You might have noticed a lack of fish and shellfish recipes on my blog. The reason being I am intolerant to shellfish and the OH isn’t a fan of fish. While everyone else tucked in to their sushi, it looked lovely, we had the above vegetable sushi with soy sauce to dip. I liked that they looked like mini gardens surrounded by rice and they tasted honest, clean and fresh.
We then had tempura vegetables which were light and crisp. I loved the salt and spices that came with it to dip in. I was enjoying a fresh and slightly syrupy chilled sake (Houraisen – WA, Aichi Prefecture, Junmai Ginjo) with this course.
Luckily I didn’t fill up on the previous courses as our main was a gargantuan piece of Galacian beef; it looked brilliant before it was cooked and irresistible when it was ready to eat. The fat on the beef was so yellow. The steak was fried on one side, flipped over and covered with salt (on the cooked side) and then left to brown on the other side. The salt was scraped off, the fat was removed and the steak sliced up. The fat was then sliced and served with the beef and there was nothing else needed; it tasted fantastic. The red wine with this course (Etna Red, I Vigneri Salvo Foti, 2011) was really good.
The rice was cooked on the hot plate after the beef was removed. It was a humble mix of rice, eggs and tiny chopped garlic and vegetables. I like rice, I love egg fried rice, and this was delicious. Simple, yes, but you can’t improve on perfection.
I was looking forward to pudding as I don’t know anything at all about Japanese desserts. We had pancakes with pineapple and ice cream (which was flambéed). It was nice, the pineapple being the best bit with nice chargrilled edges but it would have been nice to try something a bit different. The plum wine we had with this was beautiful, very strong, and I liked that it was unfiltered so there were bits of plum in the glass and it was cloudy.
I really enjoyed this meal: the food was great, the atmosphere was fun and the drinks that were chosen were interesting too. Matsuri do a range of menus, starting with the Matsuri course menu at £65 pp for five courses.
This meal was paid for by Matsuri. Thank you to them. All opinions expressed and words are my own.
What a fun experience! Lucky you! Terrific post — thanks so much.
This looks like a wonderful experience!!
How nice to be able to eat great Japanese food without having to have fish. The whole experience sounds enjoyably different. The pudding was perhaps a tad unenterprising though.
P.S. I hate captcha codes with vengeance!
Lucky you!
ela h.
Gray Apron
Wow, what an exciting experience. Elinor x
Sounds like a wonderful evening. What a great place to try all those firsts!
Japanese dishes are something we tuck into from time to time. My fav has to be teppanyaki over sushi.