Right next to Grill Sakura, the yoshoku place in Asakusa, is Mutsumi, a restaurant that specialises in kamameshi (rice cooked in a small iron pot). This place is fairly well known too, and I ended up going because I could not be bothered to cook at the weekend. Because of the way kamameshi is made, you will wait about forty minutes if you turn up without a reservation. It is a fairly big restaurant with a second floor, so there is usually a table when you walk in, but it is better to book.

Tsukemono

A generous serving. Tasted good too.

A light glass of beer

It was good, but it left me way too full. Since the menu is all rice, I should have ordered something lighter to drink.

Kamameshi

Kamameshi is rice cooked in a pot with dashi and other ingredients. I think there are similar places out in the Korean countryside, but I am not sure how they differ.

Tori kamameshi

Rice with chicken.

Gomoku kamameshi

It has all sorts of ingredients, clams, shrimp, chicken and so on, and it was much better than the tori kamameshi. The price is on the cheap side and the rice, soaked with the flavour of the ingredients, is good, but the portion is bigger than it looks. Two people could easily share one.

Served into a bowl..

Even the rice alone is delicious. A good choice for a weekend lunch.

Dashimaki

I ordered it more out of politeness, and it was just so-so. Again, the portion was far too big.

Miso soup

The aburaage, fried tofu, was delicious. Just what you would expect from a traditional, well-established place.

Ebi shinjo

Ground shrimp, shaped and deep-fried. It tasted good too, but eating fried food when I was already about to burst from the rice alone made it even harder to get through.. It would have been better to come with a few more people, order one kamameshi for every two of us and then try a variety of a la carte dishes. Gomoku is good, but the uni or asari kamameshi would probably be nice as well. Next time I would surely enjoy it more, but I have no idea when that chance will come.

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