Imaiya (Ebisu So-Hon-ten)

[torakris]

We had our first ever Tokyo egullet get together last night (6/12) at Imaiya a yakitori restaurant.

Here is there English homepage:

http://www.imaiya.co.jp/english/welcome/welcome.html

The food was really incredible and my husband and I had a great time. I will start off with two pictures.

A "snack" to be nibbled at while enjoying our first drinks and deciding what to order, young ginger and cucumbers with a miso paste

The chicken sashimi platter, top left is chicken tenderloin, moving clockwise there is chicken gizzards, down in the right hand corner is chicken breast and finally the chicken liver

[Palladion]

I'll add in a lot more pictures and comments later, but for now, here's this.

We had a private room on the third floor of the Ebisu Su-honten restaurant. They call this floor "Kagetu, A Hiding House in Edo." From the pictures that I've seen on their website, we were placed in the "Shogun" room. The table was above a recessed well, so that you could sit either Japanese or Western style.

Ebisu Su-honten kagetsu webpage

There was a foot-massage-style plastic bar in the recessed well area. It wasn't the vibrating type, but it was covered with little rounded plastic nibs, and it was nice to rub my feet against, particularly after a day of walking around Tokyo with 10 kilograms of assorted food purchases in my backpack. A very nice touch that I've not seen anywhere else.

I arrived at the restaurant first, and took this picture of the table setup in our little room:

[docsconz]

What a beautiful table! I still can't get my head around the concept of eating raw chicken. What do they do to minimize food-borne risk? I know that a lot of the risk comes with the industrialization of poultry farming, nevertheless...

[Chris Cognac]

More pics...lets see what everyone looks like!

[torakris]

oh my gosh, did we actually take any pictures of people???!!

Unfortunately I only got those 2 pictures, too busy eating and chatting .....

We picked this restaurant because none of us had eaten raw chicken and wanted to give it a try. It was really quite good and it was in some form everywhere, from under a pile kimchi in the pre-dinner appetizer to the salad, etc.

For me the most interesting part of the evening was the raw chicken brains.

and my absolute favorite dish was the foie gras, that one dish alone was worth the $100 the meal cost.....

Palladion has all the notes and most of the pictures so I will leave the descriptions up to him.

[jrufusj]

oh my gosh, did we actually take any pictures of people???!!

Unfortunately I only got those 2 pictures, too busy eating and chatting .....

We picked this restaurant because none of us had eaten raw chicken and wanted to give it a try. It was really quite good and it was in some form everywhere, from under a pile kimchi in the pre-dinner appetizer to the salad, etc.

For me the most interesting part of the evening was the raw chicken brains.

and my absolute favorite dish was the foie gras, that one dish alone was worth the $100 the meal cost.....

Palladion has all the notes and most of the pictures so I will leave the descriptions up to him.

I'm not sure there were any people pictures...uh oh!

Kristin's first pictures came out great. It's a good thing I was the only one not using a camera. I'm hapless.

I had eaten chicken sashimi beofre, but only in an izakaya setting. This was really something special.

I think Palladion and prasantrin each took a lot of pictures, so there should be more coming.

Off to catch a plane to Korea...more when I am back on Thursday.

Definitely agree the foie was something else... lightly grilled on a skewer with a little charcoal flavor, but not overcooked or oversmoked at all.

Don't let Kristin or Palladion get away without telling you how skillfully they use toothpicks as chopsticks to divide tiny portions of chicken brains into five servings!

Jim

[herbacidal]

The chicken sashimi platter, top left is chicken tenderloin, moving clockwise there is chicken gizzards, down in the right hand corner is chicken breast and finally the chicken liver

Query: so the chicken gizzards are that dark red beet-like color of a blob?

Looks good. All of it.

[torakris]

The chicken sashimi platter, top left is chicken tenderloin, moving clockwise there is chicken gizzards, down in the right hand corner is chicken breast and finally the chicken liver

Query: so the chicken gizzards are that dark red beet-like color of a blob?

