Rosanjin, New York: Seven courses and sake

We spent President's Day weekend in New York (as did the rest of the world, apparently). For us, this has become something of a tradition, as the long weekend falls around our wedding anniversary, so it's a good excuse for a few days of concentrated eating, walking, eating, shopping, and eating.

This year, The Boy was in charge of finding restaurants. His method was to check out Michelin-starred places on OpenTable, narrow it down to cuisines we were less likely to find in Boston, and then see what was actually available.

Which is how we ended up eating a seven-course traditional Japanese meal, paired with sake, at Rosanjin in Tribeca.

The style of dining is called kaiseki, and refers to a multi-course meal characterized by colorful presentation, a balance of flavors, and the use of seasonal ingredients. Most of the cooking styles are familiar enough: there's a soup course, and sashimi, grilled fish, rice, and tempura. (Wikipedia has a good overview of kaiseki.)

Our exposure to Japanese food is limited. Yes, we love sushi, and we like going to places like Samurai in Boston, where we can get fatty grilled yellowtail collar and monkfish liver.

But we still weren't sure what to expect from this experience. Would it be very traditional and full of ritual? What if they gave us finger-bowls and we drank from them and everybody pointed and laughed?

Rosanjin is a tiny, intimate space with only about ten tables. There's no music (yay!) and the few other diners (all Japanese) talked in hushed tones. Normally, I'd love this, but this time it made me feel exposed: if I messed up, everyone would have a front-row seat.

But of course, I didn't need to worry. The staff was wonderful and patient, explaining every course in detail, giving background on the provenance and flavor notes of each sake, answering all our questions.

It's just a shame that I don't remember most of what they said.

Did I mention seven courses of sake? Actually, eight, because they brought more with the check. Plus there was no menu, so we had no point of reference apart from the verbal description at the start of each course.

So here are nice pictures, with hazily recalled details.





First course: a dumpling of (tapioca or semolina) topped with caviar and fresh wasabi, topped with a single flower petal, in possibly a sesame-laced broth:



Second course: mackerel, fluke, and (something) sashimi. This was almost too pretty to eat.



That carrot, by the way, was about an inch and a half long. Teeny-tiny.

Next, yellowtail and abalone and something with sweet Japanese ginger.



And we're three sakes in at this point, coming up on number four.

One feature of kaiseki is that all the dishware is beautiful, and chosen to enhance and complement the food. The same was true of the sake glasses — no ceramic cups here. Each one was delicate, engraved or painted or marbled with color.



Next, something I hadn't encountered before: a salmon fishcake (though textured more like the dumpling from the first course) in a gelatinous soup, with very umami-ish marinated eggplant and a long, single noodle ribbon, topped with scallion, finished with gold.



Yes, gold.



Up next, a basket of tempura: asparagus, pumpkin, and eel. Which was fantastic.



The asparagus was not what I'd call seasonal, but hey.



Then came rice and beans. This was a very sticky rice with a scant handful of beans, which The Boy liked (of course), though I found it a little bland. But I loved the accompanying dark, complex miso soup, and the side dish of dried, salted seaweed and soy beans.



And finally, dessert. This was, at least to us, unexpected: strawberry yogurt ice cream and cheesecake. With berries. Nothing seasonal about that. Still tasty, though.





It's possible that some of the courses were customized for us: When The Boy made the reservation, there was a specific question about allergies. As he's allergic to anything with an exoskeleton, we may have had the non-seafood versions of some dishes. That said, the couple at the next table, who ordered the nine-course menu, seemed to be getting more or less the same dishes as we did.

We love living in Boston; food-wise, there are a lot of excellent options. But New York always has more — something different, a new twist, a narrower niche.

Which is why we followed Saturday's classic Japanese dinner with Sunday's nouveau Austrian. And a visit to a speakeasy.

Well lit at Samurai Boston

You may wonder (or perhaps not) how I choose which restaurants to write about. Does it depend on the type of cuisine? The cost? The creativity of the menu?

Is it all an elaborate cover-up to mask thrice-weekly visits to Texas Roadhouse?

Actually, it's much simpler: Did I get decent photos?

See, it's one thing to write about the food: how it smelled, how it tasted, whether it was satisfying. But the visual aspect is a huge factor for me, so it's something I like to share. And I'd prefer not to show you muddy or blurry shots that don't do anything to communicate the look of the plate and give you a sense of the experience.

Which is why, despite repeat visits over the past couple of years, I've never written about Samurai Boston, a Japanese-Korean restaurant on Boylston (right next door to the Apple store).

It's a long, narrow, basement space with a small bar at one end and a sushi bar at the other, and tables lined along the wall. The staff is young and cool, the music is varied (last night it was The Killers and Weezer), and diners are a mix of Japanese students, office workers, and hip twenty-somethings.

Usually we get a table against the wall, where the lighting is low. Last night, however, we were lucky: the place was full. So we had a choice of waiting for a table or sitting at the (well-lit) sushi bar. Easy choice.



Samurai Boston has a nice collection of sake and soju. And the glassware is lovely.



The blue indentation in the carafe is filled with ice, so it keeps the sake cool without diluting it. Love. That.

