Izakaya, Daikaya 居酒屋 大鍋屋

Recently, a few places have begun appearing in the Washington D.C. area with “Izakaya” as a part of their name; which is very encouraging. Once a restaurant with Izakaya in its name pops up on the “radar screen” we have to try it.

For example we tried Izakaya Azuma which is located in Rockville. It opened in June of last year and less than a year later it is closed. We can’t say we are surprised. We thought it missed the point of an izakaya both in terms of food and ambience in a big way. It was basically a Chinese restaurant with some “teiban” Izakaya dishes on the menu such as Yakitori and Kushiage.

Another such place is Kushi Izkakaya and Sushi. It is a big space lacking the real atmosphere of an Izakaya. I did not go but my wife went for lunch. She was not impressed.  To do it real justice, however, we should probably try it in the evening.

Another called Izakaya Seki sounds very promising but it’s location is very inconvenient for us so we haven’t tried it. 

Recently, another Izakaya cum ramen restaurant opened up in the “Penn Quarter” called “Daikaya”. It appears that its corresponding Japanese letters are “大鍋屋” meaning “Large caldron” probably referring to the large caldron in which ramen noodles are cooked. It is housed in a brand new building across from the Verizon Center (Google map street view still shows an empty lot). The 1st floor is a ramen place which we have not tried yet. It serves up a “Sapporo”style ramen. Since I am originally from Sapporo, we have to try this place. We did try the upstairs, however, which is  an “Izakaya”
Inside the restaurant is very nice with a central bar counter with small tables and booths around the periphery (picture above left).They have very cozy (read: tight) seating for 90. The tables are quite close together so you have the added advantage of sharing the conversations of the tables on either side of you. The table at which we were seated was so close it its neighbor that the neighboring table had to be moved aside in order for us to be seated which is awkward when the other table is occupied.

The wait staff was very enthusiastic and tried their best to explain everything, as scripted, even after I told him that we were familiar with these types of food and drink. As part of the explanation it was suggested that in contrast to American style where you order the entire meal at once, for Izakaya style you order a few dishes at a time in several rounds over the course of the meal. Our waiter in true American style, however disappeared after the first round of orders.

For libation, we chose sake from Kochi 高知 prefecture called “Sui-gei, Tokubetsu junmaishu"  酔鯨　特別純米酒 (picture above right). This is not too bad, not too yeasty but a bit short on taste.

Here are the dishes we had. I stopped taking photos after the 4th dish. Since we are not big eaters we never thought we would say this, but the portions of these dishes were way too small for us or even for any Izakaya. Certainly the portion size is miniscule for your average American even as a drinking snack or bar food. In order to make a meal we ended up ordering quite a few dishes which became rather expensive and even so we left the place still hungry.

The first dish we had, was wasabi octopus sashimi (left upper). I may be wrong and hate to say it but this dish looked and tasted like it was made with packaged frozen wasabi favored raw octopus such as I occasionally buy at the local Japanese grocery store. They just added small cubes of apple or jicama, olive oil and daikon radish sprouts. This was not the type of dish I would have expected.

The second was cheese stuffed shishi-tougarashi which was very interesting and good. We may have mentioned that shishi-tougarash  grown in US soil can be atomically hot but all four peppers we ate were fine (Our waiter appropriately warned us).

Then I found “Ruibe” るいべ of salmon. This is an Hokkaido specialty. It is thinly sliced semi frozen salmon. This was pretty good but again, the portion was Lilliputian (above lower left).

The 4th dish was "crab croquet". This is a very common Izakaya item and the base is Bechamel sauce with corn and crab meat. To be authentic, I was told that the crab meat must be "canned". In any case, this was served on old Japanese newspaper in apparent imitation of "Fish and Chips". We did not find the sight of our dish sitting on old newspaper appetizing and wondered how sanitary old Japanese newspapers could possibly be. Although this dish was not bad (deep fried Bechamel in general can’t be too bad) the crab missed its cue and didn’t make an appearance. This really looked like a factory made frozen item just deep fried at the restaurant.