Looks good. All of it.

yes that is the gizzard (tsunagimo).

A couple of other things in the picture that I didn't mention:

next to the chicken tenerloin (upper left) is some umeboshi paste、the purple-ish flowers are hana hojiso- the flowers of the shiso bud- and are edible and taste just like shiso, the yellow lump in the middle we thought might be chrysanthemum flowers. In the back of the picture is a stick of wasabi with a grater, we used up almost the whole stick! It was great tasting stuff.

[Palladion]

In the back of the picture is a stick of wasabi with a grater, we used up almost the whole stick!   It was great tasting stuff.

Yeah, that wasabi was great. A couple times, I grated off a tiny dolop of it and ate it straight.

-------

Alex Parker

Edited June 14, 2004 by Palladion (log)

[Palladion]

This is going to come out in installments, as I'm running around with a few other things right now.

As you can see in the picture of the table, the place settings were fancier Japanese style. Here's a closeup of my settings

In the back right, you can see a little tray with little bowls of salt, shichimi, soy sauce, and something that someone (I forget who) described as black shichimi. I think most of us tried the black shichimi straight. It was fairly spicy and peppery.

Also at the table when I first got there were two little bowls of food for each person:

The one on the right is a shaped cylinder of grated daikon. It was ok, but nothing spectacular. It's just daikon. But on the left was a very garlicky kimchi, with a suprise hidden beneath. After eating a few bits of the kimchi, we found small small pieces of chicken, which was very littly cooked on the outside, and completely raw in the middle.

We also snacked on that plate of young ginger, cucumber, and miso paste.

It was a good thing that we were given a few things to snack on while we were deciding on what to order, because it took us about an hour to order. It was a combination of us not really being able to decide exactly what to order and the fact that we seemed to have scared the waitress away. After waiting for a while, we started looking around for a button to push (lots of Japanese family-style restaurants have buttons at the table that activate a remote buzzer and alert the server that you want something). No tacky button at this upscale restaurant; instead there was a little bell. After we rang it the waitress came back, and we proceeded to order. 5 of us ordered the 8400 yen set, and one person ordered a variety of ala carte items.

A few minutes later the waitress came back and informed us of a special: we had the option to replace the chicken liver course with foie gras! The 5 of us getting the set meal jumped at the oppurtunity.

More later.

-------

Alex Parker

Edited June 14, 2004 by Palladion (log)

[Palladion]

And I'm back. I should tell everyone that I'm certainly the least qualified person from the get together to discuss the food that we ate. I only became interested in food as of about 4 months ago. I was actually in the middle of a very heavy diet that I had been on since arriving in Japan last August. So my experience with fine foods and flavors is very limited. I hope to be a quick study.

As I mentioned during dinner, I'm going to Thailand for three weeks this summer. In between bouts of feasting on Thai food, I hope to hit a few other types of cuisines. I've heard off-hand that there is decent French, Italian, and other types of foods available in Bangkok, though I haven't seen any specific reccomendations. I have, however, made a lot of detailed notes about where to eat Thai food from the archives of the elsewhere in asia forum. I know a few of you have had lots of experience with living in Thailand; do you think it would be worthwhile for me to pose the question of where to eat non-Thai food in Bangkok?

Anyway, enough with the introduction, back to the food.

At some point while we were waiting for our food (after we had ordered) we started playing with the little dishes and knicknacks that were on the table. That was when we discovered the black shichimi. We also found that they had fancy toothpicks. Those would come in handy later.

Well, it's later. We ordered the chicken brains as a separate dish, as it didn't come with the set meal. We made one order, and were going to split it 5 ways. It was the first thing to arrive:

The accompanying items and sauces were, starting from the top-right and going clockwise: ponzu and green onion, wasabi and shoyu, egg and shoyu(?), and something that I don't remember.

