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Thursday afternoon I went and got Bruegger's bagels for lunch (yum!) early on, and did some other stuff, and then in the evening I went downtown to get dinner with Stewart Clamen, who I catch up with approximately once per year (well, whenever I am in the Philly area). We've gone to a variety of places in the past, and I'd been saying for years that we should go to Morimoto (because well, my dad was never going to go there, and I wasn't really sure who else in the area would ever be convinceable). So, finally, after several years, we went. Stewart had been to this one several years before (and recently went to the Morimoto location in New York as well with his girlfriend).
Curiously, there were a LOT of people taking the train into town from out here at 6pm. At least it was super-easy to find a parking space at the station!
I went in at 6:30 and walked from Suburban Station to 8th and Walnut (I was meeting Stewart at the Starbucks kittycornered from the defunct Robbins store, and I wanted to walk for a bit before meeting up). We met up at 7:15 and had a 7:45 reservation. The website says "upscale casual" but in reality, there were several families there with kids. Clearly, it isn't *quite* the super-elite place it was 10 years ago or whenever it opened and you had to make a reservation months in advance. Heck, this is what it looked like by 9pm:
Both of us ordered the omakase, $80 level (it came in 80 and 120 and "up"), and these are the dishes we ended up getting. I told the waiter that I'm allergic to oysters and get sick from various kinds of shellfish (oddly, our waiter LOOKED Japanese, but when I tried to tell him in Japanese the kinds of fish that make me sick, he stared at me blankly, so eh).
So, onwards. I took photos of each little dish we got:
This was hamachi with some kind of crunchy chives, in a ponzu-based sauce, with caviar on top and a berry of some sort as well as some wasabi. It might just be the "yellowtail tartare" from the menu, perhaps. It was pretty good.
This, they called "whitefish carpaccio", which I'm vaguely familiar with from Japan; to me it just tasted like some variety of tai, though I'm not sure exactly which. It was decent too.
Sashimi salad. I actually didn't care for the texture of the salad (eating such small greens is annoying, they get caught in your teeth) but the sashimi itself was decent, I think it was saba and kanpachi.
After a plum soda palate-cleanser, we had the first warm dish, which I believe was maybe kohata? Basically a piece of cooked fish with a bunch of those little greens again, in a green sauce that was clearly mint-based, and supposedly the mushroom slivers with it were truffle mushrooms. I dunno, if they were, I still don't get what the big deal was. This was tasty too, though I couldn't figure out exactly what the heck the sauce was.
And this, I'm sad to say, is duck. And I ate it. I don't tend to eat duck because of my long-standing tradition of thinking ducks are awesome (and I used to collect duckie-related stuff and so on), but well, in a situation like this, you eat it. It wasn't bad, though I don't have a lot of duck-eating experience to compare it to. Of course, though, I find duck to be distinctly non-Japanese, but whatever. The sauce it was in was interesting, and to the right there's a chunk of apple, some tart berries, and some foie gras, which I did not eat. (I think that's the only thing I didn't eat all night.)
Finally, a sushi plate. But, sadly, I didn't find this sushi to be particularly great; the pieces were small and some of them tasted dry to me. Even the cheapo stuff at Tenkazushi (my favorite 120-yen kaitensushi chain in Tokyo) is better than this stuff was, so it was kind of disappointing. Plus, they put wasabi in it, and quite a bit. I like wasabi but wasn't ready for the amount they'd thrown in there.
Sushi was the last plate; we were asked if we wanted tea or coffee before dessert, and Stewart opted for tea, so I did too. I got green tea. It was... bizarre. That is, it was completely unlike any green tea I'd ever drank in Japan, VERY bitter. (Carl probably would like it.) Though after a while I guess I just got used to the taste and managed to drink most of it.
Dessert was wholly un-Japanese and quite good, though -- some kind of chocolate fondant, and the topping was birch beer flavored cream! THAT might have been one of the best parts of it all, I LOVE birch beer and only get to drink it when I am in Philly, so this was very unique.
So, interesting overall, I suppose. I'm glad we went though not entirely sure I'd do it again given a choice (I think there are other places I'd rather blow $100 on dinner, basically). But I'd walked past this place so many times, and it was such a big deal back in the day, that I really did want to get there someday, and now I have.
On the other hand, I don't think the Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto himself spends much, if any, time in this restaurant anymore. (I've heard in early days you could meet him and maybe get an autographed menu and such.) So I guess the closest I've been to him is still just seeing him throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game once :)
Oh, and here's my requisite Japanese tourist shot:
The lighting really was crappy for taking photos, so unlike![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ralphmelton's foodblogging photography, mine kinda sucked. I realize it's there for ambience, not for photos, and interestingly, the tables that were colored purple cycled between being purple, blue, and green, over the time we were there (quite a long time infact, I missed my 10:43 train because we didn't leave until around 11pm).
And yeah, I caught the last R6 (err, Norristown Line) train out of town at 11:43pm and got back here a bit after midnight. The end.
