Domo Arigato: Michi Café - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
I
became a restaurant reviewer for The
Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) after sending in published
samples of work I had done on the Olympic Games in Barcelona for newspapers in
New Zealand and Rhode Island; I lived in Paris at the time and used the very
first fax machines to send out queries to obtain published samples that all
newspapers still asked for in the 2000s.
I
had lived in Japan as an exchange student in high school, so one of the
restaurants I asked to review a restaurant that served Japanese home-style
cuisine – The Yamato Café (Now the Michi Café).
It is located in Marina, California.
I
wanted Monterey County Weekly readers
to know that there was more than sushi in Japanese cuisine:
Domo Arigato –
“Thank-You”
I
go to the Yamato (Now Michi Restaurant) in Marina (CA), because this is where
the Japanese people in town eat. That is
always a good sign.
Yamato’s
interior reminds me of Japan, although there is more space between tables than
one would find in Japan.
There
is a blonde-colored wood sushi bar that seats six people, an imitation cherry blossom
tree, rice paper windows, a karaoke bar, and a TV.
Everything
is scrupulously clean.
The
first thing I sampled was wakame udon, a soup made with a slightly sweet broth
flavored with kelp, dried sardines, soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, and sake. I ate the soup’s long, thick noodles with
chopsticks. The al dente udon noodles
would please any pasta judge.
The
three pink-edged fish cakes floating in the soup tasted like imitation crab,
which is actually made of fish. I ate delicious
soup like every day when I was an exchange student outside Osaka, Japan.
After
this great meal, I took two of my writing group friends out and Florence. One of my friends ordered chicken teriyaki
and shrimp tempura. Florence chose beef
teriyaki, another friend ordered tonkatsu – a breaded and deep fried pork
cutlet. I ate eel over rice.
Everyone’s
meal came with a bowl of miso except mine.
I already had wakame udon in front of me. After my daughter saw strips of wakame
seaweed in her soup, she quietly passed that to me to eat.
One
of my friends picked seaweed out of her soup like a pro and said she liked
seaweed, but had never eaten it before.
Fresh
cubes of bright, white tofu floated in the soybean paste soup made with a
slightly, salty stock tasting of dried kelp and bonito. We al drank the soup from our bowls as we
lifted them like one does in Japan.
Our
meals also came with a small salad, which we ate with chopsticks. The sweet dressing intrigued us.
End
of Part 1.
To
be continued…
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Teen in China, and Marrying France
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