anat0l
Enthusiast
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2006
- Posts
- 11,572
OK, so food....
I went with the Japanese set menu. So start with the bento of appetisers. Traditionally this is a simple sampling of various seasonal ingredients to amuse the palate and get ready for the main meal. Nothing too elaborate, but delicious.
No description of these dishes from the menu, so I'm guessing all of these. From top left clockwise:
- This just seemed like a coleslaw, except with julienned daikon and a lighter mayo dressing. A bit odd to include; if it were to stand on its own, I'd say more or slightly heavier dressing.
- Black sesame salmon with wasabi cream. This is probably the best of the lot.
- White cut chicken and edamame. This was perculiar - two very plain things presented together. There was a broth but not enough of it and the flavour was very subtle, and I know white cut chicken is meant to be quite subtle in taste with its broth, but this was too subtle. Doesn't help that the juiciness of the chicken was mostly lost before serving (not the crew's fault)
- Pickles, mushroom and tamagoyaki (egg omelette). This came with broth (rather jellified) which was nice. This is the amount of broth that was needed in the white cut chicken.
- Green tea soba noodles. Delicious enough.
First, the renkon (lotus chips) are a waste of time: they came out rubbery, not crispy. No point including them: maybe boiled lotus root would have been a better idea.
The seared beef was delicious - nice soy/salt combined with citrus (maybe yuzu) flavour. Not rare in any way but still edible and enjoyable. What I find odd is offering something like this for this kind of Japanese meal. The way the beef fillet was sliced and presented makes sense for a Western meal with those kinds of sides, eaten with a knife and fork. For this Japanese meal, most things should be easily picked up (or apart) with chopsticks, eaten in one or two bites. A slice of this beef is more like four or five bites.
I realise if they cut the beef smaller to suit, it'd likely be drier than it already is (somewhat), and not likely enjoyable. I'm not a Japanese cuisine expert (let alone kaiseki), but this is still one of the more peculiar Japanese set menus I've experienced.
Then, the dessert:
This is meant to be wagashi, a small sweet, typically mochi based. Hence you get the skewer as you see here. This is a slice of cake - using a skewer to eat it is not appropriate. Thank goodness for the spoon.
If I didn't guess, I'd say this cake was inspired by the same flavours of the cake on offer from the standard menu.
Slept for a while, then breakfast:
The main course - avocado, roasted tomato and boiled egg on sourdough - tasted fine, but OMG that sourdough needs to be rethought out. Don't get me wrong, I love sourdough, but if not toasted then that crust becomes tough, particularly when it cools down. Bad enough my knife could barely slice the crust to break it.... it was tougher than a well done steak. Needless to say I ate the inside of the sourdough and left the crust behind. Aside from that, the avocado mixture was way salty. Maybe for others it's OK, or I'm not used to avocado being seasoned, but I felt this avo paste was very salty.
The sourdough crumpet is a winner.
