This post was written in 2006. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Even Matsue in Shimane Prefecture, where I live, has one restaurant that’s famous nationwide, so I went to check it out. (It took me six months of living here to find even one, sob.)
The place is called Minami.
Minami is an upscale onsen ryokan right in the middle of town, with a restaurant on the ground floor. To be honest… the charm of an onsen isn’t just soaking in good water, it’s gazing out at a great view of the sea or sky from an open-air bath, and since this place is smack in the middle of the city, that’s impossible here. It’s a bit of a shame, but maybe thanks to the food and the easy access, business seemed to be good.
The entrance.
The atmosphere is traditional. Just like Kanazawa’s Higashi and Nishi Chaya districts, Matsue has a place called Chamachi with almost the same feel, and this place sits right in the middle of that street. Matsue’s Chamachi feels like a miniature version of Kanazawa. In Japan, it seems every region (roughly every 100 km) has a traditional street like this, even if the scale differs.
The restaurant entrance.
As befits a traditional restaurant, all the staff serve in kimono.
The basic table setting
The lunch menu I ordered to scope the place out. It’s the tai-meshi, supposedly the most popular dish here.
In Korean, tai-meshi would be “sea bream rice”, and it’s a kind of ochazuke. Ochazuke is the Japanese way of eating rice with liquid poured over it ^_^;
These are the ingredients for making the ochazuke.
Green onion, nori, grated daikon, wasabi, egg white, egg yolk and sea bream. Very simple, right ^_^ With regular ochazuke, you put the ingredients on the rice, mix it all up, then pour dashi over it. It’s a really simple dish, but it’s insanely good ^_^ A bit like soba, you could say… it’s very down-to-earth, yet it has a refined taste. Along with bo-zushi, it’s one of those foods you can only eat in Japan. (Looking at the ingredients, you’d think it would be easy to make back in Korea too…)
The finished product.
No frills at all, very clean and light. Personally, it’s my favorite style. Japanese food is really subtle. How do they get this kind of flavor out of such ordinary ingredients… (A manga I’ve been reading lately called Osen deals with exactly this theme…)
By the way, tai-meshi is made a little differently from ochazuke. Instead of mixing first and then adding the dashi, you pour in the dashi and then stir it up as you eat. I tried both side by side, but apart from being harder to wash up, I couldn’t tell any difference in taste ^_^;
Today’s grilled fish
The flesh was sweet and tender, and it came with a sauce that brought out the flavor of the fish just right. I got the same feeling once before when I had French food at Robuchon ^_^;
The other side dishes were faultless too. It definitely deserves its nationwide reputation ^_^
The garden in front of the restaurant. I heard it’s a fairly well-known garden, so I took a picture.
Pretty ordinary compared to the Adachi Museum of Art ^_^;
This place has branches in Osaka, Ginza in Tokyo, and Nihonbashi in Tokyo. The verdict on the Ginza branch was that the 2,600-yen tai-meshi is decent enough, but the menus above it give you average food for the price. I guess it’s hard for a branch to match the main shop… It’s on the 8th floor of the New Melsa building in Ginza, so if you’re interested in ochazuke, it might be worth a visit.