Although I stopped taking pictures we had several other dishes: creamy tarako pasta, fried turkey wing  (this was good), tsukemono 漬物 (picked or salted vegetables) assortment of three kinds (again not bad but the portion was ridiculously small). At this point we were out of sake but still hungry (very unusual for us, since we usually get filled up with just a few appetizers). We thought of going to another restaurant but the Verizon Center was having a hockey game and the other restaurants we tried were stuffed to capacity. We gave up and went home.

While the dishes at this restaurant sounded innovative, they all had a premade packaged quality to them. Again, like many restaurants in the US that claim the izakaya title, it missed the ambiance that makes an Izakaya an Izakaya. Based on portion size alone, I just can’t imagine how this Izakaya will fair with the burly American clientele attending the hockey games and other events at the Verizon Center.

Pasta with grated bottarga からすみパスタ

After tasting bottarga thinly sliced like Japanese karasumi, we tried an Italian style dish and made  "spaghetti alla bottarga". This is based on Mario Batali's recipe. We really like this pasta dish.

My wife does not like regular spaghetti for some reason (note from Wife: she doesn’t like regular style spaghetti because of all those endless bowels of over cooked spaghetti topped with tasteless canned sauce that she had to work her way through as a kid particularly for school lunches). As an alternative we used very thin Angel hair pasta instead.

The amount of bottarga is totally arbitrary but probably 1-2 tablespoon(s) full of grated bottarga per serving would be appropriate. I just used a Japanese porcelain grater and grated bottarge (about 1/2 cup, below). It is salty, so we did not need to salt the pasta.

Other ingredients for 2 servings (see picture below):
Italian parsley, finely chopped 1/4 cup
Lemon zest from one lemon, grated using  a micro grater
Garlic, two cloves, thinly sliced
Bottarga, thinly sliced (2-3 per serving)
Olive oil, 2-3 tbs
Red pepper flakes, to taste

I put the olive oil in a frying pan on low flame and cooked the garlic and red pepper flakes until the garlic was fragrant but not browned (2-3 minutes). I added the pasta, lemon zest, parsley and tossed to mix well for one more minute on medium flame. I cut the flamed and mixed in the grated bottarga and served.

I topped the pasta with the slices of botargga, added more grated bottarga and a little bit of fruity olive oil on top.

This is a good dish. It is a bit like "tarako" spaghetti but the flavor and texture are quite different. The lemon flavor from the zest is refreshing and went well with the taste of bottarga. Surprisingly, although the botargga seemed extremely salty it was just right once it was mixed into the pasta. This dish went Ok with wine (such as the red wine we were drinking) but still it was not perfect. I am not sure what will go well with this dish but sake (to which we switched) or Scotch with water, for sure, or, may be, Prosecco.

Tofu with chicken meat sauce 豆腐の鶏そぼろあんかけ

This is a dish I made using the chicken soboro I made the other day. You could make this using ground chicken as well but the meat has more flavor if you use chicken soboro. I made this as the second dish I served one evening and it was quite nice since it was still rather cold at night.

Ingredients (for two good sized servings):
Tofu,  1 block cut into bite-size cubes.
Chicken "soboro", 4 tbs
Dashi broth, About 2 cup (I made from a dashi pack)
Mirin, 1 tbs
Concentrated dipping sauce for noodles, 2 tbs or to taste
Ginger grated, 1/2 tsp
Scallion 2 stalks, finely chopped
Potato starch (Katakuriko) 2 tsp with sake or water to make slurry

In a sauce pan, I added the broth and heated it up. When the broth was warm, I added the mirin and concentrated dipping sauce. I tasted it and added a bit more, please be aware that the soboro is already seasoned. I could add more seasoning later if needed.

