Thursday, October 29, 2009

Foodies!!

Last night our Japanese class went out together for 和食 (AKA washoku, tradish Japanese food.) One of the teachers taught us etiquette, which was kind of hard to keep in my brain considering there are like 500 rules for chopstick use alone. I could get into it, because it's pretty interesting, but instead let's just move on to what everyone really wants to see: the food porn...


This was our starter. Look how beautiful the presentation is! The food was very seasonal, from the garnishes (maple leaves!) to the produce and fish. With something like this, you are supposed to eat consistently in one direction, whether it's right to left or left to right. Also, if something is too big for one bite, turn the bite mark side of the food toward you when you put it back, because apparently looking at someone else's bite is gross.



This came next. I'd describe it as kind of a Japanese ceviche, i.e. raw fish with some citric element. With bowls this size, you should pick them up in one hand and eat out of it with chopsticks in the other hand. If the bowl is large you must leave it on the table.





Shrimp, eggplant, and something else delicious but not identified to me with a really awesome miso paste at the bottom.


I'm skipping the soup we got after this because while it was delicious, it was not very photogenic.



Some kind of creamy deliciousness with pork in it. The ginger stick was a garnish, which I discovered when I briefly attempted and failed to eat it. (Not very biteable.)

I am also skipping a meat course and a rice and miso course because again, very good, but they didn't make for interesting photos.




Dessert: persimmon (called かき, kaki here) and a sweet potato cake. Like I said, very seasonal.
JEALOUS???

10 comments:

  1. the shrimp eggplant thingy looks delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  2. it was! everything was really good

    ReplyDelete
  3. I AM INSANELY JEALOUS!!!!!!!!! You have NO idea. I've been craving some good Japanese food and I doubt I could get anything like that around here. *sigh*

    ReplyDelete
  4. Aww... there are a lot of cities with great Japanese food, though, if you're willing to make a trek... I don't know where you live but apparently Vegas pf all places has some awesome Japanese restaurants.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is sort of amazing the world of Japanese food outside of sushi, eh? Looks delish, how many courses were there total? Were you full by the end?

    ReplyDelete
  6. There were like 7 or 8 courses, all rather small but I was stuffed by the end! And yeah, actually I almost never have sushi here... I eat things like yakitori and ramen and whatnot much more often.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The other yummies in the miso paste thing were renkon (lotus root) and satsumaimo (sweet potato).

    Are you sure the ginger stick was a garnish???

    ...I ate it...
    o.O;;

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh, well it was edible but it wasn't strictly necessary to eat it. And I couldn't seem to really bite through it!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh boy....cant wait to eat that stuff.....save some for me

    ReplyDelete
  10. I ate the ginger garnish! As part of the "eat everything they give you!" rule.

    It was good!

    ReplyDelete