Yes, each little (tiny!) serving of brain was to be divided into 5 seperate. Kristin went first and divided two of them into servings with two of those fancy toothpicks. I divided the other two. Someone (I forget who) remarked that the work was so delicate that it was akin to "brain surgery." Ha! Thankfully the brains separated easily into little lobes, and so the 5 of us who wanted some all got some chicken brain with each of the different sauces. My opinion? It was intesting, a quite subtle flavor, and a bit gritty maybe. I liked the ponzu sauce, which set off the subtle tastes from the brains. This was our first encounter with the restaurant's fresh wasabi, and though the wasabi itself was excellent, it was overpowering when paired with the tiny piece of chicken brain. This would perhaps not been so bad if I had been eating a full piece of brain, as opposed to one fifth of a piece.

Next up came the sashimi platter that Kristin already posted a picture of. Again, this was to be divided up between 5 of us.

This dish came with three sauces, served individually to each person. One was soy sauce, one was a garlic oil of some sort, and the third was a terrific salted sesame oil. The waitress made some sugestions for which sauce to use for which type of cut, but I can only remember one of them: plain salt with the gizzard. I didn't care for the gizzard though; I thought it was quite tough and tasteless.

You can tell more easily from Kristin's picture that the surface of the chicken was cooked. The cooked layed ran maybe a millimeter deep, and everything past that was raw. My favorite was the liver, but I liked the breast meat and the sasami too.

Next up came the chicken salad:

I guess this is where my cullinary inexperience begins to shine through. My prior experience with salads has been the disgusting kind, literally oozing with commercial dressing. So up until this year I've avoided dressing on salads. Recently I've been experimenting with making oil dressings (oil, lemon juice, and herbs) and vinagrietes.

So, what can I say, this was easily the best salad I've ever eaten. It was some varieties of mixed greens along with red cabbage. There was a bit of oil or vinagriette and the salad was lightly drizzled with a sweetened mayonaise. Add in some slivered almonds and corn (yes, corn). Chicken again, very lightly cooked, as you can see in the picture. And finally there were some little red things which I didn't end up getting a chance to eat, and I don't remember what the others called them.

The next dish was individually plated, and it was the first actual yakitori served:

This was chicken skin and gobo (burdock). The chicken skin was exemplary, crispy and charred on the outside. The burdock, something I didn't think I would like on a yakitori skewer, but its texture and dryness worked well with the fatty chicken skin.

At first I thought that they needed a bit of salt or extra flavor. That was when we discovered something that would prove a small annoyance throughout the evening: the server had taken all of the flavored oils. I wanted to try dipping it in the salted sesame oil. Others were using salt (I used a little to, on some of the pieces). Sadly, the waitress had also removed the wasabi, which a few of us wanted to try on it as well.

But I continued eating it plain, and found that the tare (the yakitori sauce) really shone through. It wasn't overly salty, like my sauces turn out to be, and was slightly sweet. It was really good. In fact, I wish I knew how to make sauces that light. All of the recipes that I've seen for yakitori sauce have been something like half to a third soy sauce, and then concentrated by simmering. That is, obviously, going to put a lot of salt into the sauce.

Next up was asaparagus:

This was good. This was served with a watery chicken soup. I didn't think that the soup had much flavor, but it was warm, which was nice, because the air conditioning in the room was set too aggressively. Later in the meal we asked the waitress to turn the aircon down, as it was just too cold in part of the room.

Next was sasami with yuzu-koshou:

Though you can't tell from the picture, the chicken here was only cooked on the outside. The insides were raw. Because everyone got an entire skewer, this was probably the best oppurtunity to get a good taste of the raw chicken. The chicken here (and all of the other mostly raw chicken) was incredibly tender and meaty.

Gads this is taking a while. The meal took a while too. At this point we were probably 2 and half hours into the meal itself, which isn't counting the hour or so before we ordered. The meal was spread out very well, and we had plenty of time to sit and chat in-between the courses. In fact, the meal was probably a little too long. I left around 11:30 or so, after the meal had ended, but before we had entirely figured out the bill (I hope it worked out correctly!) because I had to catch the subway home. I ended up catching the second-to-last train when I transferred at 12:20am. The bus that I have to take from the train station had stopped running long before -- but the meal was worth it!.

