Colour us traditional, but when it comes to New Year it is not the Champagne and raucous party streamers we go for; it's the deep, clear fragrance of fine sake and the quiet tolling of ancient temple bells. Add some quality cuisine — Japanese, of course, with plenty of soba noodles — and we are ready to start the year afresh.
But tradition does not mean old fashioned, and nor does it have to be austere. So, for one of our final meals of 2010, we booked ourselves in for a leisurely dinner at Sasuga Bekkan.
Bekkan is slightly larger, rather more sophisticated and a lot harder to find. Hidden away on the second floor on a little-traversed back street, accessed by way of an anonymous plate-glass door and an unadorned stairway, this is just the kind of obscure, inscrutable location in which Tokyo seems to revel.
We enjoyed the yakimiso (¥700), a thin layer of white miso mixed with scallions, smeared onto a square of finely shaved wood, and then grilled (actually blow-torched) to give it a delectable, dark golden-brown tinge that goes perfectly with the sake.
Tasty as the starters were, it was the mixed appetizer plate (sobaya no tsumami mori-awase) that really showed how fine the cooking at Bekkan is. It featured little rectangular crackers of deep-fried buckwheat dough, mixed with sun-dried konbu seaweed; cuts ofkamaboko fish paste topped with sliced cucumber; fillets of savory marinated herring, the kind often served over soba in western Japan, but far less sweet here;whole tsubogai whelks in their conical shells; slices of rare-pink duck breast; and — the star of this particular show — morsels of conger eel in a firm but delicate nikogori aspic jelly.
Owner Chiaki Fujita… was certainly not the very first to offer wine with noodles, but here she ups the ante with some serious Burgundies, plus a good fistful of Champagnes. On a future visit we will definitely go down that route. But this time we stuck with sake: Kokuryu, Shinkame, Kikuhime and many more.
Another standout was the sobazushi. The strands of delicate noodles were perfectly aligned around a core of egg, savory mushroom and preserved greens, rolled up in fine strips of omelet and nori seaweed, sliced into wheels about a centimeter thick, and served on dark green leaves of sasa bamboo, with a garnish of pink-tinged myoga buds. This needs to be ordered in advance, so mention it when you reserve.
The Sasuga nabe... is an original recipe developed by Fujita and her chefs and essentially it's yudofu(simmered tofu), but sobayu, the thick, starch-rich liquid left over after cooking the soba noodles, is used instead of a clear broth.
The silky-smooth tofu, made to order at a nearby artisan tofu shop, is so fresh it needs only the slightest of seasonings…
…either a pinch of salt or a gentle dip into a creamy sesame sauce.
Next, the broth is replenished with more ingredients: Shiitake and shimeji mushrooms; slivers of abura-age, golden-brown deep-fried tofu; and organic mizuna herb.
And once that is all eaten, whole groats of buckwheat are cooked up in the broth until it forms a thick ojiya porridge.
We kept the noodles to last, not as an afterthought but because they are, after all, Sasuga Bekkan's raison d'etre. Delicate and refined, they look and taste nothing like the versions you find at most common-and-garden soba joints.
[more on the soba on my previous post here...]
The look is classic contemporarywafu: Traditional Japanese materials furnished with a distinctly modern sensibility. The dining room is partitioned with simple timbers. The rough-textured packed-mud walls are tinted a range of golden ocher earth tones. Carefully lit alcoves display chunky ceramics and simple hand-dyed fabrics.
Here's the full review in the Japan Times...
And here's a map link...
Recent Comments