like an old HK cha chan teng, and didn't look pleasant at first.
But OH MAN, WAS THIS NOODLE GOOD. The soup base was goddlike. Clearly well made pork bone soup, it was so thick like 老火湯 (cantonese soup). It might be the deceptive decoration of the restaurant, but this bowl of ramen was soo good it was beyond words to explain. Their secret?
gigantic pressure cookers, placed right infront of the bar. Looks like they simply add pork bones, water and other ingredients into these cookers early in the morning. After a long of of intense pressure and heat, the pork bone dissolves into the soup to form the base. Wow. I saw every customer left the restaurant with their bowls completely empty, drinking all the soup entirely.Anyways thats all for my Japan food adventures. I didn't get to eat sushi, due to a mixture of lack of time and money. Stupid traveling tours, we couldn't spend more than 2 hours on one location. I highly recommend everyone to travel Tokyo by themselves, all you need is a reliable traveling book, some good improvisation skills and alot of money. You seriously cannot miss the hilarity the interaction between you and the broken-english waiters there.
P.S. I seriously did not go looking for this, but I was picking up coffee in Ginza when I spot this sign in the starbucks
ho ho ho, me and my luck. I stumble on a tourist attraction! It is probably the 1st in Asia too. i seriously think it was divine intervention.
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