I celebrated my arrival in Kyoto with a dinner of grilled eel, a sublime delicacy in Japan. In the water the fish resembles a ferocious jagged-toothed snake. But when sizzled over hot charcoal it looks like a fillet of sole that has spent the winter in Palm Beach. The skin turns crisp and smoky and the fatty white flesh, basted with a sweet soy syrup, becomes deeply tanned and as succulent as foie gras.
The restaurant was located in a cheery yellow mall beneath Kyoto Station, home to the southern bus terminal, north-south subway line, and Japan Railroad Tokaido Main, one of the four major bullet train routes. Being coatless and having underestimated how cold it gets in Kyoto in early November after the sun goes down, I had ducked into the mall in search of warmth and something to eat.
The restaurant lay at the end of a long corridor lined with inexpensive clothing emporiums, elegant Japanese sweet shops, and trinket stores selling sandalwood fans, pottery tea bowls, and I Love Kyoto key chains. Like all the other eateries in the area, the eel restaurant displayed lifelike plastic models of the items on its menu in a brightly lit picture window. I chose a small wooden table for two in the back of the restaurant and sat down in the chair facing the kitchen. I was the only diner. The chef, sporting a clean, pressed, white cotton band around his forehead, came over to my table. He was apparently also the waiter.
“Are you kmrmshtka?” asked the chef.
“Hmmm?” My eyebrows shot up.
“What would you nsmsplka?”
I giggled nervously, then bit my lower lip. He gestured to the window and started walking. I followed him outside. “Unagiijxwbrp?” he asked. I began to tell him I wanted the tray holding the single, not double, fillet of grilled eel with rice, soup, and pickles, but he interrupted.
“No English,” he said with a frown, shaking his head. I tapped my finger several times against the glass in front of the dinner I wanted, hoping he might make the connection.
“Ah, ah,” he exclaimed, pointing at the glass, “Unagixpxwz.” I squinted and leaned toward the window to read the plastic plaque marked with the meal's price in yen, then slowly wrote the price on my palm with my index finger and tapped the window again.
“Hai, hai.” He beamed, nodding vigorously. “Kirin?” Now, that I understood.
“Yes,” I said loudly, as if increasing the volume might lead to an increased understanding.
“Ladzkmttaka?” He opened his hands as if holding an invisible fire hydrant from top to bottom.
“Yes!” I boomed, not having the foggiest idea of what he had just asked.
The double-size beer arrived quickly, along with a glass. It wasn't one of those huge Henry the VIII steins like we get back home, but instead a teensy tumbler, similar to what budget hotels in America use for juice glasses at their complimentary breakfast buffets. I filled the glass and took a sip. The amber liquid tasted bitter and refreshing.
After about ten minutes, dinner came to the table looking identical to its plastic counterpart. Unfortunately, the eel's texture was similar too. But the accompanying steamed rice, pressed into the shape of a chrysanthemum, had a clean, delicate sweetness unlike any rice I had ever tasted. The tray also held a plastic bowl of miso soup, clear in parts and cloudy in others. I stirred the mixture with the tip of my chopsticks, then picked up the bowl and sipped the savory liquid enriched with diced tofu and emerald wisps of wakame seaweed.
In a shallow dish sat a small block of bean curd splashed with soy sauce and topped with pinkish curls of dried bonito that looked like pencil shavings. I cut into the silky white cube and tried to balance the craggy chunk on the slender pieces of wood. It tumbled off. After trying again, success was rewarded with the sweet taste of milky custard mingled with dark soy and smoky fish flakes. There were pickles too, crisp neon-yellow half-moons of sweet daikon radish and crunchy slices of eggplant. Although I had not expected culinary brilliance from a mall restaurant, dinner was exceeding expectations. The ingredients were plain, but exceptional in their purity and freshness.
As I moved around my tray—sipping, plucking, and crunching—I thought of all I had seen that day. Exotic images flashed to mind, including the painted orange gates of Yasaka Shrine, shaped like giant croquet wickets. There were the streetlights, heralding safe crossings, which chirped “uh-oh” for north-south foot traffic and “wheesh-wheesh” for east-west. Ginkgo trees fluttered banana-yellow leaves shaped like tiny fans against the turquoise sky. Red and white vending machines, clustered near subway stations, glowed brightly with offerings of beer, batteries, and cans of hot sweet milk tea. In a tiny noodle shop near Tea Bowl Lane, where pottery shops flanked both sides of the street, I joined mothers, children, and old men to slurp thick starchy udon (white wheat) noodles from a bowl of savory fish broth. At Kiyomizu-dera (Clear Water Temple), a massive wooden structure looming over the city against a backdrop of vermilion maples, I stepped inside the main hall to see the female Buddha of Mercy and Compassion. Fabricated from gold, she stood on a pedestal waving her “thousand arms” in a dark room with slippery wooden floors and smoky air pungent with the musky sweet smell of incense. Afterward I drank cold clear water from an aluminum ladle at the Sound-of-Feathers Waterfall below the temple with a crowd of boisterous schoolchildren, then sampled a green tea butter cookie at a gift shop in the mall beneath Kyoto Station. Even the beer with dinner tasted new to me, cleaner, crisper, and less fizzy than what I was used to back home. It had been a day of pure exhilaration, an unexpected adrenaline rush in anticipation of the thrilling, unpredictable, hopeful promise of Kyoto—my new home.
~~Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn In Kyoto -by- Victoria Abbott Riccardi
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