Eating Japanese Inn Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating Japanese Inn Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) loved it that I was a little exchange student in Japan in the 1980s.  She agreed that it would be fun to learn about the cuisine of a Japanese grill and sushi bar.

So, my husband Laurent and I bundled up Florence for a blustry, rainy ride out to Robata Grill in Carmel (California).

The following is the article I wrote for the Monterey County Weekly:

“Honored guests are here,” says Robata’s owner in Japanese that is loud enough for her staff to hear as she seats patrons at their tables.  The affect is to make the Japanese surroundings even more inviting in a restaurant whose name means “fireside.”

Fireside dining is always available on Robata’s patio, but when we visited the restaurant, my husband, Florence, and I chose to eat in the cozy indoors with dark, woodwork, ricepaper covering false windows and hanging red lanterns.

Laurent picked up on the Japanese genius for design by noticing how one table would be covered with a blue tablecloth, while the table next to it was covered with two blue cloth napkins laid out to look like diamonds.  Japanese music played softly.

Robata’s menu reflects the steakhouse and sushi bar tradition that became popular in the U.S. as chefs applied Japanese cooking methods to items such as beef that rarely show up in Japanese cuisine.

The appetizer Laurent ordered, called kushiyaki, was a filet mignon kebab with teriyaki sauce that qualifies as a Japanese steakhouse tradition.  Green peppers separated the tender, grilled chunks of meat that the chef glazed with a sauce made of say sauce, sugar, and sweet, rice wine.

Sesame seeds decorated the kebabs along with wisps of fresh ginger, adding a lively flavor to this delicious combination.  The kushiyaki came on a dark, green ceramic dish with Burgundy beef, which accented the color of the peppers.

A fresh, green leaf along with slender, lemon slices recalling summer decorated the dish of octopus sashimi I ordered.  I shared the raw octopus with Florence, and we both agreed that it was chewy without being tough.

I could taste the ocean in the octopus slices.  I am wary of raw octopus, though, since my first try left a sucker attached to my lip; I like fresh food, but not that fresh.

Sashimi serves as the typical prelude to sushi.  I followed suit with an order of hachi machi, yellowtail, tamago – egg omlet, and nigiri sushi – a specialty of Tokyo represents what most of us associate with sushi: small rectangles of vinegar rice topped off with raw fish or other toppings.

Robata’s deft sushi chefs were busily developing carpal tunnel syndrome during our visit.  The yellowtail sushi was silky and had a faint fish flavor.

The one thing missing from the hachi machi I ordered was the thin layer of wasabi, ground green horseradish, that usually goes into its making.

The wasabi helps hold the sushi together.  The only reason that I could think of for not including it is that most people load up on so much wasabi dipping sauce that they kill the delicate flavor of the sushi.

There is a trick to keeping sushi from falling apart – dip the topping side in soy sauce and not the side with the rice.

I learned to eat tomago – Japanese omlets – when I lived in Japan.  The taste of the omlet disconcerts you a bit at the beginning, because sugar goes into the omlet’s preparation.  The flavor of the rectangular slice of tamago, held onto the rice by a strip of nori seaweed, reminds me of French toast.

The Japanese love for sweet flavors came out in the dipping sauce that Florence ordered as well.  This seafood-flavored sauce had sweet red wine, sugar, and soy sauce added to its seaweed and dried bonito stock.

I suspect that the batter for the tempura that Florence ordered contained egg as well as flour and water, since the golden coating tasted so rich.  A plain flour and water batter makes a crispier version of this dish.

My daughter had a plateful of shrimp and vegetables and asked me to help her out.  I particularly liked the sweet potato tempura.  The shrimp tasted sweet, even without dunking them in the sauce.

The trick to keeping the shrimp nice and long when frying them is to cut along the underbelly, so they do not curl.

Laurent loved the grilled sanddabs that he ordered.  They had a salt-and-pepper breading that made them irrestible – like eating a bagful of potato chips.

Laurent drank a Sapporo beer with his dinner while I sampled a Kirin beer.  I think the Kirin tastes sweeter than the Sapporo beer and goes better with the sweet sauces and glazes on the food.  We also drank the warm house sake that had a sweet finish to it.

A rich, green tea ice cream put the finish on our meal.  It was easy to say, “We have eaten well as we left our table.”

End of Article

You can buy green tea ice cream balls at Safeway now.  “We started a trend!!!” I tell Florence now.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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