I added the tofu, put the lid on and simmered for 10 minutes until the tofu is thoroughly warmed (do not boil). I removed the tofu to the serving bowls using a slotted spoon. I then added the soboro, tasted it (adjust the saltiness as needed). I then streamed in the potato starch slurry in several increments until I reached the desired thickness of the broth (the broth needs to be near boiling to have the full thickening effect of the potato starch).

I ladled the hot broth over the tofu and garnished it with the chopped scallion and grated ginger.
This dish can be easily made using raw ground chicken but using soboro gives it a more complex flavor. The rather assertive ginger flavor was nice. We had this with cold sake but the tastes are rather neutral and should go well with any wine.

Bottarga 唐墨

Salted and dried fish roe may not to be the most popular food item in the U.S. but, for some (Sardinians, or Japanese for example), it is a delicacy. I was quite surprised to learn that Japanese “Karasumi 唐墨” was actually an import from Europe through Nagasaki 長崎 during the time Japan was mostly closed to foreign trade except for “Dejima 出島” in Nagasaki. The European counterparts are called “Bottarga”  or “Botargo” and are especially well known in Sardinia. Since we cannot get karasumi here in the US easily, we were interested in getting “Bottarga” from Sardinia instead. After several failed attempts trying to get bottarga from local Italian gourmet food stores, we resorted to the Internet. We finally got Sardinian bottarga made by L'Oro di Cabras from Gray Mullet roe sold by "Gustiamo" in New York (package pictured below).

It is rather small and much darker colored than typical Japanese karasumi.

First we tried it in Japanese style with thin slices of daikon (shown above).

Next day, I served it with sliced cucumber and radish.

This one has a stronger flavor (or you could call it "fishy") than the Japanese variety. It is also saltier than the karasumi we got from Sushi Taro Osechi. We tried it with red wine and it did not go well  so we switched to cold sake which was much better. Albeit this is a good nibbling snack for sake, this is definitely an acquired taste and I have to admit, karasumi tastes better to me.

Fried Amaebi heads and sashimi 甘エビの頭の唐揚と刺身

This is not a new dish but since we recently got amaebi 甘エビspotted prawns from Catalina among other things, I decided to post it again. This is the very first dish I served after we received toro, uni and amaebi from Catalina. I decide to serve deep fried shrimp heads and shrimp sashimi together. I changed how I served the sweet shrimp sashimi. For this preparation, I chose 4 of the smaller shrimp. The large shrimp heads are better suited for miso soup.

I removed the heads, trimmed antennae and proboscis, dredged in potato starch (optional) and deep fried in peanut oil for 5 minutes turning once or twice. I removed the shells from the shrimp tails and deveined them. I cut them into small bite size chunks. (By the way, I made shrimp broth from the shells).

I seasoned with sea salt and sprinkled them with sake and marinated for 10 minutes before serving. Since two of the larger shrimp had roe, I added some of the roe to the sashimi. I then added a small dab of freshly thawed “real wasabi”.

This is the best way to enjoy the pure taste of rather sweet raw shrimp meat. My wife removed the wasabi (she said she didn’t want to taste anything but the sweetness of the shrimp). I, however, mixed in a small amount of the wasabi which I think accentuated the flavor and made it taste even better. The deep fried heads were crunchy and nice, although you have to be very careful how you eat them so you don’t get stabbed by a sharp leg. My wife removed the hard outer shells and ate only the inside. I braved everything--the shell and all.

Chicken “Soboro” 鶏のそぼろ

“Soboro” そぼろ is a rather common Japanese dish which is often used as a topping for rice (especially for lunch boxes). It is also used for other dishes but (more importantly) it can be nibbled as a drinking snack. In this category of condiments, “Soboro そぼろ”, Oboro おぼろ” and “Denbu でんぶ” are similar products. All of them represent finely chopped or ground up fish or other meats, seasoned (soy sauce, sugar or mirin with the addition of garlic and/or ginger) and cooked until the liquid is almost gone. My first memory of “denbu” is “sakura denbu 桜でんぶ” which is artificially dyed pink and a very sweet fish meat product. My mother used to garnish scattered or roll sushi with it. The difference between “Soboro”, “Oboro” and “Denbu” may be the fineness of the chopped meat or fish. In any case, I made this “soboro” from mostly chicken tenderloin and other trimmings off of three large bone-in split chicken breasts.

