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Japanese food, with pictures
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marina asked about Japanese food recently, and qian posted not one, but two epic posts of Japanese food, and I thought…I could do that too!
I used to have many, many more food photos, but I lost about 6000 photos the day after I got back from Japan in 2008, and I've been much less photo-happy on this trip & haven't been eating out as much, so I don't actually have that many. But! I amdragging showing around some friends next month, and we are going to go to many great restaurants including a place that serves "punk" kaiseki cuisine, so there will certainly be a follow-up to this post anon.
I should explain that I have several guiding principles for eating in Japan. One: I tend to prefer Japanese or Japanese-style cuisine rather than futilely seeking pizza or Mexican food, particularly this time since I'm only here (*sob*) for 2.5 months. (That said, I enjoy Japanese pizza quite a lot. In fact, I've had some amazing Italian food in Japan.) Two: whenever you can, eat the local specialty (often called meibutsu); eat local in general. Three: whenever there's anything that says "limited time only" (gentei kikan), get that. Four: I refuse to eat whale (or dolphin), but everything else is on the table, literally and metaphorically.
All these things being said, a preponderance of these photos are from cafes. YUM.
This is sobameshi, a Kobe/Hyogo thing (as you can see, it's yakisoba mixed with fried rice) and Kansai-style okonomiyaki, in Takarazuka. Yum.
Viennese coffee and a salt caramel damand at Cafe Saryo in Omotesando Hills, Aoyama-ku, Tokyo. Oh my god so good. (Salt caramel was the hot flavor here three years ago; it'll be interesting to see what's tearing up the Tokyo cafes now when I go next week.
Soup Stock, a Kanto chain, is one of my favorite places to eat. In the summer they have an amazing cold purple sweet potato soup, but this is from their winter menu.
This is my sandwich at the Ghibli Museum cafe in Mitaka, Tokyo-to. I loved that place.
Dessert at the Toraya cafe in Omotesando Hills--the little pot contains Earl Grey-infused zenzai, which I poured over the ice cream and mochi in the bigger bowl.
New Year's cuisine (osechI ryôri) made by my host mother.
Kyoto-style white miso, made by my host mother. I actually prefer the Kyoto-style to the normal (red) miso.
Our Christmas cake. It's not possible to get more Japanese than this, I swear. Also, the strawberries are essential.
My Sasebo burger at the Harbor Cafe in Kobe. There's a U.S. naval base in Sasebo, and the burgers take their name from there. So good.
This is my friend K with her bread cube, a common thing at mixed cuisine restaurants in Kansai, usually just called honey bread. It's delicious.
Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (usually just called Hiroshimayaki) in Hiroshima, as you might guess. Note that the place all the guidebooks swear has the best Hiroshimayaki is not the place the locals will tell you to go.
This is my oyster rice bowl (kakidon) on Miyajima in Hiroshima, where oysters are a local thing. Oh it was so good.
Some kind of potato thing, if I recall correctly, at a mukokuseki restaurant in Nara. Nara has a lot of really good restaurants, actually.
Speaking of Nara, now we're in pictures from 2011. This is our Nara cuisine-ish fancy dinner at Happô in the Nara shopping arcade.
So my friend H and I got a free tea service when we went to Yakushi-ji for no particular reason; this is the Yakushi-ji meibutsu, a kind of tea sweet.
This is one of my favorite fucking things in the world and I've only found it two places: at Mimuroto-ji in Uji during the ajisai (hydrangea) season, pictured above, and at Mii-dera in Shiga. It's hiyashiame, i.e. ginger juice. SO GOOD.
I never used to like parfait, and now I'm obsessed with them, and I'm far as I'm concerned this restaurant, Tofu Cafe Fujino in Kyoto (right next to Kitano Tenman-guu) has the best parfait in Japan. This is the June special parfait--it has tofu ice cream, green tea ice cream, warabi mochi, baked yatsuhashi, an (red bean paste), whipped cream, corn flakes, and many other delicious things. That's iced green tea next to it, which is another of my favorite things.
The first half of my set lunch at Graf in Osaka. That tako (octopus) was some of the freshest I've ever had.
The second half of my set lunch: Japanese-style pasta. I actually almost started eating before I took this picture! And yes that is XMFC fanfic in my notebook.
Dessert for dinner at Cafe Bibliotheque in Osaka.
