In case I didn't feel like I splurged at Coccolino yesterday, I decided to splurge today at the izakaya, Kuraiya Yuon. It's quite hidden away around a cluster of houses so it took a bit of time to make sure this place was still open. I actually wanted to visit this place on my birthday but, unfortunately, they weren't open at the time.
Additionally, the reason why I think many colleagues had not told me about a place like this is due to the large Japanese menu. Even though they had an English menu, it seems like it was out of date and missed quite a bit of what the up-to-date Japanese menu had. However, from what I'm about to write, I think parsing through the Japanese was quite fun for me.
Since Tsukuba seemed to be incredibly into highballs, I decided to get potentially the ultimate highball with a Yamazaki highball. Yamazaki is a Scotch-style Japanese whisky that's renounced (and pricey) world wide. Although I have not been shy in drinking while in Japan, this is my first time finding and enjoying Yamazaki during this trip so it was quite nice.
The first dish I had is the first picture that's the cover for this blog! I think it was another amuse-bouche. It was a tempura fried crab dish with kewpie mayo, where the batter had a bit of seaweed sprinkled through. The crab was quite sweet, briny, and meaty in the best possible way so I was quite happy.
The first dish I ordered was a moriawase sashimi plate. It's my first time having sashimi while in Japan so I was very excited to finally dig in. The quality of the fish was quite nice and the simplicity of shoyu and wasabi was all one needs. There's not a lot of preparation and there's enough to talk about for this blog but I think the best thing to say is it tastes as good as it looks!
The second thing I ordered was a kanpachi kama (collar) that was grilled. The kama was quite flaky (so cooked perfectly) and parts of it were relatively seasoned well. The heat from the grill crisped up parts of the skin quite nicely but I wish it was either a bit more even or at a slightly higher heat. At this point in the meal, I felt like getting another drink so I got a hachimitsu umeshu (honey umeshu) on the rocks.
The next thing I ordered was torched wagyu nigiri. My memory, I think it was either A4 or A5 wagyu from Miyazaki for about 980円 so not bad. There was just a little bit of a bite due to the thickness while the umami flavor from the wagyu's fat paired with the nice char from the torch was very nice. Especially with a dip of the shoyu and the counter balance from wasabi, simple done well.
Finally, the pièce de résistance (because it's fried) is tebasaki with taré sauce. In this case, it's the wing tip and the flat, where the flat was bisected in half before it was battered. It adds a lot of extra surface area for the sauce to get on the batter but also makes it a bit easier for the user! I'm already taking notes. Overall, I felt like the pleasure of eating chicken wings with this sticky, sweet, salty, savory taré shoyu sauce is almost unfair from the blast of nostalgia. Even compared to the smoky notes of the Yamazaki balanced with the club soda, the fresh sashimi plate, or the decadence of the wagyu nigiri, fried chicken wings is just good. It's crazy, and maybe it's the umeshu speaking but, eh.
So for these four dishes (+ the amuse bouche) and two alcoholic drinks, this was maybe $40 bucks? I think it's pretty reasonably nice so 9/10. It was good in spite of the wide range that it has. I hope the pictures have done it justice.
Comments