As I said before, it's hard find a very good Japanese restaurant. I usually refrain from saying this in order not to give you the wrong idea that the Japanese dishes have more delicate tastes than the others, but some Japanese dishes are sometimes very difficult to cook just because the chef has to try hard to give subtle tastes to each dishes, like whether to add a bit of saltiness. I could basically eat anything, like very cheap hamburgers, but I think I can tell which dish is good or bad.
This restaurant is called "Rafu", and is in one of the residential sections of my city. It is very hard to find this restaurant since it's kinda hidden. And this "Rafu" had prepared only a few dishes for a few customers.
The interior looked like one of those rooms in an ordinary Japanese house. But I could relax with this soft lighting that came through these "Shouji", which are doors with these very thin pieces of paper.
I went to the bathroom, and the sink was decorated with these plants and flowers. Very Japanese-styled.
I don't remember the name of this set, but the main dish was "Tendon", which is on the far left of the tray and I introduced in this posting. What you can see in the center of the front row and back row are cucumber pickles and "Nimono" respectively. It is very hard to cook the latter because you have to fine-tune the strength of the salty taste.
As a dessert the set had this Matcha-tasted "Kuzumochi". "Kuzu" is made of powdered kudzu, and the texture of Kuzumochi is elastic like "Mochi", or rice cake. Kuzu is said to be very effective in healing your body that was made cool by air-conditioning in the summer. Here is a pic of kudzu. And "Matcha" tastes a little bitterer than green-tea.
Do you have a Japanese restaurant in your neighborhood? I'd like you to give it a try if you do. =)
