Eat Fresh at Subway in Tokyo

The Marunouchi area sits between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace.  It is the financial center of Tokyo. It is also the premium shopping area for the affluent.  Practically all buildings in the area are skyscrapers.  The street level shops are boutiques of big name Japanese and foreign fashion designers.  The interconnected basements of these buildings have many small restaurants catering to office workers.  

One day I happened to be at the basement of the Marunouchi Building.  There I found a unique shop of the Subway Sandwich chain.  It was growing its own lettuce in an enclosed hydroponic “Subway yasai lab” (yasai is Japanese for vegetable).  To me that was an interesting concept.  Even though the “yasai lab” could hardly produce enough lettuce, it supported the advertising slogan “Eat Fresh at Subway”. 

Apparently I was the only person who had any interest.  From the picture, you can see that people eating lunch at the counter paid no attention to the “lab” at all.  I found out later that the”lab” was installed two years earlier in 2010.  Its novelty must have worn off long ago.  

Amochinmi Onomichi Ramen 阿藻珍味の尾道ラ一メン

A girl friend of Mrs. A sent her a present recently.  It was two boxes of Onomichi ramen (尾道ラ一メン) manufactured by Amochinmi (阿藻珍味).  Inside each box were four packs of nama ramen (熟成生麵) and four packets of concentrated soup stock.  

                     

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Onomichi is a small scenic port city on the Seto Inland Sea side of Hiroshima Prefecture.  It has its own ramen style -- the noodles are straight, moderately skinny with smooth surface; the soup is shoyu (soy sauce) based, clear, made with stock of chicken and fish from the Inland Sea, and loaded with lard.

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Amochinmi’s nama ramen is made with flour and egg white, and processed with kansui (lye water) to be chewy and resilient.  It has not been dried by heat and can be kept in a cool dark place for up to forty days.  Its ramen soup contains pork extract in addition to chicken stock.  It is blended with a broth of katsuo (鰹節 dried bonito), saba (鯖節 dried mackerel), konbu (昆布kelp) and local hirako iwashi (平子鰯 young sardines) for depth and flavor.  The soup packet also contains the secret weapon of lard and small pieces of solid pork back fat (see the pictures below).

       

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I emptied the soup packet to 300 ml of boiling water and to melt the lard.  In a separate pot I cooked the loosened ramen in boiling water for a little over a minute.  Instead of the usual ramen toppings, I added just some nama wakame (塩蔵生わかめ a kind of raw seaweed packed with salt) to the assembled bowl of ramen.  Despite the simplicity, It tasted very good because of the lard and pork fat pieces (the little pieces floating in the soup in the picture).

      

Mr. and Mrs. A finished the box of ramen within days.

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Besides its ramen, Onomichi is well known to many Japanese as it has appeared in novels, such as Anya Koro (暗夜行路) by Shiga Naoya (志賀 直哉), as well as movies that include the famed Tokyo Story (東京物語) directed by the great Ozu Yasujiro (小津 安二郎). 

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Note: 1 Typical ramen toppings are

·         a couple of slices of chashu (叉焼 Japanese pork filet, not the Chinese BBQ pork)
·         menma (麺碼 seasoned fermented bamboo shoot)
·         a slice of kamaboko (蒲鉾 fish cake)
·         a sheet of nori (海苔 a kind of seaweed)
·         thin slices of negi (葱 Japanese scallion with long and thick white stem)
·         an ajitsuke tamago (半熟味付け卵 soft boiled egg marinated in a soy sauce mixture)

Note 2: Amochinmi has recently introduced a healthier version of Onomichi ramen with reduced amount of lard for customers who are conscious of calories intake.

Alsatian food in Toronto?

We are not sure how authentic this is, not having been to Alsace, but the restaurant said it's "inspired by modern Alsatian cuisine plus all things in season" which made it quite an attractive offering.  We decided to give it a try one fall evening after a trip to the Art Gallery of Ontario (it's a convenient 5 minute walk).  Alsatian food, the real thing, is known for its German flavour, Alsace being right on the border of France and Germany.  The region is also known for its gastronomy and apparently has the most starred restaurants in France.  Food tends to be heavier and richer - perfect for cooler weather.

We were told that the tarte flambee is a must try and so we did.  It was superb!  The crust was very light, almost like phyllo.  The tarte flambee (French) is one of the most famous Alsatian dishes and is called variously flammekueche in Alsatian, flammkuchen in German.  It is like a very thin crust pizza, often rectangular, covered with white cheese, sliced onions and lardon.  The one at this restaurant has bacon, onions, white cheese and gruyere.

Four of us each ordered a different dish.  The one below is Baeckeoffe - a traditional Alsatian meat casserole with beef, lamb, pork and potatoes.  It is very intensely flavoured and differentiated by the contrasting textures of the various meats.

This is the Sauerkraut (also called Choucroute) with grilled pork loin, pork belly, smoked sausage and fingerling potato.  Not being a sauerkraut or sausage fan, I didn't order this dish but tried it nevertheless.  It tasted good enough.

Scallop and braised pork belly on a bed of smoked potato puree.  Certainly a unique combination, reminding me of the two solitudes - both excellent but they don't mix!

This is a special that was not on the menu - a rabbit casserole so bland I'd forgotten what it tasted like.

But what a flaming finish!   The apple tarte flambee is a traditional Alsatian dessert and it's guaranteed to make you add stars to any review when you finish your meal with this dazzler.

The restaurant - Elle m'a dit on Baldwin St. in Toronto.

Two Pizzerias

Mr. and Mrs. A ate pizza twice within four days.

