Our culinary adventures this week first take us to the town of Sengendai in Koshigaya City, Saitama Prefecture. We visit a stew restaurant which serves oyster dishes as a seasonal speciality. These include oysters grilled with yuzu miso and cheese, oysters in brown butter sauce and oyster meuniere. It is also known for its hashed beef omelette rice, seafood rice gratin and tomato stew.
We decide to order the oyster meuniere, bruschetta and omelette rice with a sauce made with whole head-on shrimps. For dessert, we are served a kuzumochi-style homemade bavarois with black honey and roasted soy flour.
The second restaurant is located in Nishi-sugamo, Toshima City, Tokyo. After taking a relaxing stroll along Hachiman Shopping Street, we decide to eat at Shabutatsu. Besides sukiyaki, it also serves the pork ginger set meal, croquette set meal, grilled meat and fried fish. We order the Joshu beef sukiyaki set meal, which costs 2,500 yen. It comes with salad, noodles, rice, a generous serving of curry, pickles and miso soup. We cook the good-quality fatty meat in a steaming pot and dip it in cold eggs. We then cook the chrysanthemum greens, Chinese cabbage, onions and shiitake mushrooms. The superb sukiyaki meal is finished off with noodles cooked with shichimi – seven-spice powder – and egg.
Tips:
1) Check out Hachiman Shopping Street in Nishi-sugamo
2) Shirataki noodles are a must when eating sukiyaki
