Three princesses

I had a last-minute invitation to dine with a few of my friends tonight.  The host only goes to a handful of restaurants in town, and tonight it was to be teppanyaki at Matsubishi (松菱).

It's a typical evening here...with ridiculous amounts of good food.  There's the usual abalone and spiny lobster, followed by large oysters stuffed with diced garlic. Some more shellfish (whelk?) rounded out the seafood section. Tofu was pretty nice, with a crispy layer outside from pan-frying.  Foie gras was OK, and we had some paper-thin slices of ox tongue that were just wonderful.

We can't forget the beef, which is of A5 grade.  We had the usual combination of thin slices wrapped with garlic and spring onions, as well as the sirloin. Can never complain about marbled Japanese beef...

We had a very delicious lobster head rice porridge. There were lots of mushrooms and herbs to make it fragrant. We were pretty full by this point, but there was still the fried noodles (焼そば) with an extra fried egg on top.  I can't believe I finished both the porridge and the noodles...  Some of the others didn't finish these last dishes, and ended up having some really nice ice cream. Unfortunately I was already over my limit...

When I entered the private room, I immediately noticed three ice buckets, each with a large bottle (一升瓶) of sake.  I recognized the labels right away - these were the top three offerings from Kikuhime (菊姫), all of which are classified as daiginjo (大吟醸).

We started with the "lowest" of the three - Gin (吟). This is a sake that is released after a year's of aging.  Honestly, I'm a chick when it comes to sake.  I like them a little sweet (甘口), and this is definitely more on the sweet side.  Very round and smooth on the palate, with tropical fruit notes.

Kurogin (黒吟) came next. This sake is not pressed, but rather allowed to drip from hanging sacks.  It is then aged in bottles for 3 years before release.  Definitely drier than the Gin, and the alcohol was more apparent.  It was also a little more chemical.

Finally we had Kukurihime (菊理姫), the very limited release which has been aged more 10 years or more.  Seimaibuai (精米歩合) of 50%.  This was very complex, and in between the Gin and Kurogin in terms of palate.

It's not everyday that one gets to drink all three of these offerings together, so tonight was definitely pretty special for me.  It also meant that I got pretty drunk, but one can hardly complain when this is the kind of stuff that gets you drunk...