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The first pizzeria was famous for its pizza Napoletana (authentic Neapolitan style pizza).  The owner-pizza maker apprenticed in Naples, and had won many pizza competitions in that Italian city with his Margherita pie, which he offered daily at his pizzeria in a limited quantity (a puzzlingly odd number of 73 per day).

Mr. and Mrs. A went there because of its reputation.  They ordered a simple lunch – an antipasto of clam and bacon bone marrow, and a Margherita pie. 

The antipasto was described as “wood fired bone marrow, clams, bacon, garlic and smoked scarmoza”.  It was easy to understand the deadly combination of salted fat (bacon) on more fat (marrow).  But how would clams and smoked cheese come into play?  The weird item called for an investigation.  

Unfortunately, it was a disappointment.  The roasted bone was at room temperature which suggested that it had been sitting around.  On top of the marrow were a few whole clams and bits of bacon amid some white chopped stuff.  The very pale clams were obviously from a can.  The mysterious chopped stuff could only be garlic and smoked cheese based on the description on the menu, though it was neither garlicky nor cheesy.  Nothing on the plate was warm even though bone marrow was not supposed to be a cold dish.  Mr. A made a note not to order weird dishes in the future.

The menu described the Margherita pizza this way: “made with dough mixed by hand using San Felice flour and proofed in Napoletana wood box, topped with crushed San Marzano tomatoes, sea salt, mozzarella fior di latte, fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil.  It was baked in a 900°F wood oven.”  That was wonderful reading.

Because they were cooked in very hot wood ovens, Italian style thin crust pizzas always had some burnt spots along the crust.  The burnt spots could be removed easily and did not affect the taste.  But the pie at this pizzeria had many burnt spots at the bottom as well, giving the whole pie a burnt taste.  The crust was also powdery in the mouth as if it had picked up a lot of excess flour before going into the oven.  The pie might be authentic Napoletana, but Mr. and Mrs. A did not like it.

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Three days later, Mr. and Mrs. A had dinner at another pizzeria, a place that they had visited before.  This place specialized in New York style pizza – the kind with thin flexible crust so the slices could be folded to eat for those on the go.

The small menu was full of mouth watering items.  Mr. and Mrs. A started with a stew of squids, clams, mussels, pancetta, leeks and tomatoes.  The seafood was fresh, tender and tasty.  The creamy and rich aioli on the crostini reminded them of Europe.

Mr. A believed that meatball was a barometer of the food in an Italian restaurant.  So he ordered it as their second appetizer.  The dish was simply superb.  Three tennis ball sized meatballs of pork, beef and prosciutto bathed in a bowl of tomato garlic sauce.  They were meaty, tender but not mushy, and rich in flavor.

Next came bucatini with chopped onion, garlic and pancetta, tossed in tomato sauce, olive oil, red chili pepper flakes and grated cheese.  The texture of the skinny long tubes was a little bit softer than al dente.  The dish was earthy and comforting.  Good as it was, Mr. and Mrs. A had to save room for the pizza.  They took most of the pasta home with an extra order of meatballs.

Finally there was the Acciughe pizza with Sicilian anchovies, Calabrian chiles and fresh oregano.  Mr. and Mrs. A shared one slice and enjoyed the explosion of flavor in their mouths -- it was salty (the anchovy), spicy hot (the chile pepper) and aromatic (the oregano).  By that time, they were so full that they could not eat any more.  The rest of the pizza was boxed up to go.

They did not plan to have sweets.  But the cannolo two tables away looked too good to be ignored.  Fluffy ricotta spilled out of both ends of a fried pastry dough roll and decorated with fresh pistachio.  Confectioner’s sugar was sprinkled over it like a thin layer of fresh snow.  Mr. and Mrs. A could not resist and shared one.  The gentle sweetness and lightness of the dessert was a perfect way to end the big meal.

Scallops again - but service is the key!

I was in Vancouver a few weeks ago and had a food encounter that kind of made my day.  We had gone to this restaurant as a second choice, the original destination had an hour long wait time.  We had walked 15 minutes to this one in the rain and cold and was told it could be half an hour.  After looking at the menu, we decided to stay and wait it out.  When we turned down offers from the bar, we were very graciously served with water while taking up space at the bar.  Score one.  As it turned out, a table was ready for us in 15 minutes.  Score two.

It was hard to make a decision on the menu, things that jumped out were braised lamb shank, duck breast and scallops.  After I ordered the lamb (because of the cold and the rain) and finished my first course of delicious mushroom soup, the server delivered a plate of super-sized scallops to the diner at the neighbouring table. The four jumbo scallops looked so good I couldn't resist. I took my chances and asked the server if it's too late to change my order. He thought so and I wouldn't have insisted (I should be embarrassed to even ask but I had nothing to lose).  But he very good-humouredly said he'd check with the kitchen. I was surprised when he came back and asked me what I wanted to change it to.  When I said "scallops!", he said, "Ï knew it!" and proceeded to let the kitchen know. He had obviously noticed our stares at the scallops when he brought it to the next table.  Score three!

It was worth the wait! The scallops were perfectly done, fresh and delicious!  And especially so because of the circumstances.  (Score four)  Two of my dining companions had the duck breast - also superbly prepared and the meat tender and flavourful.  (Score five)  It was one of the best dinners I've had for a while and I would say - it's in good part because of the service!

The restaurant is Crave on Main and I gave it a four star on TripAdvisor, only because one of us did stick with the lamb shank and it was a little dry.  That's one out of four, so it's less than perfect.  But the service made up for it!