Tag: japanese food

#oneaday, Day 271: Clever Pun on “Teriyaki”

Food is great. Everyone loves food. Some might call it an essential to survival. But not all foods are created equal. Some are lame and bland and tasteless. Some are Brussels sprouts. Some are chocolate eclairs.

And then there’s Japanese food.

“So what?” you might say. “Who gives a god-damn doodly bugger bollocks?”

Well, okay. You may take Japanese food for granted. But it’s still a relative rarity in certain parts of the UK that aren’t London. And even then, YO! Sushi isn’t really Japanese food. Or perhaps I should say “authentic” Japanese food.

Tonight I went to a place in Southampton that I’d always wanted to go to but never had done for some reason. That place is Zen, a Japanese restaurant at the far end of the High Street. I was gently encouraged into this course of action by my very lovely dining companion for the evening, who was a big fan and certainly didn’t need much convincing when I suggested we give it a shot.

Inside, the décor is a curious blend of Japanese and Western cultural influences. There is Japanese artwork on the walls, but the heavy chairs would look more at home in a banqueting hall than an Eastern-style restaurant. Also, there is a glitter ball, the presence of which was never fully explained.

The place is bathed in a soft red light from the lights on the bar and the candles at the sides, and the ambient light is dim, but not annoyingly so. It’s a very pleasant atmosphere in which to dine, marred only slightly by the distinctly Western pop music playlist.

Then came the food. It came very quickly, for starters, which is a good thing. Also, it was delicious.

You want more details than that eh? All right. I had a “Teriyaki Salmon Set”, which included several generous chunks of beautifully-cooked melt-in-the-mouth salmon in gorgeous, sweet teriyaki sauce. Then there was a simple salad with tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce with a mild yet tasty dressing. There were some pickled vegetables (cucumber and carrot strips) that had been pickled in a very sweet vinegar. There was a mound of sticky rice. And there was a bowl of very tasty miso soup, too, containing tofu which dissolved into nothingness pretty much the second it hit your tongue.

There was not one thing on that plate that wasn’t delicious. Even the simple “side salad” tasted great thanks to the dressing. But the highlight of the show was the salmon. It was magnificent.

Dinner was followed with a look at the sake list. We opted for “Kushi” (I think), which is a plum wine which tastes dangerously non-alcoholic and is served cold. It was fruity and delicious, and had a bit of a bite to it, but not in that sometimes-unpleasant overly-alcoholic way. The bite in this was from the tartness of the plums, and it was a pretty delicious way to cleanse the palate after the yumminess of the main course.

I later told my experiences to a friend, who claimed that an actual Japanese friend of his didn’t rate it much. This was a surprise. So maybe it’s not that “authentic” after all. But it was certainly delicious, and I’d definitely recommend it. So who are you going to listen to? A Japanese person or the guy whose blog you’re reading right now?

Actually, don’t answer that.

A Jedi in New York: Day 4

Still here! Again, another short entry as it’s pretty late, once again, and we both need our sleep! My legs are exhausted from the amount of walking we’ve both been doing.

Today we went to the Museum of Sex (surprisingly work-safe – the website, anyway) as it was something that little bit “different” to the norm, plus it was somewhere that we could again use our New York Passes.

There are three exhibitions on at the Museum at present – The Sex Lives of Animals, Sex and the Moving Image and a selection from the Museum’s permanent collection.

First came the Animals section, which presented an interestingly “alternative” take on natural history and biology by focusing exclusively on the sexual behaviour of animals, mostly looking closely at unusual behaviour which in many cases, the curator describes, goes against Darwin’s theories of natural selection, against Creationism and instead presents a third possibility.

In practical terms, this meant we got to look at videos of animals masturbating, fucking every possible way they could and even some discussion on homosexuality in animals, including the story of the gay penguins And Tango Makes Three which got banned from many, many educational institutions. It was interesting and, yes, different, as expected.

On the floor above was the Sex and the Moving Image exhibition. As the name implies, this exhibition charted the use of sex (or lack thereof) in movies from the earliest black and white silent films, where sex was mostly implied (with the exception of “stag” movies – early porn films, very few of which have survived due to their illegality at the time, but some examples of which were on, err, “display”) through the more liberal approach that developed over the years, taking in (no pun intended) Russ Meyer and Deep Throat all the way to modern porn and celebrity sex tapes, contrasting hugely with how mainstream film deals with sexual encounters. There were also some shorter videos from Beautiful Agony (NSFW) showing different people’s faces during orgasm, and a selection of sex-themed commercials from over the years.

Then in the final room we had the selections from the Museum’s permanent collection, which included male and female RealDolls (sex dolls that run into the thousands of dollars due to their supposed “realism”) to a selection of sex machines, including a terrifying-looking one that was essentially a rubber cock attached to a Black and Decker drill.

So that was nice.

Anyway, we spent rather longer in the Museum than we had intended, as we’d originally planned to move on to Bodies… The Exhibition and also potentially to go and see Ground Zero later in the day. However, we’d also made plans to meet up with the fine gentlemen Papapishu and Regulus for dinner in St Mark’s Place at a Japanese joint called Kenka which is often filled with Japanese ex-pats, is very noisy, serves traditional Japanese food that isn’t sushi (which I’ve never had before, and which proved to be delicious, even the deep-fried garlic) and serves terrifying “specials” such as bull penis.

So it’s been a good day, only marred by the fact that Jane’s not been feeling too well off-and-on since last night. I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing her a big “get well soon”.