Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Cafe - Part 2 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Café – Part 2 – Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After a little research in a Buddhist temple cookbook called The Legacy of the Japanese in Hawaii, I found a recipe for the salad dressing made with rice vinegar, sugar, and a little soy sauce.

A mound of lightly, fried shrimp, eggplant, green beans, and turnips came with one of my friend’s grilled teriyaki chicken dish, making me think he ended up with the best value for his money.

The Japanese got the idea for deep frying foods during the 16^th century from the Portuguese, on of the first nation to have contact with Japan.

Tempura shrimp stay nice and long when you cut along their underside.  I like the way the Japanese fry chicken with the skin on to keep them moist, but other people take the skin off.

My daughter Florence liked the beef teriyaki she ordered and said it was “juicy and tender.”  I like the way Yamato serves it teriyaki sauce on the side, if you ask them.

Teriyaki can be too sweet for some people.  It is a syrupy sauce make from soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar.

One of my friends complimented me on exposing my daughter to so many different cuisines.

I laughed and said she liked beef in various forms – Korean bulgogi, Mexican carne asada, and Japanese beef teriyaki.

We all tried the breaded pork cutlets that one of my friends ordered and loved the.  This dish is called tonkatsu and was adopted from the Dutch.  A spicy sauce accompanied the dish, but she said the cutlets were so juicy that they did not need any sauce.

The eel I ordered came over rice with thick, soy sauce in an orange-lidded box with flowers on it.  I had never eaten eel.  The flesh was fatty, but tasted good. 

Green tea-flavored ice cream came with our meal as dessert. 

Article end

The real sweet ending to this article is that you can buy green tea ice cream in Asian markets now.

The following cookbooks can help readers become familiar with Japanese menu items and cooking methods:

Japanese Soul Cooking:  Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and more from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat

Washoku:  Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Cafe - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

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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Exchange Student Food at Michi Cafe by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exchange Student Food at Michi Cafe by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Since I had lived in Japan as an exchange student with Youth for Understanding in high school, I naturally wanted my daughter Florence to learn about this country when she was growing up.

My husband Laurent was subject to yakitori (sweet-flavored, chicken shish kebab) and tonkatsu (breaded pork fillet of Portuguese origin – the Portuguese had a trading post at Hirado, Japan), because he did not like sushi.  He did approve of teaching Florence about Japanese culture, so I had a “go-ahead” on teaching Florence how to eat udon soup with chopsticks.

I had Florence read an article I wrote for the Monterey Country Weekly (Circulation: 100,000) to give her background on how I learned to eat soup with chopsticks as a teen for the “Side Dish” column of the Weekly before we ventured out to Japanese restaurants in our neighborhood.

Slurping Sisters (Original Title Selected by the Editors)

As I changed my inside slippers for my outside shoes, my Japanese host sister said, “We will eat lunch now.”

She then led me out of the house, both of us ducking under all the doorframes as we went.  It was my first day as an exchange student in Japan.

We walked through narrow, winding streets without sidewalks, fighting for space with trucks, bikes, and cars.

We arrived at the restaurant, a dark wooden building.  Curved strips of blue-and-white checked fabric with large, red kanji (Chinese) characters written on them swayed in the open doorway.  There was a display case with plastic models of the foods served inside.

I pointed and asked, “Is that eel? Shark? Octopus? Sea urchin” Sea cucumber?”

I did not want to eat those things. I made my host sister look up all these words in her Japanese-English dictionary.

Finally, I chose what my host sister told me was nabeyaki udon soup, which was made with thick, flat, wheat noodles.  I chose this soup, because it had shrimp, onion, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms in it.  There was only one suspicious item in it.

“What’s the white stuff with the bright pink edges?” I asked my host sister.

“What is ‘stuff’?” my host sister replied not totally grasping colloquial English.

“Never mind,” I said.

“What’s that?” I said as I rephrased my question.

“That’s kamaboko,” she said.

“What’s kamaboko?” I asked

My host sister leafed through her dictionary some more.

“Fish cake,” she announced.  The kamaboko was a small oval.  I reasoned that if it tasted repulsive, I could choke it down in one swallow.

The other patrons discreetly looked at me when we entered the restaurant and sat down.  A foreigner, a gaijin, was a rare sight in the 1980s.

The waitress brought us noodle soups and a pair of chopsticks.  I knew I was supposed to eat first, because I was the guest.  I smiled and waited for the waitress to bring me a flat-bottomed spoon like they do in Chinese restaurants.  No spoon was forthcoming.

My host sister and I smiled at each other while our soup cooled.  I looked at the two people on the other side of the restaurant.  I saw that they were picking out their noodles and other ingredients with chopsticks.  I started doing the same.

I immediately noticed that Chinese and Japanese chopsticks are different.  Chinese chopsticks are about six inches long and have pointed tips, which you never use for stabbing your food.  I had to practice getting the right grip and distance on my Japanese chopsticks.

Pretty soon I was left with a bowl of broth.  I was stumped.  I discreetly glanced at the same diners, who had helped me out before.  They were drinking soup from their bowl.

So, I began to sip more quietly from my bowl.  My dainty host sister’s slurping surprised me.  In Japan, slurping can show your appreciation to the chef.  It is also hard to eat noodles without doing otherwise.

I liked the soup and made a mental note that udon was a good food choice.

Even that thick, fish paste patty with the bright, pink edges tasted good.

End of article –

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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