Pre-holiday FUK day 3: Chinese Island

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Our only meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant on this trip was dinner tonight.  Sushi Karashima (鮨 唐島) has been open for a little more than a year and a half, and already grabbed a coveted Michelin star shortly after opening.   This was all the more impressive because, while Karashima-san has been cooking for a few years, his experience with a sushiya started relatively recently.

Tilefish dashi chawanmushi (甘鯛出汁茶碗蒸し) - made with dashi (出汁) from tilefish (甘鯛) and a specific type of egg from Ukiha City (うちは市), which has a more white-ish yolk.  Served with some shaved yuzu (柚子) zest for fragrance.

Karashima-san started prepping the shari (シャリ), and I could really smell the vinegar in the rice... and it was very similar to the black Chinkiang vinegar (鎮江醋) I grew up with.

Pre-holiday FUK day 3: American ro ro

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After two days of having no meat, Ro Ro was dying for some ro ro.  Thankfully DaRC had arranged lunch at Authentic Living Butcher NYC - a place where they serve dry-aged beef.

Being a fan of Japanese Hamburg steak, I chose the Aging Humberg and Hanging Tender Steak Course.  It's been a while since I had Hamburg steak in Japan...

We started with a few amuses bouches:

Spiced popcorn

Pork liver gougères

Chiffon cake with Marscapone

Pre-holiday FUK day 2: hidden on the side

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We had real trouble finding Daidokoro (大所).  The address points to an apartment building, but there didn't seem to be a door leading to any restaurant on the ground level... or was there?  We did see an innocuous wooden door on the side of the building's main entrance, but we forgot to check the pictures on Tabelog.  In the end I had to call DaRC, who walked out of the same wooden door we had ignored...

Napa cabbage and conpoy soup (白菜と貝柱のすり流し) - very nice with a little bit of yuzu (柚子) added, and a few black sesame seeds.  Interesting texture, too.

Next came a series of appetizers, starting with cream cheese flavored with dried persimmon (あんぽ柿), topped with a piece of kumquat (金柑) from Miyazaki (宮崎).  This was kinda interesting.

Pre-holiday FUK day 2: ramen and shopping

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Hello Kitty and I desperately needed to catch up on sleep, so we decided to sleep in today.  After eventually dragging our butts out of bed, we made our way to the original shop (本店) of Hakata Ramen ShinShin (博多らーめん ShinShin) in Tenjin (天神).

I first learned about this place at the GohGanDen pop-up in Macau last year.  The crab curry finale featured noodles from ShinShin, and I was really impressed with the texture of those thin strands.  It seemed natural that we should check this place out while we were in town.

There was already a fairly long line across the street when we arrived, and for two people who normally refuse to line up for food beyond, say, 15 minutes or so, we ended up enduring a nearly 40-minute wait.

Ramen with cooked egg (煮玉子入りらーめん) - the most popular choice.  With an egg, some char siu (チャーシュー), spring onions, and wood ear.  The fatty pork belly was really delicious, as there were some smoky and charred flavors.  The soup was tasty yet light.

Pre-holiday FUK day 1: hidden upstairs

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We're off to Fukuoka for a few days before the Christmas holidays, and thanks to the need to transit through Taipei, we landed just one hour before dinner was to start.  Thankfully the immigration and baggage claim at Fukuoka airport was really efficient, and we managed to get to the restaurant right on time in spite of a little Friday night traffic.

But Sensui (千翠) doesn't have any obvious signage... which isn't uncommon for restaurants in Japan.  We saw a well-lit staircase leading upstairs, but there didn't seem to be anything indicating that it was the restaurant we were looking for - until Hello Kitty poked her head inside and saw the name of the restaurant in very small font on a small piece of wood on the side after checking for pictures of the restaurant exterior on Tabelog.

Once upstairs, we sat ourselves at the short end of the L-shaped counter with a mere 8 seats, which our group of 6 basically took over while ignoring the Japanese couple who had arrived earlier.

I didn't do any homework for this trip, and just let DaRC book all the restaurants.  I just follow lah... So I really didn't have much of an idea of what to expect for this meal.

We started with a trio of root vegetables tempura (天ぷら) - Jerusalem artichokes (菊芋), potatoes (馬鈴薯), and propagule (零余子).