The last supper (?)... with Hajime and Chun (27-08-10)

For the last bang in Machida, I wanted to try one of the last Japanese culinary frontiers which were left to me...Fugu!

Now, I couldn't find the occasion to go for a Kobe beef restaurant (shame on me, I know...), but I wouldn't be leaving Japan without trying their flagship fish. Fugu (河豚, フグ, or pufferfish) can only be eaten in Japan (as far as I'm aware of). Its meat is reputed to be among the tastiest and most delicious, at least for the Japanese. Unfortunately, there is this poison-related problem: Fugu fish has some glands whose poison ranks very high in Mr.Death's Wish List (just below listening to Britney Spears for 30mins.). You need a special license AND specific training in order to become a fugu chef and open a fugu restaurant.

It's fairly easy to convince Japanese people to go eat fugu. Yes, it's expensive (menu prices start around 4.000¥ or so), but considering how much they like it (and also the fact that it was really my last going out, I will not be seeing Hajime after that), it doesn't let that much of space for them to say no. The same goes for Chun, the Malasyan intern who had never tried fugu before, hehehehe... So the three of us headed for the fugu restaurant in Machida, with 300¥ discount tickets -Yuhu!- (even though it doesn't account for much, considering the price of the meal...)

The reccomended menu consisted in five main dishes containing fugu: a fugu-skin appetizer, fugu sashimi, fugu tempura, fugu BBQ, and fugu rice. Overall, the experience was interesting. Specially the fugu tempura and the fugu BBQ, where you could really feel how tasty is fugu's meat. Moreover, with the BBQ slices you could see that the fish was really fresh, since its flesh was still moving when they served it on the table (check out the vid!)



It's not the first time I get to eat moving food, but not being able to actually recognize where each piece of meat belonged to made me feel like staring at a living (?) cubist sculpture...

The skin's texture was OK, but its flavor is so subtle it's kind of complicated to figure out its taste.

All in all, I enjoyed the meal pretty much. All these "last things" that I've been doing for the last week have wore me down a bit. this supper, of course, was no exception...But on the other hand, who can cry when Chun and Hajime are both around?


Thank you guys for these past months...and the Fugu!