This was my dinner Friday night: chilled ramen at a place in Kyoto. It was pretty good. Note how I nearly started eating it before I took the picture.
marina asked about Japanese food recently, and qian posted not one, but two epic posts of Japanese food, and I thought…I could do that too! I used to have many, many more food photos, but I lost about 6000 photos the day after I got back from Japan in 2008, and I've been much less photo-happy on this trip & haven't been eating out as much, so I don't actually have that many. But! I am
I should explain that I have several guiding principles for eating in Japan. One: I tend to prefer Japanese or Japanese-style cuisine rather than futilely seeking pizza or Mexican food, particularly this time since I'm only here (*sob*) for 2.5 months. (That said, I enjoy Japanese pizza quite a lot. In fact, I've had some amazing Italian food in Japan.) Two: whenever you can, eat the local specialty (often called meibutsu); eat local in general. Three: whenever there's anything that says "limited time only" (gentei kikan), get that. Four: I refuse to eat whale (or dolphin), but everything else is on the table, literally and metaphorically.
All these things being said, a preponderance of these photos are from cafes. YUM.
This is sobameshi, a Kobe/Hyogo thing (as you can see, it's yakisoba mixed with fried rice) and Kansai-style okonomiyaki, in Takarazuka. Yum.
Viennese coffee and a salt caramel damand at Cafe Saryo in Omotesando Hills, Aoyama-ku, Tokyo. Oh my god so good. (Salt caramel was the hot flavor here three years ago; it'll be interesting to see what's tearing up the Tokyo cafes now when I go next week.
Soup Stock, a Kanto chain, is one of my favorite places to eat. In the summer they have an amazing cold purple sweet potato soup, but this is from their winter menu.
This is my sandwich at the Ghibli Museum cafe in Mitaka, Tokyo-to. I loved that place.
Dessert at the Toraya cafe in Omotesando Hills--the little pot contains Earl Grey-infused zenzai, which I poured over the ice cream and mochi in the bigger bowl.
New Year's cuisine (osechI ryôri) made by my host mother.
Kyoto-style white miso, made by my host mother. I actually prefer the Kyoto-style to the normal (red) miso.
Our Christmas cake. It's not possible to get more Japanese than this, I swear. Also, the strawberries are essential.
My Sasebo burger at the Harbor Cafe in Kobe. There's a U.S. naval base in Sasebo, and the burgers take their name from there. So good.
This is my friend K with her bread cube, a common thing at mixed cuisine restaurants in Kansai, usually just called honey bread. It's delicious.
Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (usually just called Hiroshimayaki) in Hiroshima, as you might guess. Note that the place all the guidebooks swear has the best Hiroshimayaki is not the place the locals will tell you to go.
This is my oyster rice bowl (kakidon) on Miyajima in Hiroshima, where oysters are a local thing. Oh it was so good.
Some kind of potato thing, if I recall correctly, at a mukokuseki restaurant in Nara. Nara has a lot of really good restaurants, actually.
Speaking of Nara, now we're in pictures from 2011. This is our Nara cuisine-ish fancy dinner at Happô in the Nara shopping arcade.
So my friend H and I got a free tea service when we went to Yakushi-ji for no particular reason; this is the Yakushi-ji meibutsu, a kind of tea sweet.
This is one of my favorite fucking things in the world and I've only found it two places: at Mimuroto-ji in Uji during the ajisai (hydrangea) season, pictured above, and at Mii-dera in Shiga. It's hiyashiame, i.e. ginger juice. SO GOOD.
I never used to like parfait, and now I'm obsessed with them, and I'm far as I'm concerned this restaurant, Tofu Cafe Fujino in Kyoto (right next to Kitano Tenman-guu) has the best parfait in Japan. This is the June special parfait--it has tofu ice cream, green tea ice cream, warabi mochi, baked yatsuhashi, an (red bean paste), whipped cream, corn flakes, and many other delicious things. That's iced green tea next to it, which is another of my favorite things.
The first half of my set lunch at Graf in Osaka. That tako (octopus) was some of the freshest I've ever had.
The second half of my set lunch: Japanese-style pasta. I actually almost started eating before I took this picture! And yes that is XMFC fanfic in my notebook.
Dessert for dinner at Cafe Bibliotheque in Osaka.
This was my dinner Friday night: chilled ramen at a place in Kyoto. It was pretty good. Note how I nearly started eating it before I took the picture.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2011-07-19 08:55 pm (UTC)(link)It looks kind of like sweet potato wrapped in something, which seems like it has to be wonderful :)
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Note my host mother was from Shikoku, she had to learn all the Kyoto-style things when she got married.