I'm illiterate. In Chinese, that is. I can speak well enough, but I read like a five year old (at best). Here in Bellevue, Washington, this limitation is not super debilitating except at Chinese restaurants. As many of you have probably surmised, you get better service at most Chinese restaurants if you're Chinese. Deal with it. So, whenever we're at a Chinese restaurant, I try to order in Chinese, but since I can't really read too much, I'm limited in what I can order to the few things I know or can read. (As Michelle discovered when we were on our honeymoon, the "something something" in "beef something something noodles" can be a lot of different parts of a cow, not all of them things most Westerners would be comfortable eating.)

So, you can imagine my delight (and her relief) when Michelle pointed me to How to Order Chinese Food Dot Com. This gem a site has photos, English names, and Chinese names for popular dishes, broken out by region and type. The author even has PDF versions you can print and carry with you.

I'm looking forward to expanding my repertoire and maybe even advancing to second grade food Chinese.

I can't believe I missed it. Saturday was International Bacon Day. This important holiday is the Saturday before Labor Day (August 30 this year). I'll have to make up for my omission with a double-serving of bacon. (Which of course, is impossible since the serving size of bacon is whatever is in front of you.)

(Flag courtesy of YesButNoButYes.)

During my research for my Szechuan Noodle Bowl post, I ran across MSG150 -a site describing a year long quest by my new heroes to eat at every restaurant in Seattle's International District. After a brief glance, I find that I agree with most of their findings, so they must be smart. :)

Anyway, if you're looking for a great restaurant in the ID (or trying to avoid a bad one) check them out!

Michelle, the boys, and I were in downtown Seattle Friday evening for some reason or another and started getting peckish (it being dinner time and all). We hadn't been to the International District for a while, so we thought we'd cruise some of our old haunts looking for a nosh.

We settled on the Szechuan Noodle Bowl, an ID classic. Michelle and I used to go there a lot when we were dating and first married, but for some reason or another, we hadn't been back for years. Big mistake.

The place certainly hasn't been updated since we were there last; it's a small place with fluorescent lighting, laminated tables, and a mishmash of photos and posters on the walls. But, like many great Chinese restaurants, you don't go to Szechuan Noodle Bowl for the decor.

You go for the crispy green onion pancakes. OMG, I had forgotten how good these are. These are easily the best green onion pancakes (cong you bing) I've ever had. The secret to their flaky, crispy deliciousness is lard. Everyone else seems to use the (presumably) healthier but way less yummy veggie oil between the layers of onion and dough. Not SNB. Nothing but the best here. Wow. It took all my restraint to not push my family out of the way getting to the crumbs.

Fortunately, just as Michael (8) elbowed me out of the way for the last wedge of pancake, the waitress arrived with plates of jiaozi (steamed dumplings - gyoza in Japanese). Unlike most Chinese restaurants, SNB makes these fresh every day with (most importantly) handmade wrappers. The result is a delicious, toothsome wrapper around great fillings. (In Chinese we say that wrappers like this have jiar or energy.) As regular readers know, I love meat, but surprisingly, my favorites were the veggie jiaozi -- spinach and tofu filled dumplings of love.

The beef noodle soup was almost as good as the first dishes. They actually have several different kinds of beef noodle soup; I chose the hong shao niu rou mein since it wasn't spicy so the kids would eat some. (This literally means  "red cooked beef noodles" where "red cooked" means cooked in soy sauce. I forget now what they called it in English on the menu -- sorry). Anyway, the bowl was filled with thick noodles with good jiar, lots of falling apart tender beef (that Michael loved) and a tasty broth. Yum.

It was so damn good; I'm already dreaming of my next trip.

Szechuan Noodle Bowl
420 8th Ave S
Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 623-4198

For our last dinner in Roppongi, we ate at Restaurant Morimoto XEX - one of the restaurants of Iron Chef Japanese Masuharo Morimoto. This was a stupid good teppanyaki meal that lived up to the hype.

The restaurant is dark and beautiful with very attentive service from the English-speaking staff. Like other teppanyaki restaurants, guests sit around a bar where the chef grills your food in front of you. However, unlike Americanized Benihana-style teppanyaki, there isn't a cooking "show", so no flaming onion volcanoes or flipping of shrimp heads into the chef's hat (much to the boys' disappointment.)