Anyway, I'll post pictures and comments of the rest of the meal tomorrow.

-------

Alex Parker

Edited June 14, 2004 by Palladion (log)

[mjs]

I've been lurking for awhile (mostly on NY restaurant forum, since I live in NYC). I'm a frequent visitor to Tokyo and like Imaiya very much. I've only been to the Roppongi locaion and just took a couple of colleagues there a few weeks ago.

I've had raw chicken a few times before (always in Japan, first time was my first visit to Tokyo around 20 years ago...it was at an unagi restaurant). However, beyond the raw chicken, I think the quality of the cooked chicken at Imaiya is superb. Glad all of you liked it and hope perhaps one of my future visits will coincide with another eGullet get together

[torakris]

mjs,

welcome to both egullet and the Japan board!

Just let us know when you will be here, I am happy for a get together anytime!!

[torakris]

Alex,

thanks for getting the pictures up! I can't wait to see the rest of them , I am getting hungry again.

A couple more notes:

-the 4th sauce with brains was miso with something I think yuzu

-with the sashimi platter the recommended sauces were, soy-garlic or sesame oil (from Kyoto) for the liver, soy sauce (with wasabi or umboshi paste or the hana hojiso) with the tenderloin or breast and for teh gizzard she said anything would work but she recommended just plain salt. The liver with the sesame oil was my favorite.

-I really wish they hadn't included corn in that salad.....

-for some reason I was the only one whose trays of sauces didn't get taken and that sesame oil was delicious on the asparagus, my husband who is a wasabi freak had also grated off a small pile and placed it on the side of his dish before she took it away.

-the yakitori was really great, I felt the sauce didn't need anything else and I love the combination of the skin and gobo and I was very happy to see them using yuzu-koshou, my condiment of choice for everything.

[Palladion]

Right, now I remember, it was the asparagus that we had really wanted to try with the flavored oils. If you look in the top-right corner of my pictures of the asapragus, chicken with yuzu-koshou, or the grilled chicken wings, you can see Kristin's trio of oils and soy sauce.

Next we had another pair of items, grilled chicken wings and ginkan (gingko nuts):

The grilled chicken wings were meaty, and their skins were tougher than normal, I thought, a bit chewier. I really liked the gingko nuts. Here they were simply lightly salted and grilled, very tender and flavorful.

Next was the star of the evening, the foie gras. Unfotunately, evening though I took three pictures of it, they all came out horribly blurry. Grrr. Maybe prasantrin managed to take a decent picture. Anyway, here's one of the pictures that I took:

You can see the most important element, the light surface char. Like Kristin said, the charred bits had a wonderful smokey flavor and texture, but it wasn't burnt or overwhelming, it was just right. It provided a perfect bit of rough texture that complemented the insides, which seemed to melt away in my mouth. Also in the picture you can see the combination of fat and slightly sweet sauce that accompanied the dish. Excellent.

Next served was a grilled boneless chicken breast. I think there were two of these to be shared between the five of us.

I'm not a big fan of the chicken breast, and I thought that this was only ok. To me, it didn't seem different from a brined and broiled chicken breast that I could do at home. Lots of others in the group seemed to like it though.

Next up was what someone (I think Jim) described as "giant tsukune" (balls of ground chicken meat skewered and grilled yakitori style. typically they're much smaller and served three or so to a skewer):

Served with more of that tasty tare sauce, this time with an egg yolk to mix into the sauce, to give it more flavor and richness. It looked great and tasted wonderful.

This next dish was a plate of vegetables and that mostly raw chicken. It came with a pair of extra-thick, dowel-like chopsticks that you can see in the picture, for serving. The chicken was, again, sublime, and at this point, I think, everyone was thinking that they'd be forever tempted to undercook chicken when making it at home, however bad an idea that might be.

