tokyo food file

Two British classics done just right

British food does not get a great rap in Japan. But there are a few places that fly the flag — the Union Jack, of course — for Albion. And they're doing a great job.

 

Strictly speaking, shepherd's pie should be made with minced mutton. This version I had for lunch the other day at Margaret Howell Cafe in Shibuya was made with coarsely cut beef (more like what you'd put in steak and kidney pudding), mixed with finely chopped carrot, onion and celery and topped with smooth-mashed potato browned exactly right.

Like just about everything I've had there, it was excellent (even if it should rightly be called cottage pie...). So good it deserves a close-up shot!

 

You can't get much more British than fish and chips. And you can't get much more Anglophile than Atarashi-san at The Market SE1 down in Enoshima on the Shonan coast. He's got the recipe down perfectly.

The fish — today it was sawara — couldn't be fresher, as he gets it in the morning from the fish market a few hundred meters away from his shop. The batter is just right, not tempura-wispy but thick, golden, nice and crisp on the outside. And served with thick-cut chips, made from really good fresh spuds. It comes with a little pot of tartare sauce, with a bottle of Sarson's malt vinegar and a pack of sea salt on the side.

And then, for afters, there's his great selection of ice cream. We had the spicy kabocha (pumpkin with various aromatics). And a tub of the seasonal SE1 sundae, which he whips up from his milk ice cream blended with marinated fresh figs plus nuggets of caramelized walnut and bread crumbs (from his own spelt bread, baked in-house).

That was today's lunch well sorted!

 

I introduced the Margaret Howell Cafe in a JT column over a decade ago. It's still one of my favourite places for lunch in that part of Shibuya, especially sitting at the big outside table on a mellow autumn early afternoon. More here (scroll down)...

I wrote up The Market SE1 rather more recently...

fish 'n' chips and a pint, home and away

I've been spending some time in the Old Country this summer – and I haven't been skimping on the pub grub. And, yes, among plenty of other good things, I've put away my share of fish and chips.

Too often this "icon" of British cooking can be disappointingly limp, or even worse. But not this one, served at a favourite pub in the West Country. The fish, a lovely piece of haddock shipped straight from the port in Cornwall, is cooked in a nice crisp ale batter. The chips are fat and satisfying, just as they should be: golden on the outside, moist and tender inside.

On the side, there are small pots of good mushy peas and tartare sauce, with a wedge of lemon and half a gerkhin to give a nice sharp accent. Here's a close-up:

 

Even after all these years, there's nowhere serving anything quite like this in Tokyo. But who cares? We have our own alternatives – and they're just as tasty…

Fresh-caught young aji (horse mackerel), lightly deep-fried and served with proper chips (rather than the ubiquitous skinny-cut French fries), and downed with a fine local ale. 

This is how they do it at the Mokichi Craft Beer bar down in Fujisawa, just an hour or so south of Tokyo.

The fish, aji, is a speciality of the Shonan coast of Kanagawa, here served with a light sprinkling of salt and aromatic ao-nori seaweed.

 

Better yet, there is a range of excellent craft beers to go with it – none more so than this nice, hoppy pale ale, perhaps my favourite of the brews produced by the Shonan Beer company (aka Kumazawa Shuzo).

 

The Kumazawa folks now have three outlets where you can sample their their fine offerings, of which the Fujisawa pub (above) is the newest and smallest.

Further down the coast, in Chigasaki, is Mokichi Foods [sic] Garden, a much larger restaurant which boasts its own wood-fired pizza oven and serves substantial meals to go with its beers.

Best of the lot is the brewery itself, about 20 kms inland from Chigasaki. Still a working (and now thriving) sake producer, the original warehouses have been beautifully converted into two restaurants. On one side of the grounds is Mokichi Trattoria, also with a wood-fired pizza oven. On the other, is a Japanese restaurant – called Tensei, after the brandname of the sake produced by Kumazawa. 

I gave it a detailed write-up several years ago in my Japan Times column, here.

And I'll be posting a few more of my recent UK eating exploits over on my other blog, here…