This iced tea is made from scratch (pardon the pun) at a kitty cafe where there are literally cats you can pay to play with and cuddle. The beverage is made with Japanese ceremonial green tea from Kyoto. The owner drizzles hot water onto the tea while she whisks, she adds organic honey to sweeten it just a bit, and then it goes over ice with some kind of milk. I chose oat milk, and the drink was a little creamy, very refreshing, and delicious. The tea flavor came through much better than if a mix had been used, and I'm thinking that this is the best iced matcha I've had.
Location: Frisky Business, 4781 E Palm Canyon Drive, Ste F, Palm Springs, California. Date: August 27, 2023.
1 Comment
Tendon is a Japanese dish that consists of rice topped with tempura. For lunch today I had this dish together with Japanese curry. The Japanese version of curry has a very rich and deep flavor, and mine came with pieces of potato and carrot (which I think is fairly traditional). The tendon part consisted of three fairly large shrimp battered and fried tempura style. Tempura batter is crispy and light. Tempura and curry are two noteworthy Japanese dishes, and I had them in the same bowl. My dish was garnished with shredded dried seaweed. I ate everything in the bowl and left it clean.
Location: Zen, 1231 W Ramsey Street, Banning, California. Date: May 20, 2023. When I feel a bit run down, I almost always crave raw fish, and tonight was no exception, so I went to Edoku Sushi and ordered their twelve piece assorted sashimi plate, the Yokohama. It came with four thick slices of salmon, four thin slices of izumidai (sushi grade tilapia), and four thick slices of tuna. It was served on grated daikon radish with two wedges of lemon and some kale for garnish. I'm not crazy about grated daikon, but I ate all of the kale. I enjoy raw salmon with lemon, so I used the wedges for squeezing. While there are many noteworthy sashimi plates out there, tonight this modest one is what I had, and I'm feeling better.
Location: Edoku Sushi, 69-195 Ramon Road, C-5, Cathedral City, California. Date: September 30, 2022. I think this may be the first sushi roll I've had with beef on the outside. Inside the roll was shrimp tempura, crab, and avocado, but on top were tender and thin slices of wagyu beef garnished with various colors of sesame seeds. It worked. It was a delicious roll with a subtle smokey taste from the meat. It was served on a salad of salanova lettuce (whose claim to fame is that it has more leaves than any other lettuce type) with avocado vinaigrette. The sushi bar where I found this roll is owned by a Turkish sushi chef who studied in Japan (I've also heard of a Turkish sumo wrestler who wrestles in Japan). Interesting.
Location: Sandfish, 1556 N Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California. Date: July 9, 2022. In Japan, donburi is almost anything served atop a bowl of rice. While living in Japan, my favorite was unagi donburi, known in Japan as unadon. Fillets of grilled or broiled freshwater eel are place on the rice and drenched with a sweet and savory sauce before being garnished with sesame seeds. At Musashi, here in my desert valley, they called it Unagi Donburi on their menu, and they served it in a lacquered wooden box, which they often do in Japan as well. The eel is soft and moist, and fatty on the underside, and together with the sauce it is delectable. The sauce also bleeds into the rice, and that becomes delectable as well. My meal started with a bowl of miso soup and a bottle of Asahi dry beer that is now made in Italy.
Location: Musashi Japanese Restaurant, 72785 Highway 111, Ste B4, Palm Desert, California. Date: June 18, 2022. I enjoyed this seasonal cold noodle dish during the hot summers in Japan, but it's not that easy to find here in California. Luckily, I came across it at Ichiban in San Diego. The cold noodles, in a light soy based sauce, were topped with julienne of carrot, ginger, cucumber, lettuce, omelet, seaweed, crab meat, and teriyaki chicken pieces. The dish was garnished with sesame seeds, and it was a little sweet, savory, sour, a touch spicy, and it was very refreshing. It probably isn't the most popular dish at Ichiban as the lady looked slightly shocked when I ordered it, so I told her that I'd lived in Japan. She looked relieved and confessed that she liked the cold noodles too.
Location: Ichiban, 14490 University Avenue, San Diego, California. Date: April 9, 2022. This is six pieces of thinly sliced Japanese whitefish, each with a small dollop of yuzu pepper, and they're sitting on citrus juice mixed with some oil. The fresh fish was tender and just a little chewy. The yuzu pepper was peppery and citrus forward. A saltiness and peppery spice spread through my mouth as I ate each piece of fish, and the citrus added freshness. The citrus juice was not concentrated enough to cook the fish, like ceviche; the fish remained sashimi. This dish was expensive but luxurious, and it went well with my draft Suntory Malts beer.
Location: Taka Shin, 641 N Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California. Date: February 11, 2022. There is a new style of sashimi at Saiko, and in my case I chose the scallops. Scallops are hard to cook as you need to get a nice sear without turning them into hockey pucks; eating them raw solves this problem. The texture is soft and tender, but they do need some help in the flavor department. Here my halved scallops came topped with little blood orange pieces and bacon jam, which was finely chopped crispy bacon that had some sweetness to it. There were also micro greens for looks and freshness as well as garlic ponzu emulsion. The menu said there was jalapeño, but I failed to detect that. Like traditional sashimi, it came with soy sauce and wasabi. All in all, there was plenty of flavor, and the raw scallops were the perfect vehicle for it.
Location: Saiko Sake and Sushi Bar, 2884 University Avenue, San Diego, California. Date: July 23, 2021. These are two of my favorite Japanese appetizers. It doesn't seem to depend on where you get them as they're always delicious. Today I went to Sam's Sushi because they had outdoor seating, and I wanted a Japanese beer with my food (not legal when you're eating in your car). Agedashi tofu is a chunk of tofu that has been fried tempura style and placed in a bowl of dashi broth (which is made from seaweed and shaved bonito flakes; thus, it isn't totally vegetarian even though the fish flakes have been strained out). Today the tempura batter was sliding off the tofu, but who cares when the broth is this delicious. It was savory, a little sweet, a touch sour, and with lots of ginger (I think they added chopped up pickled ginger). It was garnished with chopped green onion and sesame seeds. The seaweed salad consisted of crunchy seaweed, a few chili flakes, some sesame seeds, and a watercress garnish. The dressing was a balance of sweet, savory, and sour. I enjoyed these appetizers with a large Orion beer, probably the only Japanese brand that is still imported from Japan.
Location: Sam's Sushi, 79485 Highway 111, La Quinta, California. Date: March 13, 2021. While I prefer my fish raw, if you're going to eat it cooked then one of the best parts is the collar, especially the collar of the yellowtail (which is amberjack, not yellowfin tuna). I think it's so good because the meat adheres to a large piece of bone which I think keeps the meat from drying out (and probably adds flavor as well). My takeout yellowtail collar tonight came with two wedges of lemon, a couple pieces of preserved carrot, and some ponzu sauce (citrus flavored soy sauce). My favorite way of eating this delectable fish was simply with a squeeze of lemon, but when I wanted more of a flavor explosion in my mouth I used some ponzu (at the expense of not really tasting the fish). This collar was the best piece of cooked fish I've had outside of Japan (where my favorite was whole fish head in a sweet soy sauce).
Location: Taka Shin, 641 North Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California. Date: January 16, 2021. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
All
|