Our final savory course was a combination of different elements. It was served somewhat late, probably about half an hour after the previous course. It was held together by rice (the only time rice was part of the meal) that had been steamed in a pot called a kamma (I have no idea what is different about a kamma. Perhaps some kind soul could inform us all...). This slow steaming process was, apparently, what had delayed the dish.

The rice was purposefully undercooked, still just a touch hard in the middle. Prasantrin remarked that it was rice "al dente." The rice came with an egg in a dish. You broke the egg into the dish, added soy sauce, stirred that together, and then mixed it into your rice. I thought the rice was delicious, both with the egg and soy sauce mixture and plain (I had a bit of the rice afterwards, by itself). The al dente rice held up very well even when covered in the rich egg and soy mixture. Plain, the rice still had lots of flavor and a wonderful smell and texture, and made me want to get rid of the bag of super-cheap rice that I bought when I first arrived in Japan and didn't know any better (literally the cheapest rice that was in the store) and trade up to something better.

You can see an identification sticker on the egg. The egg yolks provided in the previous dishes had all been top notch, and this whole egg was no exception. The small item on the on the far left side is an umeboshi, a salted and pickled plum. I typically don't care for these, and while this one was definitely better than the standard, I still left mine at least halfway uneaten. In the top right you can see a bowl of miso soup.

Accompanying the rice were a variety of small dishes of food. Unpictured are mentaiko (spicy fish eggs) and salted squid in sauce. There was also a plate of assorted pickled vegetables:

And there was a bowl of kimchi (good kimchi, but no chicken hidden underneath this time) and the bowl of nattou that's being discussed in the nattou thread (again with the oddly thick chopsticks). I can't really identify the other items in the picture.

I just really liked the rice, egg, and soy sauce combination. I ate the other items separately, for the most part. The exception was the nattou, of which I added a little to my rice. It was much better than nattous that I've tried in the past, but it was still a bit strong, and I was really enjoying the rice mixture by itself. A testament to Imaiya's wonderful ingredients.

Lastly we had a small piece of melon for dessert. I forgot to take a picture of this, but it wasn't particularly unique or exciting anyway, just a slice of good, juicy melon. This was also the only course of the meal that had no fowl at all. I guess trying to work chicken into a dessert was a bit too much, even for the ultimate chicken restaurant.

Looking back at all the pictures now, it sure doesn't seem like all that much food, particularly spread out over five hours, but it was indeed filling, and I think we were all fairly well stuffed by the end of the meal. It was a wonderful way to sample a whole host of different chicken preparations. Between the food and the company, the five hours seemed to fly by, and we could hardly believe that it was 11:20 when we were getting prepared to leave.

I ended up walking home from the train station, which took about an hour and a half. This was while carrying 22 pounds of stuff in a backpack. I finally reached my apartment around 2:00 in the morning. And you know what? The meal was worth it.

-------

Alex Parker

[torakris]

Alex,

Thank you for the rest of the pictures! You are right it doesn't look like much but man was I full, even my husband turned down a third bowl of rice and he never gets full!

I can't believe you walked home!!!! My husband and I were talking about you on the way back and were hoping you be able to find a taxi, I didn't tihnk the walk would be that long! Maybe next time we could do lunch....

[Palladion]

Alex,

Thank you for the rest of the pictures! You are right it doesn't look like much but man was I full, even my husband turned down a third bowl of rice and he never gets full!

I can't believe you walked home!!!! My husband and I were talking about you on the way back and were hoping you be able to find a taxi, I didn't tihnk the walk would be that long! Maybe next time we could do lunch....

Actually, I chose to walk back. There were still some taxis running, but it was a nice night, I wasn't really tired yet, and, after the cost of the meal, I wanted to save a little bit of money. Thankfully, it didn't start raining, but it did lightly drizzle for a minute or two at one point.

Now, if I had missed that last train at the transfer point... that would have been bad. It's funny how you never think of such practicalities when the meal is set to start at 6:30.

