Flavors of Niigata

The latest victim I chose to skewer review for the South China Morning Post this month was Ebi-no-Hige (海老の髭) - the first Hong Kong outpost of a hospitality group from Niigata (新潟).  The izakaya features a good selection of dishes that includes regional specialties, which both No Fish and I found interesting, so we picked this place over a couple of others.

The set menus didn't look too interesting as they didn't feature much in the way of Niigata specialties, so I decided to order à la carte instead.

Our server came and plopped the appetizer onto the table and left without any word or explanation.  I guess this is what we should expect from izakayas... or is it?  As it turns out, this was pretty much the case throughout the entire dinner - just about every dish came without any introductions.  I guess since I had ordered every single dish off the menu myself, the staff figured that was no need to point out the obvious...

Anyway, one quick glance and it's obvious why we got this as the appetizer.  After all, the name of the restaurant literally translates to "shrimp's beard", and those are some long antennae!

Besides the cooked prawn - whose tail was stuffed with a paste which was a mixture of rice and egg (and I had to get our server to ask, because he had no idea the stuffing even existed...) - there was a bowl of nanban-tsuke (南蛮漬け) made with some type of fish.  Always nice to have something acidic at the start to whet one's appetite...

From here on the food arrived in rapid succession... and I think we got the next 5 dishes in the span of 15-20 minutes - thereby hitting one of my biggest pet peeves.  Sigh...

Jumbo fried tofu (栃尾ジャンボ油揚げの炙り焼き) - once you added a little bit of minced ginger, spring onions, bonito flakes and poured a few drops of soy sauce on top... pretty good stuff.

Really nice and puffy texture.

Noppe (のっぺ) - never had this regional specialty before, but I liked the contrast in textures between the crunchy vegetables like lotus root, the springy fish cakes (かまぼこ), and of course I just love it when salmon roe (いくら) is involved...

Mullet roe with radish (からすみ大根) - mullet roe is another one of my buttons that is easily pushed.  Just gotta order it whenever I see it.  Besides the flavor, I actually kinda enjoy having it stick to my teeth...  I guess it's my Taiwanese upbringing at work...

Salt-grilled rosy seabass (のど黒塩焼き) - I was a little taken aback when this was requested by No Fish.  After all, there IS a reason why she's No Fish...  Anyway, this was half a fish, and it was just absolutely perfect.  Crispy skin with succulent, moist and tender flesh on the inside.  I never thought I'd have to fight for fish with you-know-who... and when I took my eyes off the fish for a minute, all that was left on the plate were the bones...

Japanese vegetable assortment with 2 kinds of miso (日本産野菜の盛合せ ２種味噌で) - I would have been happy just to enjoy these delicious veggies on their own, but the snow-aged miso were pretty good, too.

Stone-grilled pork roast "Koshi Gold" (黄金豚ロースの溶岩焼き) - the one disappointment tonight.  While I loved the strips of fat in the pork, the lean meat was overcooked and seemed a little tough and chewy.

Eel with rice cooked in traditional copper pot (うなぎの釜戸炊き土鍋御飯) - Niigata's most famous produce is rice, and here they use Koshihikari (コシヒカリ) rice for their pot rice.  Eel over rice is something that's just so comforting for me, and adding some bamboo shoots into the mix provided a little more textural contrast in addition to the subtle flavors.

We turned down the offer of green tea ice cream, as we had other plans for dessert.  When I asked for the bill, it turns out there is an automatic charge of HKD 50 per head for the appetizer and dessert.  I guess this is kinda like how some Korean restaurants automatically charge you for banchan (반찬)...

I gotta say that I found almost all the food to be very solid and enjoyable.  This ain't fine dining - it's just simple izakaya food designed to go with... you guessed it... sake and other types of alcohol.  Most of the service staff could use a good deal more of training, but that's what you get when you visit a restaurant in the first weeks of its operation... at least in Hong Kong.

Speaking of sake, I was a little surprised to find No Fish in a drinking mood.  I must have been stingy on alcohol at our last few meals together.  Anyway, she herself was surprised that I didn't pooh-pooh her choice of sake as being "too feminine"...

Koshinosetsu Getsuka Ginjo Namachozoshu (越乃雪月花 吟醸 生貯蔵酒) - slightly sweet upfront but medium dry on the palate.  Clean and easy to drink.

I had an evil plan of getting us some ice cream after dinner, since we were just 2 blocks away from Lab Made Café.  I had vaguely remembered seeing someone post an interesting and local Hong Kong flavor, and wanted to grab a scoop.

When we arrived, though, said flavor was nowhere to be found.  Instead, one of the usual four flavors on offer has been turned into a random lucky draw, with the staff serving one of four flavors which, supposedly, they don't even know the identity of.  This was apparently in support of local social enterprise Dialogue in the Dark, whose mission is "to raise awareness and create tolerance for otherness in the general public" - including, obviously, people who are visually-impaired.

So No Fish and I each for a different flavor, and ate our first few spoonfuls with our eyes closed and trying to spoon the ice cream into our mouths without the benefit of sight...

The flavor of No Fish's scoop had that milky flavor but I couldn't place it, but when she said it was Vitasoy (維他奶) it all seemed to make sense.  My scoop was clearly made with tea, but instead of Japanese green tea I thought it had a deeper flavor profile and more tannic - consistent with Oolong tea (烏龍茶).

A pretty fun evening out.  I guess I should stop being a tightwad and start bringing out bottles of wine again for dinner...