9 March 2017
I woke up happy and sad. I had a wonderful evening the previous night; it was a date night so I didn’t want to do a full review, but safe to say I will be returning to 1-Michelin kaiseki Totoya Uoshin next time I’m in Tokyo. Excellent seafood, from a fabulous nodoguro to a rather nicely-presented and delicious sazae. Sad, as I was heading to Narita in a few hours to fly out.
I had already finished packing up, but there was one more meal to be had — and it was a meaty one. I checked out of my room and headed off to the train for a few stops to my lunch destination, Hiyama.
This 1-Michelin place is above a butcher shop that sells some fabulous meats. I didn’t anticipate getting a whole tatami room, but that seems to be the way this place is structured. I looked over the menu and they recommended the wagyu rump from their special herd, so I went with it — in butter-yaki style.
I chilled as I had some sake and they brought the pot and various vegetables — and the meat…
My server started up the pot and started cooking some of the vegetables. Then added one piece of the beef, and this was the first bowl…
Mmmm, excellent beef indeed, and some good asparagus and onions. Good stuff. As I was finishing, my server returned and started up again, cooking a second bowl…
Agian, very good, lovely flavours with the generous use of butter. I enjoyed it, and she returnd with a full tray of things for the third bowl, cooking the rest of the vegetables.
Good, and I enjoyed this lunch. But I thought, I didn’t want to eat on the plane (don’t want to be poisoned by Delta like coming over) so wanted to fill up beforehand since I won’t be eating for another probably 20 hours (1.5 hours to Narita, 2 hours at Narita, 12 hours to Detroit, 2 hours in Detroit, 1 hour to Baltimore, 1.5 hours home from BWI), so I asked to order one more dish…
NOPE! Got dinged. They said they needed the space. I left rather unhappily…I was just an early space-filler apparently. Sigh… So I headed back to my hotel, but was way early for my bus to Narita… In any case, I ended up going to a nearby izakaya, Zen, had a big ol’ excellent grilled saba (mackerel). Damn that was good. That helped fuel me for my long, long trek home…
Sad to go, but had to go. Was a hellish trek home, but worth all the headache, stress and pain of cattle class travel to come to Japan. I’ll miss Japan, but will be back sooner than later.
Hiyama [日山]
2-5-1 Nihonbashiningyocho, Chuo-ku
Tokyo, Japan
melhuang1972 