江戸清 (Edosei)

Posted on March 27, 08 by seat

(Jan 30, 2009)
鳥ロース焼き、￥1100。
Grilled chicken lunch set. Comes with delicious chicken soup and rice. Only one menu at lunch time.

(Nov 30, 2007)
A small but popular Japanese restaurant specialised in chicken. A friend who is a self-claimed connoisseur of chicken took me here for dinner, and I was totally satisfied by the juicy and tender meat served in this place.
Free appetizer simmered radish is so good.

Chicken sashimi, eaten with wasabi and soy sauce and scallion. The chicken is so fresh that you can eat it raw!
Yakitori.

Fried chicken. Boiled chicken. Both are simple but amazing.

Chicken meatballs and vegetables hotpot only available in winter. The very friendly madam will do everything for you.

Ponzu to eat with the hotpot. Rice and egg are added to the soup at the end to make zousui(Japanese soup rice).

Four people shared the food with lots of alcohol drinks, about 5,000 yen per person.

江戸清 (Edosei)
Add: 15-14 Kodenmachou, Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku
Tel: 03-3661-2918

ほていさん＠月島 (Hoteisan)

Posted on February 22, 07 by seat

もずく酢。胡麻豆腐。刺身の盛り合わせ。
Mozuku(seaweed in vinegar) and sesame tofu. Sashimi.

あんこう鍋。雑炊。
Anko-nabe(Angler-fish/Monkfish hotpot). So good! The big pile of orange paste is Ankimo, which the madam told us to taste a bit before she put the lid on the nabe. The dashi is delicious from the start – we all drank a bowl while waiting for the ingredients to be cooked. The meat of Anko has firm texture, the skin is jelly-like and chewy(full of collagen). The rich-tasting Ankimo is of course the best part! Rice and egg are added to the soup to make zouzui. Yum!

This place is very popular during winter season when Anko is available. I had to book like 2 months ago and it was not an easy task cos the staff don’t seem to be very patient on the phone. While you are there, they are efficient and simply do everything for you – you just sit and wait for your bowl of food. You are only allowed 2 hours, which is more than enough because, before you finish the sashimi, they will start making the hotpot, and before you finish your first bowl of anko and soup, the staff will come and scoop more ingredients into your (donburi-size)bowl. We had to wait a long time for the zousui though(Maybe they forgot to cook rice? ^^;;).

The place was packed with people smoking so not exactly a comfortable place to stay long. In fact I got a massive headache because the guy at the next table(very close) was an impossible chain-smoker who didn’t quite stop even when he was eating.

We all had beer and nihonshu, about 6600yen each. Well very reasonable for the amount and quality of food you get. Taste-wise this place definitely makes it to my favourites, but the environment is a little too much for me!
ほていさん

浜よし(Hamayoshi)

Posted on January 25, 07 by seat

8000yen dinner course. Pictures show portion for 4 people.
鯛の煮付け。お刺身盛り合わせ。
Bream simmered in sweet soy sauce. Very nice! Fish is soft and fatty. Craved rice!
Assorted sashimi. Other than fish, there are also abalone sashimi and scallop. The abalone is very hard when eaten raw. Plenty of shiso underneath which is fresh and very nice to eat with the sashimi.

毛蟹。
Hairy crab(kegani). My friends taught me to pour hot nihonshu(Japanese wine) into the crab shell, mix with the kanimiso(crab innard) and drink from the shell. Surprisingly delicious~.

Apparently the master hunted the wild ducks himself. There is a picture of him with his hunting rifle on the wall. My friends went to watch him skinning and preparing the duck over the counter but I stayed at the table. ^^;;

鴨鍋。
Other than the wild duck, pigeon is also added to make the soup stock for the kamo(duck) nabe.

Lots of mushrooms, veggy, tofu, Konjac went to the soup too. One daidai(bitter orange) for each person to squeeze the juice as a final touch.

The madam did everything for us so we just waited. (btw it takes 3 hours at least to finish the whole course)

Sliced wild duck meat are to add at the end. Texture is quite hard.

鴨雑炊。
Rice and egg are added to the leftover soup to make zousui(rice porridge). This is always the best part of a nabe course, but argh, I was just too full and only could eat a bit.
浜よし

桜なべ中江＠三ノ輪 (Sakura-nabe Nakae)

Posted on December 4, 06 by seat

Dinner party at a traditional Japanese restaurant more than 100 years old. Speciality is horse meat, also called “sakura meat” in Japan.

馬肉の佃煮。
Horse meat Tsukudani.

馬刺し：霜降りとロース。タルタルステーキ。
Two kinds of horse meat sashimi – more expensive shimofuri(meat marbled with fat), and loin meat. Somehow the cheaper loin meat is actually nicer. Both are sweet and tender.
Tartar steak – ground raw horse meat, with sesame oil, and a raw egg yolk. Very good. The sesame oil and the egg yolk combined to give the lean meat a smoother texture and a nice fragrance.

馬刺しにぎり寿司。馬肉串焼き。
Horse meat sushi is incredible, while the grilled horse meat skewer is no good – the meat is too hard.

桜鍋。ザク：ねぎ、しらたき、麩。
Sakura nabe: horse meat sukiyaki. Tender and juicy, no need to cook too long, dip into a bowl of raw egg before you eat. Also added to the nabe are leek, shirataki and fu. The warishita is miso and soy sauce and zarame sugar.

ステーキ。お新香。
Steak. Thick cut and tender. Homemade pickles are so good you can eat them alone.

Eggs are added to the leftover soup, and you are supposed to scoop the sweet full-of-meat-flavour egg and add onto the rice. It is so yummy!
Dessert is Matcha ice-cream.
中江

山くじらすき焼ももんじや＠両国 (Momonjiya)

Posted on November 24, 06 by seat

野獣肉コース、６８００円。
先付(猪と大根の煮込み)、鹿刺身。
A dinner course of wild animal meat. Simmered wild boar and radish. Venison sashimi. The wild boar meat and the raw venison both don’t have the bitter taste or unpleasant smell I expected of game meat. Very light and easy to eat. Venison is lean and healthy, very soft.

猪鍋（甘味噌仕立）、鹿竜田揚。
Wild boar sukiyaki. Miso is added to the sukiyaki, the soup base is quite strong. Probably that’s why there is no distinct smell or taste from the meat since the strong soup is covering it up. The wild boar meat is very hard at first, but the more you cook it, the softer it becomes.
Venison Tatsuta-age(i.e. meat is marinated with soy sauce before deep-frying). Venison is lean and gets a bit dry and “sandy” when cooked, but it is well-seasoned and frying it gives it back a little fat. ^^;;

狸汁。〆のうどん。
Tanukijiru(racoon-dog miso soup). Gosh, this soup is one strong experience of the wilderness. ^^;; There are only bits of racoon-dog meat, which stink even stronger than the soup when you chew it. Everyone else was okay and absolutely loved it. I thought it was delicious too(seriously!), but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sick at the same time. ^^;; The course doesn’t include udon but we ordered it to put into the leftover sukiyaki(must add water to dilute it though cos it is so strong), which is very very yummy.

あずきと栗のアイス。
Red bean and chestnut ice-cream.
I didn’t realise it at that time but when I got home, all my clothes stank as if I had been to the zoo.
ももんじや