Sometimes you just want to hole up in your room and just watch anime/blog while eating junk food which is what I did for most of the day – rice crackers and BOSS coffee.
Come dinner time, I wanted something nice though and walked to Butagumi Nishi-Azabu (my second visit after my first visit in 2007). It was early and I managed to get a seat without a reservation. In fact, I had a table of four to myself.
Appetiser of yama-imo and Suntory Malts draft beer (JPY 600); the potato didn’t really taste of anything just had a mildly pleasant palate-cleansing sort of feel, the dashi that it was cooked in was very sweet in that umami sort of way though. Suntory Malts is probably my favourite draft beer out of all the commercial brands – such a pity we don’t see much of it back home in Singapore.
Meishanbuta (Plum Mountain Pork) set with aka-dashi (small clam) soup, pickles, cabbage and rice (JPY 3,800). Tonkatsu sauce, salad dressing (with chilli and dried rosemary), pinkish salt and mustard.
The elderly waitress recommended the pinkish salt and it was spot-on, not too salty but enhanced the meaty flavour of the pork which was beautifully cooked with a still pinkish centre. The breading was so thin and yet was stuck firmly to the meat. Despite being deepfried, it was incredibly light and not oily at all. Truly grateful to AW for recommending this place to me four years ago and glad to see that it is still so good.
There were free refills of rice and cabbage but overall the portion of pork would be considered quite small – I was still satisfied as the meal was a thing of exquisite beauty in the mouth.
For dessert, I dropped into Burdigala mainly because I LOL’ed when I saw this sign… Her Excellency Leonmitchelli beckoned me!
I’ve always figured Captain Droppy Ears to be plain cream (not even vanilla) with a touch of mint but the eclairs (JPY 310) were like Ford Model Ts – you can have any flavour as long as it’s chocolate. Not that I dislike chocolate or that this was not good because it was good.
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