Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Back in Japan (May 2014)...Soba Lunch and Oyster Dinner


I had lunch with my sister at a very classic soba house in Kudanshita (near Royal Palace) in Tokyo.

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It's also a short walk from Yasukuni Shrine. The place is called, Issa-an. While there are many soba restaurants under the same name, because many direct and indirect apprentices of original Issa-an have opened restaurants over its history, this place is considered to have directly taken over the will of the original Issa-an's soba master.

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This place is also famous for duck dishes. We first shared grilled duck slices with ponzu sauce. It was so scrumptious. Vegetable tempura was really nice, too.

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For the soba main course, I had cold soba with tororo (grated mountain yam) dipping sauce. My sister had two kinds of soba. Classic 2-8 style (80% buckwheat and 20% wheat flour blend) and lemon blend.

Really fantastic soba lunch.


In the evening. I got together with Isako-san and gang from iga-mono Tokyo shop (Nagatani-en's donabe shop). We went out for dinner at an oyster bar near the shop in Ebisu.

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It's a super tiny place with just two tables. They serve so many varieties of oysters from all over Japan. We started our oyster party!

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With Champagne, we started with raw oysters. Then, we also had oyster and crab quiche. Seasonal ayu fish confit was nice, too.

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Then, we had many different kinds of grilled oysters. Those were really HUGE! I could barely fit each oyster in one bite.

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It's Japanese style, so of course, we have "shi-me" (finishing) courses with starchy dishes. We had pasta with meat and seafood ragout, as well as seafood paella.

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Great food, and great fun with wonderful friends!