Today's lunch excursion is an establishment that is right outside the lab's front gates called Andryu! I've been looking for an opportunity to stop by and after a 6 mile walk, why not? I went in and got the meat set. Here's how it went.
The set started with this appetizer set, which contained curried lentils, carpaccio (snapper I think), salad with parmesan dressing, and a prosciutto crostini. It's an interesting combination of sides. The salad and crostini paired together quite well since they were parmesan dominant, though the quality of the cherry tomatos and other veggies almost made the dressing unnecessary. The curried lentils were cooked perfectly and weren't very spice forward while the carpaccio was fine.
The main course today was this beauty below. Surrounded with a nice vinaigrette and either roasted (eggplant) or blanched veggies (zucchini, broccoli, radish, Belle pepper) was this beautiful confited chicken thigh. A fork alone was able to break down the chicken thigh while the nice broil on top for the skin was well executed. The pepper and vinaigrette did a great job providing additional flavors and seasoning to the already decadent chicken thigh. I'm actually a bit surprised to see this type of preparation in a small town but Japan is just built different. The veggies were also just vehicles for the vinaigrette so of course they were good. The main question now is what the vinaigrette is. Since the taste of olive oil wasn't present but rather a rich taste that complimented the thigh really well, I want to suspect the oil used to confit the thigh was used and maybe a red wine vinaigrette was used additionally. Diced mushrooms were also used as an additional boost of earthy flavor.
If that wasn't enough, the set ends with a drink and dessert. I decided to go crazy and get espresso and an affogato. The affogato had some cereal beneath it that provided additional texture so I'm quite content. The espresso quality was nice so nothing wrong there.
I think this was very reasonable for ~$20 so an 8.5/10 seems reasonable me thinks. I enjoyed the meal, the food came out quickly, and if the confit thigh is a good representation of the restaurant's other entrees, I look forward to stopping by the restaurant again!
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