Bangalore has suddenly become cooler, thanks to a Bento box delivered to your doorstep! Now we can eat sashimi and sushi at home in our pajamas – the deliverance of couch potatoes and Netflix addicts. Shiro is pioneering the trend and I tried a couple of their offerings this weekend. I reckon I’m off to a great start!
The name Edo is inspired by the erstwhile title of the ancient city of Tokyo. It brings alive the Japanese Izakaya style of dining (casual after work watering holes) with sake, wines and whiskeys to savor alongside sashimi, sushi, robatayaki, tempura and scrumptious desserts. Edo has been enthralling and delighting Bangaloreans since its inception and has created an exalted space for itself in the culinary landscape of Bangalore. Voted the ‘Best Japanese Restaurant’ five years in a row – Edo is quite the overachiever! As Edo turns five, it has a new Masterchef in Nariyoshi Nakamura from Tokyo and a new menu to boot. The competition better pull up its socks… I had the pleasure of experiencing a Kaiseki style meal on a lovely Saturday afternoon (yes, they are open for lunch on Saturdays). Japanese Kaiseki is your equivalent of haute cuisine where the chef uses fresh seasonal ingredients to prepare a sequence of dishes or courses. Each course is artistically presented on carefully chosen tableware that aims at enhancing the final dish. Edible garnishes …
Japanese cuisine is so varied that to even fit the basics into one post would be a gargantuan task. So I will restrict myself to what I tried as part of the new Bento Box introduced by Monsoon at The Park Bangalore. The Bento Box is ahem…a box (sheepish grin), that holds a single portion meal of rice, cooked fish or meat along with pickled vegetables. It is the Japanese version of our lunch dabbas, albeit carefully prepared and presented (as is with everything Japanese)! The Japanese have created an art form, even with something as simple as a lunch box. Bento’s can range from the simple arrangement of food to the more complex ‘Kyraben’ where the items are arranged to look like popular Japanese cartoon figures or ‘Oekakiben’ where the food is arranged to form a picture. The Bento boxes itself can range from beautiful black lacquered boxes, shiny metal boxes to the more modest and convenient disposable microwave boxes. Japanese homemakers spend a considerable amount of time making Bento’s for their kids and …
Featured in Foodgawker.com on 20th Nov 2012 Featured in Tasteologie.notcot.org on 20th Nov 12 Featured in BitchinKitchen’s Twitter feed on 28th Nov 12 I must confess, I had never heard of this thing till my trip to Stuttgart this summer. I know Stuttgart and Japan are miles apart, but the story starts there. The co-resident’s friends, let’s call then D and E decided to make Okonomiyaki for dinner. Now E had travelled to Japan for her summer break and fell in love with this dish. The dish being a savory omlette/ frittata/ pizza made out of flour, eggs, cabbage, veggies and pork and topped off with mayo, sweet sauce, fish flakes and seaweed. It’s so popular in Japan that there are more than 30,000 specialized Okonomiyaki restaurants. The restaurant provides you with ready okomomiyaki batter and you add in whatever your heart desires and proceed to grill it on the grill pan in front of you. Then you decorate it with the condiments of your choice and proceed to polish off your Japanese pizza! Unfortunately …
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