This visit was more than two weeks ago now. I’d heard that Kokoan (香古庵), a sister restaurant of an onsen ryokan in the Daisen area of Tottori Prefecture, opened back in February, so I went to see what it was like.
The front entrance
It’s apparently a converted old inn. Even though it’s right in the middle of town, the inside is very old-fashioned. The surroundings, though, are all izakaya and hostess clubs..
We start with the starter.
Neat, but nothing all that special. Take away the downtown location and it falls short of the food at the onsen ryokan Kasuien Minami. Then again, depending on the gathering, being right in the middle of town can be a huge plus.
Duck
With quality this good, it can hardly taste bad. But Japanese food feels a bit tame, so I thought a French course might suit young people better. Well, if you’re sick of French like me, Japanese is probably the better pick.
Starting, as always, with a beer
A hot pot for the duck.
Sashimi
Very high quality. I like the level of the food.
Roast beef
It seems to stand in for a salad.
Sakura soba
Apparently it’s a cherry-blossom-colored soba famous in the Yasugi area, but it tastes like soba with something mixed in -_-. It’s an unusual flavor, so it seemed fine as a seasonal thing.
I don’t remember well, but I think this was kinmedai (splendid alfonsino).
There isn’t a single weak dish. Not that anything tastes extraordinary, either. If they sourced top-grade ingredients for the menu the price would go up accordingly, so satisfaction is bound to drop.
Eggplant dish
Tasty, but it came out slightly cold. The place seems bigger than you’d expect, and that seems to push the timing of the dishes back a little.
Tempura
There’s real skill here. With good food in front of you, you can’t help but enjoy yourself.
A glass of shochu..
I’ve been drinking a bit of premium shochu lately, and I still haven’t found one better than Mori Izo. Hmm.. maybe that’s the limit of shochu.
Eel yanagawa
It tastes fine, but by this point I’m getting pretty full. We still had to go on to a second round, and I picked the wrong course. I should have thought about the number of dishes..
Let’s just say this was some kind of shellfish
Fresh. I wolf it down.
Rice
In Korea and Japan, a course isn’t over until the noodles or the bowl of rice come out.
And dessert..
A clean, satisfying meal.
Matcha and yokan to cleanse the palate..
I’m still not used to judging how much people can eat, so today I made the mistake of ordering too big a course again. Not everyone in the world eats a lot, so I always need to be careful, and I got sloppy. I’ll pay more attention next time. Building up experience like this is probably one of the upsides of getting older.
On to a second round at a nearby bar, Taisho Club.
Order a glass of wine and out comes duck
It’s a bar, but it serves proper food. It’s a really fun place: there’s a pasta menu, and you can have more or less a full meal. Apparently people from the neighborhood sometimes drop by at night.
Croissant
I heard the croissant is the house specialty, so I ordered one, and it’s rich with butter yet not greasy at all, so it’s easy to eat. Pasta alone is surprising enough, but a croissant that puts bakeries to shame.. Japan really has a lot of fun bars. I had a great time that day, too. Not that anything fun happened for about two weeks after that.