We tend to get the same things each time we go to Samurai (so I don't feel as bad about not telling you about it earlier). Always on our list are the thin-sliced beef tongue, broiled and salted, over a bed of greens:



and the grilled yellowtail collar, with a crispy skin and fatty, deeply flavorful meat (and also a good test of chopstick skills if you can pull all the fish out from between the bones):



This time we also tried some new stuff. First, fresh, briny oysters with sweet ponzu sauce:



And then takoyaki, griddled balls of sticky dough filled with octopus and topped with shaved bonito:



And then ... "What's ankimo?" we asked our waiter.

"Oh, that's monkfish liver. It's kind of like ... cheese, maybe?"

Cheese?

"Well, kind of soft, but with a fishy taste."

Uhhh ...

"Actually, it's sort of like foie gras."

Fishy foie gras? Sign us up!

It was certainly very pretty.



And indeed it was a lot like foie gras in texture: soft, creamy, very rich. The flavor was both fish and liver, but not overwhelmingly either. Not cod-liver-oil intense, but a milder and very lovely level below it. Definitely one of those why-have-I-not-tried-this-before? moments.



At some point we might make it past the first page of appetizers on the menu and try out something else; Samurai Boston has a lot of Japanese and Korean dishes, and I always end up coveting whatever the people at the next table are eating.

Oh! And I just saw that the desserts on Samurai's dinner menu include cassata! Okay, that's a definite for next time.

And I'll make sure it's well-lit. Promise.

New pre-game ritual: Basho

It's hard to get a table anywhere around Fenway on a game night, and harder still to find a non-sports-bar option.

I should rephrase that. Past tense. It used to be hard, but now there's Basho.

We walked in early on a Saturday night before a game. The weather was sticky and oppressive; Basho was cool and fresh, green and bamboo-y.



It was also empty, and at first we thought it wasn't open. But no; it's just that most people either don't know it's there or actually prefer a 20-minute wait for clam chowder and chili dogs at Remy's on an 80-degree day. Hey, it's a free country.

We had Japanese yam tempura, and — because I'd just read about a similar, doubtless more heavy-handed version cropping up at state fairs — avocado tempura.



There were deep-fried balls of crispy sushi rice topped with spicy tuna:



There were tiger rolls: eel and cucumber with salmon and squid, topped off with salmon roe, a lovely balance of textures and flavors:



And. There was. The. Steamed. Pork. Bun.



Not the usual filled nikuman, these were more like sliders: hand-sized and stuffed with sweet, fatty Korobuta pork and lightly pickled cucumber. It was good.

So good that when I went to lunch at Basho with work friends last week, I ordered the same thing. And they were still awesome.

The bento lunch boxes looked pretty good, too:



The one downside at lunch was slow, slow service. A 20-minute wait for food is not good when you only get a half-hour break. And when they messed up an order, it took another 15 for them to bring the right thing (which they at least comped, with many apologies).

I hope they work out the lunchtime glitches, because it would be a very civilized alternative to the desk-sandwich.

Last Basho bit: we were back there this week to celebrate a much-loved co-worker who is leaving for Denver (sob!).

The sadness at her departure was leavened by Basho's insanely good chicken balls, which are light, studded with vegetables, and coated with teriyaki sauce. I know I wasn't the only one wondering how many I could eat without drawing attention to myself, and whether more would be forthcoming once the plate was empty.



Basho is a huge space; for each of the visits mentioned here, we were in a different part of the restaurant. As well as the bar, dining room, and semi-private area with a 17-seater table, there's a sushi bar and a more private room.

It's big enough that the chances of not getting a table, even on a Saturday night in August, are highly unlikely.

In other words, there's no reason to stand outside anymore.

Wagamama

Exploring the Selfridge's food court made us hungry. Luckily, we were just around the corner from the Wagamama on Wigmore Street.

The look and feel of this Japanese restaurant chain is sleek, clean, modern: open, airy and well-lit, with white walls and beechwood tables and a stainless-steel open kitchen running the length of the space. Dining is communal, which means you're seated family-style wherever there is space at the long tables.

You know, of course, how I feel about being unnecessarily close to my fellow diners; I prefer my food to come without a side-dish of unavoidable eavesdropping. Luckily, the overall noise level in the place is so high that we could hardly hear what our waitron was saying, never mind the people next to us.

As a rule, there's enough space for everyone--unless, as was The Boy's experience, your neighbor decides to dump all her shopping on the bench between you, thereby leaving you with just enough space for half yer bum.

Oh, yeah, the food. The menu (PDF) is big on freshness and value, with interesting choices like duck-and-leek gyoza and grilled asparagus with chili garlic salt. Big bowls of noodles and soup and rice dishes with lots of color and texture.

When I lived in London and was a Wagamama regular, I always went for the cha han (stir-fried rice topped with chicken breast) but this time I eschewed nostalgia for the yasai yaki soba, an oversized helping of wholewheat noodles with crunchy fresh peppers, scallions, beansprouts and butternut squash topped with pickled ginger. The Boy chose the chicken katsu curry, which involved panko-breaded chicken breast with a generous scoop of sticky rice and a sweet, mild curry sauce (plated with the rice on top of the chicken, rather than the other way around).

Wagamama is due to open its first US franchise on April 23 in Faneuil Hall (in the space that used to be Rustic Kitchen), with another branch in Harvard Square later in the year.



I don't doubt they'll do well.

Noodle alert!

Excellent news: Wagamama is coming to Boston! This was one of my favorite restaurants in London; the design is clean-modern-minimalist, and the food is fresh, healthy and fun. There'll be a place in Faneuil Hall and another in Harvard Square, opening spring-summer 2007.