Here is one small serving which could be nibbled while sipping sake.

Ingredients:
Chicken, ground ( I hand chopped tenderloins, 300 grams or about 10oz)
Ginger, grated (about 1/4 tsp, I was out of the tube kind and used fresh ginger).
Garlic, grated (about 1/3 tsp, I used garlic from a tube but you could grate fresh garlic).
Vegetable oil (1/3 tsp)
Soy sauce (2 tbs)
Mirin (2 tbs)

I added the ginger and garlic to the ground chicken. I cooked the meat mixture in a non-stick frying pan with a small amount of vegetable oil on low heat. I continuously mixed and crumbled the meat mixture into small individual pieces by occasionally cutting and squashing the pieces using a bamboo spatula with a straight edge (below, left). I kept stirring until the meat was completely cooked and individual pieces were separated into granules. I added the soy sauce and mirin (the amount should be adjusted depending on preference or the use of the soboro. For example, If it is going to be used as a rice condiment, you may season it more strongly). I kept stirring until almost all moisture was gone (below right).

This is a very standard Japanese flavor of sweet and salty with ginger. The granular texture gives is a nice little crunch. Hopefully, I can come up with few more dishes from this chicken soboro.

Chicken breast with yuzu flavor 柚子鶏

I saw this recipe in one of the blogs I follow (in Japanese). Interestingly, this is all done in the microwave oven in a fashion similar to my saka-mushi  or sake-steamed chicken. This is a quite good drinking snack and we enjoyed it.


I followed the recipe with very minor modifications (I did not add sugar to the marinade).

Ingredients:

Chicken breast, boneless skinless (one, large)
Salt (1/4 tsp)
Potato starch (1 tsp)

For marinade:
Soy sauce 1 tbs
Mirin 1.5 tbs (original 1 tbs)
Sake (rice wine) 1/2 tbs (original 1 tbs)
Rice vinegar 1 tbs
Soy sauce 1 tbs
(Sugar 1 tbs, I omitted this)
Yuzu koshou 2tsp

For the side:
Onion, sliced, 1 medium
Scallion for garnish

I first removed the tenderloin from the chicken breast. Following the original recipe, I "stabbed" the chicken breast with the tip of my knife to make multiple cuts across the grain of the meat. Then, I flattened it using my  meat pounder (with a smooth flat bottom). I placed the marinade and the chicken in a Ziploc bag, massaged, removed as much air as possible and sealed it. I let it marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.

I placed the chicken breast in a silicon microwave container. sprinkled in the potato starch, poured the marinade over and place on the lid. I microwaved it on high for 2 minutes and checked (it appeared that the sauce was getting thick and I added a small amount of hot water). I flipped the chicken over and microwaved for 1-2 more minutes. (Our microwave is 800KW, and this timing has to be adjusted depending on the wattage of your microwave oven). I let it cool down a bit with the lid on for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile I put the sliced onion in a separate silicon microwave container, put the lid on and microwaved it on high for 2 minutes. I then put the cooked onion in the sauce with the chicken.

When the chicken was warm but cooled down enough to handle, I sliced it (The first picture is one small serving which is half of the breast), put the onion on the side and garnished with chopped scallion (green part for color).
I thought this was quite good and had a nice yuzu-citrus favor from yuzu-koshou. It is not spicy at all despite the yuzu-kosho. My wife thought this was on par with my microwave sake steamed chicken. I thought this tasted more interesting. In any case, this is a perfect snack with sake or even wine. Actually we had a cold ginjou 吟醸 sake from Shizuoka 静岡 prefecture called "Wakatake Onigoroshi 若竹鬼ごろし" Devil slayer. This is a slightly sweet gentle sake but has a nice fruitiness and went well with this dish.