   

There were really too many amazing courses to list or show off here, but I'll hit a few of the highlights.

One that we all thought was incredibly delicious and innovative was the sashimi course (below). This lovely box contained (from right to left): caviar, minced chu-toro (fatty tuna), uni (sea urchin), squid (I think), salmon roe, chives, toasted rice balls, nori (seaweed), wasabi sauce (I think), sour cream, and avocado sauce. To eat this, you used the little bamboo paddle and swept across the box, combining bits of the different ingredients and then dipping the mix into the light shoyu sauce. The combination of flavors and textures was insanely great. Even the others who don't normally eat uni and such enjoyed this.

  

Another great course was this lobster dish. The very sweet tail meat of the Australian lobster was well balanced by the sharp pepper sauce; the cilantro was a nice addition too. This was perfect in its simplicity.

As the chef prepared the star course of the show - the meltingly tender and moaningly delicious Kobe beef for me, great fillet for the others) - we were served little ramekins of mashed potatoes. These already smooth potatoes had a quarter inch of clarified butter on top; we were instructed to mix butter into the potato. The results were almost soup-like; of course, they were rich and scrumptious. The beef, needless to say, was great, served with a choice of sauces, exotic salt, and garam masala - a nice and unusual offering. Kobe beef is the only meal I've ever had where everyone at the table either softly moans or giggles to themselves as they chew. This was no exception. Michael (7) demolished his 50g steak almost instantly.

After dinner, we moved upstairs to this very retro 70's/early 80's lounge for dessert. The centerpiece of the lounge was this incredibly kitschy Dom Perignon stand light with a rotating top. It was kind of fun that they didn't take themselves too seriously. I was too full to eat, so I just had a glass of Suntory Hibiki 17 year Japanese whisky. Lovely stuff.

 

Obviously, this wasn't a cheap meal, but damn, it was good. Truly a memorable feast.

Today, we made a pilgrimage to Akihabara today, mecca for geeks. In particular I dragged everyone to Yodobashi, the photo giant. While the camera gear was more expensive than I could get at home, they had tons of great accessories like camera bags (you can never have enough camera bags) and my favorite lens cleaning cloth - Microdear (yes, I have a favorite lens cleaning cloth - You can get them at Amazon too.). Since Michael's (7) birthday is coming up, we got him a little digital camera (a slick little black Fujifilm Finepix Z20fd). He's been snapping pix like mad since then.

After Yodobashi, we played some video games (including a cool Gundam game in pods) and headed to Shinjuku to get lunch at Takashimaya Department store and shop some. On the way from the train station to the store, we passed through "Little Seattle" - the row that has our Microsoft Japan sales office, REI, Eddie Bauer, and Starbucks (and now a Krispy Kreme with a huge line out the door). Our tempura lunch at the Tunahachi (a big tempura chain) in the store was nice as was the visit to the legendary food department in the basement of Takashimaya.

The ladies stayed to shop, so I took the boys back to the hotel. We stopped off at the Motoyama Milk Bar for a bit of refreshment; after seeing the name, I had to try it out. It really was a milk bar, serving great milk products like ice cream, milk, panna cotta, and so on (apparently, it's unhomogenized milk from Hokkaido). I had an absolutely lovely Coffee Milk in a cute bottle; it was like a frappuccino done right -- creamy and sweet but not cloying, with great coffee taste. I am dreaming of coffee milk and may have to come back to Japan just to get another one.

Today we took the train out to Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo filled with shopping malls, museums, a huge Ferris wheel, and such. We wandered around floors of shops, mostly without much luck, although the kids were delighted to find a Toys 'R' Us with a huge Pokemon Center. One of the odd things we saw in the store were live elephant beetles. Apparently, because of the popularity of the video game Mushi King where players battle with giant beetles, Japanese kids are collecting real beetles now.

After the toy store, we spent some time at the Sony showroom playing with their cool toys including the very fun Rolly, a little robot MP3 player that dances to the music; it was a neat way to get hands on with some fun technology. I kind of wonder if Microsoft should do something similar.