OH wait. Not QUITE the end. I forgot, when I walked there from Suburban all the way there, I went through the Jefferson campus, and took this shot of this wacky cylindrical light sculpture there:
Also, unrelatedly: I passed the 7-kyuu quick 15-min test on Kanji Kentei DS on the train on Wednesday, so on Thursday I took the long 60-min test on the train rides in/out of the city. I got 136/200 points and they consider 140 to be passing. Bleh. It's not terrible though, I'm surprised I did that well considering how I feel like I haven't absorbed so many of the kanji yet.
Curiously, there were a LOT of people taking the train into town from out here at 6pm. At least it was super-easy to find a parking space at the station!
I went in at 6:30 and walked from Suburban Station to 8th and Walnut (I was meeting Stewart at the Starbucks kittycornered from the defunct Robbins store, and I wanted to walk for a bit before meeting up). We met up at 7:15 and had a 7:45 reservation. The website says "upscale casual" but in reality, there were several families there with kids. Clearly, it isn't *quite* the super-elite place it was 10 years ago or whenever it opened and you had to make a reservation months in advance. Heck, this is what it looked like by 9pm:
Both of us ordered the omakase, $80 level (it came in 80 and 120 and "up"), and these are the dishes we ended up getting. I told the waiter that I'm allergic to oysters and get sick from various kinds of shellfish (oddly, our waiter LOOKED Japanese, but when I tried to tell him in Japanese the kinds of fish that make me sick, he stared at me blankly, so eh).
So, onwards. I took photos of each little dish we got:
This was hamachi with some kind of crunchy chives, in a ponzu-based sauce, with caviar on top and a berry of some sort as well as some wasabi. It might just be the "yellowtail tartare" from the menu, perhaps. It was pretty good.
This, they called "whitefish carpaccio", which I'm vaguely familiar with from Japan; to me it just tasted like some variety of tai, though I'm not sure exactly which. It was decent too.
Sashimi salad. I actually didn't care for the texture of the salad (eating such small greens is annoying, they get caught in your teeth) but the sashimi itself was decent, I think it was saba and kanpachi.
After a plum soda palate-cleanser, we had the first warm dish, which I believe was maybe kohata? Basically a piece of cooked fish with a bunch of those little greens again, in a green sauce that was clearly mint-based, and supposedly the mushroom slivers with it were truffle mushrooms. I dunno, if they were, I still don't get what the big deal was. This was tasty too, though I couldn't figure out exactly what the heck the sauce was.
And this, I'm sad to say, is duck. And I ate it. I don't tend to eat duck because of my long-standing tradition of thinking ducks are awesome (and I used to collect duckie-related stuff and so on), but well, in a situation like this, you eat it. It wasn't bad, though I don't have a lot of duck-eating experience to compare it to. Of course, though, I find duck to be distinctly non-Japanese, but whatever. The sauce it was in was interesting, and to the right there's a chunk of apple, some tart berries, and some foie gras, which I did not eat. (I think that's the only thing I didn't eat all night.)
Finally, a sushi plate. But, sadly, I didn't find this sushi to be particularly great; the pieces were small and some of them tasted dry to me. Even the cheapo stuff at Tenkazushi (my favorite 120-yen kaitensushi chain in Tokyo) is better than this stuff was, so it was kind of disappointing. Plus, they put wasabi in it, and quite a bit. I like wasabi but wasn't ready for the amount they'd thrown in there.
Sushi was the last plate; we were asked if we wanted tea or coffee before dessert, and Stewart opted for tea, so I did too. I got green tea. It was... bizarre. That is, it was completely unlike any green tea I'd ever drank in Japan, VERY bitter. (Carl probably would like it.) Though after a while I guess I just got used to the taste and managed to drink most of it.
Dessert was wholly un-Japanese and quite good, though -- some kind of chocolate fondant, and the topping was birch beer flavored cream! THAT might have been one of the best parts of it all, I LOVE birch beer and only get to drink it when I am in Philly, so this was very unique.
So, interesting overall, I suppose. I'm glad we went though not entirely sure I'd do it again given a choice (I think there are other places I'd rather blow $100 on dinner, basically). But I'd walked past this place so many times, and it was such a big deal back in the day, that I really did want to get there someday, and now I have.
On the other hand, I don't think the Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto himself spends much, if any, time in this restaurant anymore. (I've heard in early days you could meet him and maybe get an autographed menu and such.) So I guess the closest I've been to him is still just seeing him throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game once :)
Oh, and here's my requisite Japanese tourist shot:
The lighting really was crappy for taking photos, so unlike
ralphmelton's foodblogging photography, mine kinda sucked. I realize it's there for ambience, not for photos, and interestingly, the tables that were colored purple cycled between being purple, blue, and green, over the time we were there (quite a long time infact, I missed my 10:43 train because we didn't leave until around 11pm). And yeah, I caught the last R6 (err, Norristown Line) train out of town at 11:43pm and got back here a bit after midnight. The end.
OH wait. Not QUITE the end. I forgot, when I walked there from Suburban all the way there, I went through the Jefferson campus, and took this shot of this wacky cylindrical light sculpture there:
Also, unrelatedly: I passed the 7-kyuu quick 15-min test on Kanji Kentei DS on the train on Wednesday, so on Thursday I took the long 60-min test on the train rides in/out of the city. I got 136/200 points and they consider 140 to be passing. Bleh. It's not terrible though, I'm surprised I did that well considering how I feel like I haven't absorbed so many of the kanji yet.
