This post was written in 2008. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
I ended up going to Nagoya, supposedly Japan’s third-largest city. It wasn’t as big as I’d expected, but it was a charming, cozy sort of place. (Contrary to the rumors, though, I didn’t see many beauties around Nagoya. And here I thought Aichi beauties were one of Japan’s three famous types of beauties.) I got to meet an acquaintance who lives in the area and was treated to dinner at a great restaurant. Wherever you go, the places the locals recommend always seem to be cheap and delicious.
Here’s a Japanese site with detailed info. If you’re planning to go, have a look.
http://g.pia.co.jp/shop/7878
This place has been making nothing but chicken dishes for over 20 years, and its most famous dish is the chicken hot pot. Since they mostly serve regulars, it doesn’t seem to have spread much by word of mouth. It’s run by a husband and wife, and the lady of the house has a wonderfully hearty, outgoing personality. And unusually, when you order, you fill out the order slip yourself. At the end, you also work out how much you ate, then leave the money and go. ^_^ It’s an almost perfectly self-service restaurant, and this was honestly the first time I’d seen it taken this far.
First we ordered hot pot for each person, then a few small dishes to have before the hot pot.
Chicken sashimi.
This was the day I learned for the first time that you can eat chicken as sashimi. The colors are really beautiful.
From left: heart, breast, gizzard, liver.
A close-up I don’t usually take
So you can admire it in more detail… As for the taste, I think you can guess from the gloss practically dripping off the photo. The heart is chewy and springy, the breast is light like white fish, the gizzard has a bouncy bite, and the liver is simply rich and nutty.
Reba – grilled liver
The fragrantly grilled, rich liver really melts in your mouth. I actually liked it better grilled than raw. All I can say is it was fantastic.
Norimaki, seaweed rolls
Fried chicken rolled in nori. I’ve never had fried chicken this good. All the bad impressions of fried chicken I’d built up from KFC and the like vanished in one go.
Shisomaki – perilla rolls
Well, the frying skill is the same, but to my taste the nori rolls were a little better.
Hot pot ingredients 1
Hardly any difference in freshness from what came out as sashimi.
Hot pot ingredients 2
You put the vegetables in first to build the broth, then add the meat.
Ponzu.
Ponzu with grated daikon radish. It’s called daikon oroshi. For some reason it doesn’t exist in Korea, but it’s used all the time in Japan.
Atsukan
Hot sake. This was the drink of the day.
You cook it like this. Maybe you could call it shabu-shabu style…
As for the taste, well, it tastes like hot pot ^_^ Maybe because the meat was so fresh, it just melted away in my mouth. Even though it’s chicken, it’s every bit as good as a beef or pork hot pot.
When you’re done, you make rice porridge.
Maybe because the eggs were good, it was really light yet full of savory flavor. Exactly my kind of thing. I’m simply amazed that chicken dishes can be this delicious. Thanks to a good friend I discovered a great place and had a wonderful time. In the end, whatever you do, I think people are what matter most.
We ate all this and drank a whole lot too, and it only came to about 5,000 yen per person. Lots of the restaurants in Nagoya that cater to tourists are ridiculously expensive, but this place is the complete opposite. It even makes me want to go back to Nagoya again. Nagoya, what a great place ^_^