Date Night

I hope everyone had a fun 4th of July! While you were all eating delicious BBQ and hamburgers and playing with sparklers, Gen and I had a fancy date night in Tokyo. When we decided to have a fancy date, we perused the Tokyo Michelin Guide (a gift from one of Gen's colleagues) and picked Morimoto XEX in Roppongi. Morimoto sold his stake earlier in the year, so it's now Omae XEX. Definitely check out that link- there are some great interior shots of the restaurant that wouldn't show up on our camera. Even though it's no longer the Iron Chef's restaurant, it was great!

The restaurant is three levels, teppanyaki on the basement floor, sushi on the first floor, and a dessert/cocktail lounge on the second floor. There's also a nice looking bar on the first floor, but we got a little lost (of course) on the way there and didn't have time for a drink. We ate on the teppanyaki floor. Teppanyaki is where the chefs cook the food in front of you on a flat-top grill. Think Benihana, but nice (no throwing of zucchini or drum solos on the grill).

We both ordered the lobster and steak prix fixe menu. Now I'm going to bore you with all the food details. The amuse bouche was a tiny cone of beef tartare and a coin of eggplant, fresh mozzarella, and salami with herb sauce. The appetizer was a bagna cauda with organic vegetables. Bagna cauda is a warm dip generally made with anchovies, but this one was made with crab liver (called crab miso over here). I didn't think I would like it because crab miso does nothing for me, but it was really good. Then we got the lobster. It had been killed right when we ordered it and placed in front of us, so during the amuse and appetizer, the poor split lobsters were waving their little claws at us from their bed of ice. The lobster was steamed with Dom Perignon (!) and then sauteed on the grill. It was served with saffron-orange sauce and asparagus and drizzled with chili oil. Seriously, the best lobster ever. Maybe it was the Dom, I don't know. The main course was the steak. I ordered sirloin and Gen got filet, but the chef split it 50/50 for us. We both agreed that the filet was the way to go. The beef was served with a roasted onion and some corn that had been dressed with soy sauce and butter. I don't know if it was the way they cook it or that all the veggies are organic, but it was the best corn in the world. On the side we had wasabi mashed potatoes. The second picture from the top was the main course. In the front are all the sauces. There was a black bean/sesame, a soy/green onion, Himalayan pink salt, and the house spice mix. Gen liked the soy for the onion and a combo spice/salt for the steak. I preferred the black bean for the onion and just the salt for the steak. Then the finishing course (before dessert) was a rice dish. Gen ordered the boiled rice. It came in a tiny little cast iron pot and had been mixed with scallops and some veggies. I ordered the garlic fried rice, which was topped with beef tartare.

Then we retired upstairs for our dessert. The dessert lounge is cool- a bunch of leather sofas and cocktail tables bunched around the room. I got the creme brulee (I think it was passion fruit flavored- the flavoring was a Japanese word we didn't know) and Gen had chocolate ganache-filled mochi. It was the best dinner ever. The service was really good. There were 2 guys to open doors for us, and one more to accompany us out to the street. And the waiter was really nice and took that first picture for us.

So after dinner we went to the New York Bar in Shinjuku for cocktails. It's on the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt Tokyo hotel. The view was amazing, even though the picture didn't turn out that great. We need to practice our night shots. We didn't have a reservation (who knew you had to have a reservation for a bar?) but ended up with a great seat in front of the window and right next to the jazz band. This is supposed to be where Sofia Coppola filmed the bar scenes in Lost in Translation. I don't know, I only made it through about 10 minutes of that movie. Maybe I'll give it another whirl now that I know the locations.

OK, this was so funny. Gen normally just orders whiskey when we get post-dinner drinks. In Japan most of the bars hand-carve the ice cubes and whiskey is usually served with a perfect ice sphere, which I think looks so pretty. But Gen decided to branch out and kept ending up with these girly drinks. His is the one to the right, by the way. It had flower petals floating in it. It was made with grapefruit and was actually very refreshing, though extremely girly looking. My first drink was so good- it was made with pear vodka, ginger syrup, and fresh apples. It was garnished by what I thought was an apple slice, so I took a bite. Nope, it was a giant hunk of ginger. That gave Gen the giggles for a while. I hope you enjoyed our date!