Ehhhhhh, Big Bird and I were all set to lovelovelove this place. Somehow it seemed too easy, too predictable, not good enough, and ultimately boring. Oh, and expensive. I may have grown to prefer the thrill of discovery, with my ridiculous run of good-to-amazing places over the last two weeks setting way too high a bar for Mr. Kan.
Or I may always have preferred the thrill of discovery. I bet that’s what you were thinking. Anyhoo, that’s why we didn’t get through a full meal here before leaving in search of greener pastures.
This is a sweet menu. Props. And points. And I’m really inclined to like a place where the chef working the counter in front of us, and taking our food orders, was a woman. That may be a first for me (but only because Woody and Bird waited until I was out of the country to try the female-owned-and-operated place I recommended). I don’t know why I had a hard time ordering from the menu. I didn’t feel it.
I felt the (firm yet softly yielding) octopus. And I felt spring in the air with the prickly ash leaves on top of the octopus.
So much so that I ordered off menu. Who does that in Japan?! So again, props to the chef for saying “Yes, I’ll make you some bamboo shoots with white miso and prickly ash leaves.” That just says spring to me, ever since I got the perfect version of it in Kyoto after the earthquake.
I’m not sure anymore what this is. It looks like a nuta. I was ordering nuta every time I saw it this week. I got sick of it.
I was ordering tacos too. The sashimi platters at more than one recent meal had tacos that were the high point, so I wanted a whole plate. This wasn’t worth a whole plate. Or even a whole slice.
What was this whole plate? Other than asparagus and cheese baked together? And tasty! But I’m a DieHard saki drinker, and this doesn’t go with saki (I know, “So why did you order it?”) and combined with a lack of saki on the menu that I wanted to drink, it just pushed me over the edge and out the door. I bet the staff were puzzled.
As were we.
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