Eight Course Lunch
Inspired partly by Jill-san’s post about her fabulous dinner at Nacional 27, I thought I would post about my lunch today.
Today was a special day. It was time for Aaron and I to go pick up our Gaijin card. These are our foreigner registration cards and they must be carried with us at all times. We are now officially registered with the Gifu City Hall and can breathe a little easier. We can also start leaving our passports at home, which is quite a relief.
To celebrate the receipt of our Gaijin cards, we went out for a nice lunch at Kouzo. Unlike restaurants in the States, most restaurants here have a special menu with items and flavors designed to complement one another. Items can be ordered a la carte, but it is quite rare. Instead, you order a complete meal and enjoy the different flavors as the chef had intended.
For lunch at Kouzo there was one meal option. And for the bargain price of 1,500 yen (about $15) we got to savor a delightful 8 course meal.
For starters we were served a very traditional Japanese wheat tea. This is a tea that is served cold and enjoyed by most people during the hot summer months. It is light and refreshing and I thoroughly enjoyed it after a hot bike ride to city hall.
After we sat and enjoyed our tea, the courses started rolling out. Not too fast, not too slow. Just right. One note about the portion sizes in Japan, each portion and course is small, no more than a few bites. Enough to savor and taste the food, but a small enough portion that one doesn’t leave the restaurant with a distended belly. Here is a list of the foods we enjoyed today.
The meal was absolutely exceptional, and for the price we were really pleased. But even more than the meal, I was so impressed that all while we were eating, the chef (his name was Hiro and he had great english skills) kept coming to check in on us. He was very welcoming and a great host. He explained many of the dishes and said that he would translate a future menu into English. We will definitley be going back to this restaurant, it was one of the best that I’ve found so far. Although, we will have to find another nice occassion, as the price is not nearly as cheap for dinner. But I am sure it won’t be too hard for us to find an occassion to splurge.
Mmmmmmm—-sounds good, even the stuff that I would normally not consider ordering. It’s fun to celebrate with a nice meal!
What’s your gaijin card look like?
What an excellent and complete description of a meal. I really got a good feel for all of the courses. It must have been so enjoyable to both feel so welcome and to have all the parts of this meal so tasty and to comes together so perfectly. I think I might try to get there for lunch often. At lunch anyway, it sounds like a great deal. And congratulations on getting your gaikoku-jin card.
Dad
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