For me, this is perfection. I have so many dish requests in mind that I hope Papa would cook for us during their visit here in Japan but I think I’d be requesting for this one again very soon.
With pork meat, bacon, mushroom and loads of cheese. And sugar.
And so with the start of the new year is the hope that I’d be able to update this blog more often; “more often” being at least once a month.
Had our first dine out for the year earlier for dinner at the Glick Grill. Set up is like one of those popular family restaurants here in Japan; only, that this is of high end and of course with more class.
Both hubs and I had the meal with roast chicken, pan-grilled tuna (hiding under the paprika in below photo) and deep-fried marinated shrimp on lemon sauce. I love all three, especially the roasted herbed chicken skin (I rarely eat chicken skin as part of dieting) and the shrimp (which reminded me of the way Papa cooks shrimps – which they had for their Media Noche ~drool~). If given the choice however, I wouldn’t have had added the lemon sauce.
We ordered herbed rice with our main dish. I was just expecting the usual herbed rice but was delightfully surprised with what was served us.
It’s reminiscent of the Singaporean Chicken Rice but made EVEN BETTER because it’s Japanese rice and cooked with herbs. I’m limiting my rice intake to only half a cup once a day but I believe I could easily finish four cups of this one. 😀
Tummy has no more room for dessert so I just ordered cafe mocha. No expectations for this one but yet again I was delighted with what was served.
Thanks for the treat Otoosan! 🙂
Proof of how much a wanderer I was during my single days stint in Japan – happened to look at a list of famous sites in Japan and I realise I have been to all of them, and other places besides. And no, they’re not located in the same region.
I could easily call this Mediterranean restaurant an old favourite. Their menu is one that would make you come back again and again and again. And well, the fact that it’s a place were i’ve had wonderful memories of get togethers with friends add to the place’ charm.
Honestly, I’m craving for Cicada’s dishes today so much so that I asked Hubs we eat there with Okasan next week when she comes to visit us. I-CAN’T-WAIT. For now and the next few days, I’ll just daydream of these:
Grilled flat bread that goes great with salted olive oil. It’s “bottomless” or for okawari at only 500yen (without tax).
They offer a selection of olive oils – Greek, French, Californian, Italian.
For their Tapaz, these are our absolute favourites:
Spicy Moroccan Crab Cakes
Roasted Calamari stuffed with Prosciutto
For the main entree, Pan-roasted scallops with farro and maitake risotto
Drool. Six sleeps away.
Garbage segregation is strictly implemented here in Japan. Every household has a copy of the daily garbage pickup schedule – what type of garbage gets picked up at certain days and at what time. And if you’re a delinquent and your combustible garbage is with PET bottles, trust that the garbage dudes definitely won’t pick it up.
The schedule differs with every area. in ours, burnables/decomposing garbage and plastic wrappers/cellophane/styro and similar stuff gets collected twice a week at Mondays and Fridays (albeit burnables should be in a different garbage bag as the plastics). PET bottles are on Tuesdays, big boxes and old magazines/books (should be neatly tied and bundled together) every second Saturday of the month, und so weiter. And oh, it’s required that you use see-through garbage bags, well, sometimes, it’s out of courtesy as well.
During winter, spring and fall, the decomposing garbage getting holed up inside your house is just fine. The cold ambient arrests the bacteria that would otherwise cause foul odour. It’s a different matter though during summer when it’s hot and decomposing garbage could fester fast. Thankfully, we don’t cook much nowadays, especially during the workweek so it’s not torture at all.
However, I can just imagine how used baby diapers would reek after four days of being held up in the garbage can. Or rather, I really don’t want to imagine at all.
Hence, I am convinced that this special diaper trash can made by Combi is really a boon for parents in properly disposing their baby’s poop.
The “contraption” is actually a bit complicated when we tried to check it out – Mayumi and Hubs had quite a good laugh about it as we explored how it is used. But basically, it uses a disk of partitioned cellophane. When you throw away the used diaper inside, the opened partitioned cellophane will “candy-wrap” the diaper as it goes to the bottom, leaving a newly opened cellophane gaping wide open to receive yet another used diaper.
Supposedly, the “candy wrapping” and good trash can seal can eliminate the odour seeping out of the trash can. Hopefully. Let’s see how it is in a few months’ time or should I say, next summer.
I just needed to update this blog once a month but even at that I’ve remiss in updating it. So while we wait for my turn here in the OB (one could now understand why I’ve been pretty neglecting this site the past couple months),I figured it’d be better updating this blog than browsing either Facebook and Twitter.
My last post was back in February. So where were we in March for my goodfoodhunt?
March is a special month for me. It’s my birthday month after all. 🙂 So to celebrate, Hubs and I and a couple of my friends tried one of Ukai’s branches – Azamino Ukai-Tei in Yokohama.
The place was a Dutch guest house in the Meiji era. I just love the house’ charming facade.
It was already a bit late when we settled when to celebrate hence, having had reserved only a week before the supposed lunch, the private rooms weren’t available anymore. Nevertheless, we still had our own chef to grill our food in front of us.
Simple yet elegant setting.
Ukai is famous for their steaks cut from the famous Japanese black cows hence, even when I don’t eat beef, we ordered the Â¥8400yen set course with grilled beef on it. My stomach can’t digest regular beef but it sure can digest those oh-so-tender Japanese beef! 🙂
So, for starters.
I’ve no doubt of the freshness of the fish they serve but as I’m expecting, reading all my pregnancy books and references had me so paranoid on eating raw fish.
So whilst my hubs and friends had raw marinated snapper,
I had grilled sea bass.
Each one of us were quite happy with what was served us.
Next up, king crab soup in milk. So creamy. Yummy.
I’m not sure now what our facial expressions were when we saw what the chef was about to grill. But I’m pretty sure our expectations were quite low.
Young bamboo shoots.
Tada! Young bamboo shoots steamed in sparkling water and soy sauce.
If truth be told, it-was-surprisingly-really-delicious! Tasted like succulent, sweet Japanese sweet corn (yes, the redundancy is required). This is actually our group’s collective favorite – next to the beef which was up next.
Those small slices on the side are actually prized beef fat.
Sans service charge and tax, our course cost 8400yen for each of us. Yet we have to share this slab of beef. That’s-how-expensive-Japanese-beef-is.
My portion.
Who would have thought that the description “melts in your mouth” would ever be connected with beef?! But unanimously, we all agreed that this is so. It was just so good. And by the way, that toasted garlic by the side is the best garlic I’ve ever had.
And I mentioned prized beef fat earlier, right? If the meat earlier was really excellent, I’d say having these few slices sort of made me forget who I was with for a few minutes. There was just my tongue and the beef fat in the whole wide world. Nothing else existed.
We had a Japanese course. So the rice and miso came last. Garlic fried rice (probably the most oil-less fried rice we’ve ever had), side dishes and miso soup.
Lovely miso soup bowl depicting a weeping sakura.
Dessert was served on the second floor for a more relaxed atmosphere.
Over bottomless coffee and tea.
Satiated. Ukai Tei was also very thoughtful in giving me, the birthday celebrant, three red roses. Each one of us also have a commemorative card with our group photo on it, with mine having birthday greetings.
Ah, excellent food, excellent place, excellent service.
——
Azamino Ukai Tei
Premium Steaks & Grilled Dishes
Lunch/ ￥6,830･￥8,400
Dinner Course/ ï¿¥10,500 – ï¿¥16,800
6-5-2 Tsukimino, Yamato, Kanagawa
TEL.046(276)5252
http://www.ukai.co.jp/english/yokohama/index.html