On our hunt for Michelin restaurants in Japan, we've decided on Yotaro Honten solely based on our curiosity. I was wondering how good can tempura be to make it a 2-star restaurant?
Yotaro Honten - A 2-star Michelin restaurant, specialized in Kansai style tempura, serving since 1921. A restaurant full of integrity, serving their local style tempura fried to precision, with impressive service.
Never a fan of bamboo shoot, but this was good. Boiled to perfection, soft and crunchy (do I sound contradicting haha), with their real good homemade mayonnaise.
Fresh scallop and Tai sashimi with paprika powder, equally good.
(HELP: Any other words to replace good? :D)
The square item below the prawns' tail - bread filled with shrimp paste, fried to perfection. An unconventional and unusually delicious piece, it's the chef's own invention.
Look at that green piece on the right, it's called butterbur.
As the server was trying her very best to explain each item to us in English, honestly, we had quite a hard time to be fully comprehensive. But being thoughtful, the restaurant provides a list of items with English translation. So when she was telling us butterbur, we were like... WHAT IS THAT I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THAT. When she pointed at "Butterbur" on the translation list, my mind went blank. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH WORD. -_- Why am I so shallow? I even thought did they make spelling error? Thanks to the internet, I've learned a new vege I've never known in my whole life. BUTTERBUR. Welcome to my world.
An eye opening dining experience. My knowledge about tempura is all about giant prawns/vege covered in crunchy, frilly batter and sweet tempura sauce. Forget about this when you're looking to try Kansai style tempura. Tempuras here are served in lightest batter, paired with baked sea salt at almost powdery texture. Being the only condiment, surprisingly, the salt brings out the freshest flavours of the tempuras.
The quality is apparent - with no trace of unfresh oil and almost no oil left on the paper (replenished from time to time), such light batter made the tempuras tasted almost like steamed instead of fried (very, very light crunch). Totally no sense of guiltiness.
Another house specialty is tai-gohan, also known as sea bream rice, cooked and presented in a pot.
After presenting it to us (like the pic above), they served it again by mixing up the fish with rice, removing all bones. We were already quite full from the tempuras, but this yummy pot of rice didn't stop us from eating yet! You can tell it's a very plain dish. But the tai fish was so fresh and the rice was sooo fragrant and soft you can't help to stop taking another spoonful. However given such a big pot, we really couldn't finish it. Thoughtful as ever, the server packed it nicely for us for takeaway.
Sakura soup complemeting tai-gohan.
Fruits to end the course - juicy and sweet orange and Japanese melon.
This 2-star restaurant is worth every penny, definitely worth trying out. The restaurant has minimal interior and is pretty small in size. We were seated in a private room located on the second floor, there's a bar counter on the first floor. I guess it will be great to be seated at the bar counter, as you can see the chef does his cooking like a magician.
We took a cab from Subway Midosuji Line Yodoyabashi Station and it took us approx. 10 minutes (with light traffic). It's actually very near to the station but we were running late, we didn't want to arrive with our reservations being cancelled (trying our best to meet the Japanese punctuality). Reservations are highly recommended!
Address: 2-3-14, Kouraibashi, Chuo-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka, 541-0043
Additional unrelated piece of advise: Cab fare in Japan is HIGH.
No comments:
Post a Comment