For lunch we found a bit of heaven - a ramen "theme park". This was a six of small ramen shops representing different styles from around Japan. There were "Iron Chef" style photos of each of the chefs. There was a hawker outside each shop drawing in customers; once we picked one (Tokyo style) we put money into a machine, pushed the buttons for what we wanted, and got some tickets to hand to staff. The gyoza and ramen were absolutely delicious; the ramen was very different from the Kyushu-style we had at Jangara with dark, rich broth.

After lunch we wound up at another mall called Venus Fort which was unremarkable except that it looked like the inside of the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Creepy really.

 

 

Barbi, Kellie, and I decided to take advantage of our jet lag and go to the Tsukiji Fish Market early (5:30am) this morning (this isn't a great place for kids, so Michelle and the boys stayed at the hotel). This is the largest fish market in the world and an amazing scene of commerce and food. I had been to Tsukuji many years ago, but I was excited to come back.

In the intervening years, they have apparently had an influx of tourists getting in the way of operations. As a result, in the tuna auction area, they now have an area blocked off for tourists and rules about flash photography. I've read that they may be closing the whole thing off to tourists; while this makes perfect sense, it would be too bad.

Anyway, the big thing here is the tuna auction where they sell off huge frozen and fresh tuna. The buyers walk around inspecting the fish and then the auctioneer starts the sing-song bidding. In a few seconds, a huge tuna is sold. Click here for an idea of the prices. Beyond the auction area, the place is a maze of shops selling everything seafood related that you can imagine; the shops also cut down the big tuna they just bought for further sale. The auction area and shops are in a huge warehouse known as the inner market.

The outer market is a series of streets and alleys selling more food like pickles, spices, and such as well as cooking supplies like the big knives the guys in the inner market use. There are also crazy good food stalls and restaurants serving the freshest fish from the market. After our tour, we had a bowl of maguro donburi (fresh tuna slices on a bowl of sushi rice) at Kanno, a stall four booths from the corner of Shin Hashi Dori and Harumi Dori (the main intersection near the market). It was super good, with the super fresh tuna and lovely sushi rice. Click here for a good New York Times article on restaurants in the area.

 

 

 

 

For lunch today, we went to Jangara Ramen in Harajuku at the recommendation of my colleague Li. In his mail to me, he said, "...you'll be in pork fat heaven!  Some say it's the best in Tokyo, and I can't imagine better tasting ramen."

OMG, he wasn't kidding. Jangara specializes in Kyushu-style ramen. I don't know if I can characterize the differences, but the broth is pork-based (vs. miso or shoyo-based) was perhaps a bit richer than I'm used to, and the pork was cut thick with a luscious cap of fat. The boiled egg on top was soft cooked, and the whole thing was topped with cod roe (lovely). The pickled greens and crushed garlic on the table made the bowl even better. For more, here's Rameniac's description of the style.

You could order one of a couple styles of ramen, each with options A-H which defined the toppings (everything, no egg, etc.) We also had nice gyoza to go with. They had English menus, and the staff was quick and helpful. I slurped down my bowl and ate what the kids' didn't finish from theirs. I was stuffed to the point of pain, but I couldn't stop eating. I'm still silly with the thought of the stuff.

Jangara is a small chain in Tokyo; there are actually two at this location on Omote-sando Dori, located on two floors. They are about a block from the Harajuku JR train station. They were apparently voted best ramen in Tokyo in 2003. I must find who won this year.

This evening, we had an early dinner at Inakaya, a robatayaki place here in Roppongi. I had been to the original branch several years ago and was excited to come back. In robatayaki you sit at a  U shaped bar with a huge selection of vegetables, meat, and fish before you. You point to things you want and the chefs grill it in front of you. As you order, all of the staff yell out the order in reply, so the place can get pretty raucous (although we were there early, so it was more subdued.)

The chefs pass the food, beer, whatever to you on these 3-4 foot long paddles; these guys are seriously strong. They can hold the paddles up without shaking at all. I'm not sure I could even hold the paddle steady.

The food was simple and very fresh; for instance the prawns (which were the hugest I've ever seen) were still moving on the display tray. The abalone was especially good but the whole snapper was my favorite. They thread a whole fish onto a skewer so the fish is in a S-shape; they rub a little salt on the fins to make them stand out, then they suspend the fish over the heat to cook. When it comes off it looks like it's swimming. The meat was tender and perfectly done.

Anyway, it was a great start to the trip. I'm looking forward to some other great meals...