Dysfunctional Planner

Food hu, something I am very passionate about and something I feel I didn’t have enough of on last years trip to Japan. I am trying to make some recipes, I am nervous to try making as I want to get the flavours right but I thought I would share the best things I ate whilst I was out there.

Japanese food is probably my favourite outside of my dads Kreole cooking. We never had a bad meal. We are at tiny restaurants, vending machines, ramen shops that had queues down the road. We hunted out recommendations but we also ate what ever we discovered.

Okonomiyaki

Okonominyaki is like the best savoury pancake in the world. This was one of my favourite eats in Japan. When lockdown is over I am hunting for some London finds!

We tried them in Hiroshima as well as Osaka and I am an Osaka convert. I feel a bit bad because I was exhausted the first time I ate this, so when we go back to Japan I will be trying the Hiroshima one again. I think it’s only fair to give it another go.

This was so good when we went to Kyoto we were tempted to hop back in the train just to eat it again. Lucky there was plenty to eat everywhere. If you go you have to try!!

Sushi

I did not eat enough sushi but whenever I did it was incredible we were exploring all over Japan so we often bought our lunches at the train station so I always chose fresh pieces.

No matter where we went the sushi was beautiful. Fresh and tasty we didn’t eat as much as I would have liked because Gavin is not a fan and we found that lots of restaurants would only do one type of food. So his choices where limited. We did go to some fab fun places though!

Gyoza

Oh little Chinese dumplings, one of the things I loved most about Japan was that they were really honest about origins. Gyoza has always been my favourite.

Over 13 years ago when I was heartbroken in New Zealand my sister grabbed my hand and said Dana you have to try these amazing Japanese dumplings. So we ran through the streets of Auckland and found this tiny restaurant that had four stools at the counter and we sat down. She orders prawn and chicken dumplings and they were amazing.

Truly delicious.

We ate gyoza pretty much everywhere. Bar snacks, late night a quick lunch. If we couldn’t decide on what to eat we both agreed to gyoza.

Prawn is definitely my favourite but I wouldn’t say no to any flavour.

Ramen

We ate a lot of Ramen, it was only fair to try and eat different versions of it. But on a cold slightly drizzling day is there anything better than soup. Not just any soup but soup with noodles, meat and my favourite an egg.

No one does eggs like the Japanese we had it so many ways and in so many things. Gavin’s favourite food is Ramen he had a list of places he wanted to go so we ate it a lot. Clear broth we bought through a machine and sat down and devoured. A bone broth that we waited in a courtyard to be seated.

Ramen is heaven and if you are hungry this meal will fill you up. Just remember to practice your slurp!

Honey Cheese Tarts

We found these little patisseries everywhere each one doing it’s own version of heaven. You will want to try these little morsels.

When we were in Hakone we bought two honey cheese to try. The shop was very French in style and the fact it just sold tarts intrigued us. They were perfect. Pastry was crisp light and flakey and the filling was heaven. After eating our way up the street I couldn’t get them off my mind so we bought 4 more for the journey.

I was happy to discover them all over Japan. I really want one now. It’s making my mouth water just thinking about them.

There is so much to choose from

I couldn’t include it all. Like I said the food was amazing everywhere. We were adventurous ate in restaurants that were upstairs from the street. Tiny little places hidden away in backstreets. I even had a recommended tempura place to visit. The reviews were excellent, I didn’t know there was a simulator restaurant a few doors down which is where we went. The tempura was excellent we ate at the bar/ serving platform so we could watch the food get prepared. We also had our first Sake at that place which was so beautiful I had to film it!