Weekend Cooking: What We Ate on Holidays - Japan and Korea - The Savoury Edition

Are you ready for a ton of food photos? 

Last week Robert and I returned from a 18 day trip to Japan and South Korea, which included a 12 night cruise. Along the way we ate some amazing food!  Normally I would mix savoury and sweet together and just do a week at a time but we didn't have internet on the boat so instead I am going to do two posts - one will be lots of savoury food and the second will be sweet treats. Oh my goodness ....the cakes! But that is next week.

We have been talking about going to Japan for a long time, and one of the main reasons for booking the cruise we did is that we would get to be there for cherry blossoms! We didn't quite get the full cherry blossom experience where you have cherry blossoms fully blooming on both sides of a path creating a blossom tunnel. We were probably a week early, but we did still get to see lots of cherry blossoms in both Japan and Korea.

In Tokyo, we spent some time in Euno Park where there was a Sakura festival taking place. This mean heaps of interesting looking food being sold. The day we were there it was busy enough. I can't imagine how busy it would get once all the blossoms came out. 

The one thing that we wanted to do while we were in Japan was to go to one of those small restaurants that you see in Japanese series like Midnight Dinner. The kind where there are just a few seats in a small restaurant, with a tiny kitchen which serves up delicious morsels. We found this kind of place as we walked through all the laneways, although we just had a beer because it was standing at high tables only and they were very clear when we walked in that there was no English menu available. 

We ended up wandering down the street a bit further and found a place. We weren't really sure what the food was going to be like but it was a place which specialised in soba noodles. Everything was delicious, although we did get two surprises here. One was that the noodles were cold, and the other was that this cute little bottle was for whisky soda! I saw the can and the word soda. It was only when this glass arrived that I realised we may have made a boo-boo!

At the end of our second day of walking around, we really just wanted to go somewhere local and so we found a little place a short walk from our hotel, which really fit the definition of the small restaurant I mentioned above, but much more modern. It was run by an older couple, cash only, no English menu but the Chicken Katsu Curry was had there was absolutely delicious and super cheap! It also had a takeout window so I suspect a lot of people just come there to get something cooked for them and then take it to their nearby houses to eat it.

On our last night in Tokyo we went up the observatory tower, Skytree, which was absolutely crazy! Talk about crowded. It seems everyone wanted to be there for dusk.  The view from the top was amazing though. We headed down to the shopping centre and then wandered through the floors where all the restaurants were. We really struggled to find a place where the food looked okay and there wasn't too long a queue. Getting both of those was a bit of a struggle, so in the end we just picked a place and then queued up to wait for our number to be called. And let's just say, we chose a great place. They serve up all sorts of dishes where you get an assortment of dishes including very thinly sliced meat in a broth which is sitting in a dish over a flame so that you dunk the meat in, and it cooks very quickly. It also comes with an egg, some miso soup, pickles and a steamed egg custard. This meal completely blew out minds. The broth was oh my goodness level of delicious! What we didn't know is that we would see this style of dish several times over the next few days, but this one was spectacular.

The others were all good too, and each had regional variations which represented the city that we were in, and they all looked so beautifully presented. In one place, there was a little bit of whitebait, in another the specialty was more fried dishes as accompaniments and then in another place, instead of the ingredients being in a metal pot over flame, it was served up in a thick, coated paper, which didn't burn as long as there was still some liquid in. They were all so beautifully presented

We did buy this gorgeous tea set from a market set up in one of the cruise terminals. I wasn't really looking at buying anything like this but I had to have it when I saw it!

When it comes to the food on the ship, it was fine, nothing much to write home about, but we did do a dinner in the French restaurant on board which was really good! I had French Onion Soup (not quite as good as the one we had on our foodie walking tour in Paris but not too far off), a beautiful piece of steak and a poached pear served with a dark chocolate sauce and ice cream. Robert had a mushroom soup, pork with peppercorn and floating meringue islands. 

In Okinawa we went to a really interesting fish market. There were all different stalls where you could just go and choose whatever seafood you wanted. I forgot to take a photo of what we chose, but here is one of the lobster options that were available. They were really reasonably priced too.

In two of our stops, Nagasaki and Jeju, we didn't really have any time to have have any meals as the ship left port mid afternoon. We did visit a village on Jeju where women divers live and work, which was an amazing experience. I knew that was the excursion I knew I wanted to do after reading Lisa See's book The Island of Sea Women. I did learn that Jeju is famous for it's mandarins and we did get to taste a piece of that, and the women divers also gave us a taste of some of the seafood that they catch when they were out diving. I tried some conch but I didn't get a chance to take a picture of that unfortunately. 

On our first day in Seoul we did a full day excursion before getting dropped off at our hotel. The lunch stop was at a big market where you could get absolutely anything. Food, drinks, fabric, electrical, kitchenware, you name it! Our tour guide tried to encourage us to try one of the specialties which is raw octopus but I ended up choosing the steak tartare bibimbap instead, which I quite enjoyed. I wouldn't normally choose steak tartare from a menu, but with the egg, vegies and rice it worked out quite nicely

Our last night in Seoul we stayed in a hotel quite close to the airport, as we had an early flight and it takes at least an hour and a half to get to the airport from the city. We weren't really sure where to go, but we ended up wandering around and found this Korean BBQ place. It has these very cool contraptions on the table which was really interesting to see! We had dumpling soup which came with various side dishes including what I think were maybe picked quails eggs. Whatever they were, they were slippery little suckers. It did amuse me to see that the Korean man next to us just used a spoon to pick his up!

We flew to Tokyo and then back from Seoul on Singapore Airways. I have to say that they are right up there when it comes to their service and food. That is one airline that you don't get off the flight and think gee I am really hungry. 

Next week I will be back with some of the sweet treats we enjoyed

Weekly meals

Saturday -  Meatballs
Sunday - Roast pork and vegies
Monday - Honey Pepper Chicken and Rice
Tuesday - Pork chops, mash and vegies
Wednesday - Takeaway
Thursday - Pork Nachos
Friday - Beef and Broccoli Noodles

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