------

Alex Parker

[torakris]

From their website here are pictures and descriptions in English of the the "7 miracle dishes" served with the rice (Koshihikari):

http://www.imaiya.co.jp/english/menu/miracle.html

The only one that was different was the silky egg, instead we were served a type of squid shio-kara, that was REALLY good.

I loved the tsukune on the skewer with the egg yolk, their eggs were really good, I forget were she said they came from (but they did have the sticker to prove it! ) but they weren't from the hinai chicken...

That last savory dish was a tataki of chicken thigh (seared on the outside and raw in the middle) was incredible, I also really liked the grilled checken breasts, unlike the rest of the dishes they were actually cooked! It was served with a salt and pepper condiment for eating.

I can't believe I forgot about those gingko nuts, that was also one of the best dishes.

Probably my least favorite, though it was still quite good, was the grilled chicken wings. don't really care for chicken wings anyway as I find them mostly skin and fat...

[Pompollo]

To all that attended.

Sorry I couldn't make it this time. I hope to get to the next one. Thanks Torakris for organizing.

As it was, I also caught a cold and was feeling lousy on Saturday when I was with clients all day. Went home and slept 11 hours.

Feeling much better now.

[Hiroyuki]

At this point, I'd like to ask all of you the following questions:

1. No one ordered sake? Almost all dishes seem to go well together with sake.

2. Why the foie gras offer? Because most of you were gaijin?

3. Why did the dinner take so long? Is it the shop's fault?

[torakris]

At this point, I'd like to ask all of you the following questions:

1. No one ordered sake? Almost all dishes seem to go well together with sake.

2. Why the foie gras offer? Because most of you were gaijin?

3. Why did the dinner take so long? Is it the shop's fault?

Question 1:

I don't know if anybody was a sake drinker.....? I don't drink at all and my husband doesn't really care for sake. I think we were also spending so long figuring out the regular menu that we didn't have time to think about the drinks, another factor may have been the price, witht he amount of money we were already spending I probably wouldn't have let my husband order sake!

Question 2:

Seared foie gras was actually one of the items on the menu and Jim's wife ordered a full serving of it, but they came back and said the a la carte portion had already been sold out, but they could susbsitute the "yakitori" one for the liver yakitori for those who wanted it and we all jumped at it. In my opinion the absolute best item on the menu and the best foie gras I have ever tasted.

Question 3:

Well it took us a good while to get assembled and order, about 1 hour but I am thinking that 3 to 4 hours was a typical time period for that course we ordered. The dishes were brought out one by one (except for the final rice and small dishes) and were very well explained. I felt the time and pace was similar to most kaiseki meals I have had.

[Hiroyuki]

Thank you, Kris, for satisfying my curiosity.

[prasantrin]

Between my IBS acting up and the almost end of term, I've not had much time to get to my pictures/posting. I had a great time, and y'all kindly forgot to mention that my being half an hour late contributed to the lateness of the dinner! Getting lost is my hobby, doncha know!

I put my pictures up here for now. I just don't have the time to resize, image gullet, and then post here. Not much commentary, or anything different from what has already been seen, but a nice picture of the washroom sink and also of people's elbows (so no faces, what's a face when you can see an elbow!) .

[docsconz]

This has been a fascinating topic. Thank you.

[torakris]

Between my IBS acting up and the almost end of term, I've not had much time to get to my pictures/posting. I had a great time, and y'all kindly forgot to mention that my being half an hour late contributed to the lateness of the dinner! Getting lost is my hobby, doncha know!

I put my pictures up here for now. I just don't have the time to resize, image gullet, and then post here. Not much commentary, or anything different from what has already been seen, but a nice picture of the washroom sink and also of people's elbows (so no faces, what's a face when you can see an elbow!) .

prasantrin,

I love your pictures (all of them!)

why is that no one got a really clear shot of that foie gras?

Were we all too busy drooling over it, too eager to eat?