A year ago, I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of eating, much less LOVE eating ikura or salmon roe (fully ripe ovaries or egg mass of salmon).
(Yes, it-is-expensive besides!)
Nor did I foresee myself having mentaiko (roe of pollock or pollack) as a favorite!
If truth be told, they look GROSS. Hubby said though that for Japanese, the site of roe is appetizing. And I could understand why – probably because they already knew how good it tastes and remembering how good the roe tastes makes your mouth water at the mere site of it.
One friday last March, after picking up hubby in the office for a date, he hauled me off to Komeraku in Landmark Tower. The poster up in the store front features a mentaiko meal set and for me, it wasn’t appetizing at all . I was scared of trying it, to be honest! But hubby encouraged me to try it because it’s one of them traditional Japanese food and I should give it a shot at least once. And boy was I so thankful hubby insisted.
I chose the mentaiko set because it had pork in it. Figured that if I can’t stomach the fish eggs, there’s always the pork to eat. 
The pork (the one at the far right) was re~~ally good. Tasteful and so tender, so yasashii! Yet, although the pork was good, it was a far cry from how the mentaiko (pink one on the left of the pork) tasted. It-was-just-so-good I repeatedly told hubby how good it was the whole time we were eating. Pardon the blurred photos though.
The teapot nearest me in above photo contains flavored hot water which you can use to make Ochazuke. I wanted to taste the mentaiko as much as possible hence I poured too little water on my ochazuke. Yep, that’s how good the mentaiko is.
Last Wednesday, hubby and I were craving for the mentaiko again hence off we went to Komeraku. Once seated though, the lady staff told us that the mentaiko set is already sold out for the day (it was already 8pm). Feeling adventurous, I chose the Ikura/salmon roe set.
It turned out I made a great choice. The meal was truly an explosion of flavors.
Ikura on top of flavored rice, peppered with salmon bits, herbs and arare (small rice crackers). Besides being truly flavorful, the meal is very interesting what with the salty-flavorful little eggs exploding inside your mouth as you chew, and the arare giving a bit of crunch.
The meal comes with a special sauce. Pardon though in that I don’t know how to describe it further other than that it made my meal even more flavorful.
This time, the ingredients on my ochazuke had the right proportions.
Nori and arare are available on each table to add more taste to your ochazuke . Nori addicts as we are, hubby and I emptied out the container, I think, after our meal.
Ahhh..so good. What made Komeraku even better is that aside from all the good food (and additional helping of rice besides), your meal comes at an affordable price of ~1200~1000yen only.
If you’re in the area, do check the place out; be adventurous and you’ll be rewarded with good food. 😛 Komeraku is just right in front of Tonkatsu Wako in Landmark Tower Ground floor.