Gyoyu : "Fish Play" with Chef Iwamoto in Ginza

48 hours after I arrived home from Jakarta, I was on a plane again bound for Tokyo. Traveling for business has its perks, one of which is regular trips to Tokyo, Japan -- a real foodie's paradise where I have yet to eat a mediocre meal.

As usual, my gourmet Japanese friend had scheduled a dinner upon my arrival.

He knows (though he does not approve) that I have stopped eating meat and bless his kind heart, always goes out of his way to give me a new food experience.

We walk from the hotel to the Ginza area and on one of the side streets, very near the corner of Harumi dori, among many anonymous buildings, we come upon this small lighted sign on the sidewalk.

It's fish night tonight! My friend has never tried this restaurant before but has read many good reviews about it and has seen it featured on t.v.

Let me drag my gourmet Japanese friend out of anonymity and obscurity.

Here we are standing in front of the small elevator that will whisk us up to the fish restaurant.

This is Nobuo Abe, the Japanese expat from Dentsu who established Dentsu Philippines ten years ago. Since then, we have shared many dinners, lunches and marvelous meals together.

He was a foodie long before the word became fashionable.

He is also a very kind and good hearted friend.

Typical of many buildings in Tokyo that house fantastic, small restaurants, you won't see any windows at street level -- they're all hidden up inside the building.

You have to be able to know the address and read the signs posted so that you know where to go.

This sign reads "Gyoyu" the name of the restaurant that Abe san has discovered for tonight.

According to him, the first character stands for fish -- although I think it somehow looks like a

cow -- or even a horse.

Surprise, surprise! The chef proprietor is a woman! Her name is Chef Iwamoto and she's very friendly and gregarious.

She gamely poses for this photo while pointing to the fish on the wall, which she painted herself.

The restaurant name "gyoyu" when taken as two words ... "gyo" stands for fish and "yu" means play. This is a chef who loves fish and plays with it to draw out unusual and unique taste experiences.

Talk about "playing with your food"!

The restaurant is very small -- as I have seen in most restaurants like this that are run by chef proprietors. There are 4 tables that seat 14 and a counter, right in front of the small open kitchen that seats 4. If you sit at the counter, you can chat with the chef and watch her while she cooks your food.

Abe san and I share a large bottle of Sapporo -- very cold and very good. Later on, we would switch to shochu -- with Abe san remarking that he notices that I have become a much stronger drinker!

Here is a small table by the entrance. Each table has hangers right beside it so that you can hang your coats and winter gear.

For this dinner, Abe san has thoughtfully ordered ahead. Reservations are crucial for this tiny gem of a place -- With just one seating each night and no lunch offered, the chef needs to prepare what she intends to serve since all ingredients are fresh, just sourced and in season.

Our first course is a tray filled with three small dishes.

From the top, chopped crunchy greens with sesame seeds in a light and smooth dressing, a fat plum marinated in shochu which gives a salty alcoholic kick and a slice of cold daikon or radish with a dollop of a yummy miso paste -- with small slivers of citrusy yuzu skin.

Everything is well matched -- slightly tart, salty-bitter, cold-creamy-citrusy.

We're ready for the next course!

The next small dish that comes out contains three different kinds of sashimi -- just two small slices of each kind. There is young tuna, tuna cheeks and a different kind of fish. So good -- each is different from the other one, in terms of texture, subtlety of taste and mouth feel.

A salad of mixed greens acts as a palate cleanser after the sashimi. Again, the dressing is very simple -- just a taste breaker that prepares us for the next course.

Next up comes a slice of ishidai or false parrot fish -- a species that is indigenous to Japan.

This has been lightly basted with a sweetish sauce and grilled in the salamander. It is a bit thick and chewy, not the usual flaky, melt-in-your-mouth fish but it's very interesting and sort of grows on you.

The skin is thick and tough -- but surprisingly tasty. So -- I chewed away!

After that delicious new experience with the ishidai -- we are next served these two very small cups that contain less than a teaspoon each of our next course.

The yellow pieces in the cup on the left are bits of fish liver which are oily, fatty and very rich, as liver usually is.

The cup on the right contains bits of anchovies -- yummy and salty.

These small portions are shared between the three of us.

Japanese food is really an exercise in restraint and discipline -- can you imagine sharing these very small portions among three people in Manila?

But here in Japan -- why eat more than a mouthful if the taste of that single bite is enough?

After the saltiness of the anchovies and the fish liver, Chef Iwamoto brings out another dish that is shared between the three of us. It's an old and traditional food that Abe san said is difficult to prepare and hardly is seen in any home.

This one dish I happily recognize as having a counterpart in the Philippines.

It's fermented rice with slices of salmon. It's creamy and sour and very refreshing.

I tell Abe san about our own local buro, which is also fermented rice with either fish or shrimp and which is quite similar to this.

When the waitress brings out three bowls of rice porridge, I know that this is the end of the meal. This is simplicity at its best. Rice with chopped greens, some onions and radish in a clear and uncomplicated broth.

It is the perfect single note ender to the symphony and play of fish flavors that we have just enjoyed.

It has been an evening of "fish play" with Chef Iwamoto.

Before we leave, I give her a bow and tell her I am so happy to have dined at her table.

She speaks English well and invites me to come and visit again.

When she learns that I told Abe san that I thought she was about 40 or 45 years old, she gives a

hearty laugh and hugs me tight -- telling me that she is already 61!

I cannot believe it but then again -- she is forever young because she is forever playing with her love for food and fish!

Domo arigato gozaimashita, Chef Iwamoto!

From Paris to Padang in 48 Hours

Simon Raven said "life is short and the world is wide" ... and may I add,

"there's so much to taste"

I arrived back from Paris before the New Year and left the day after for a business trip to Jakarta.

As I dragged my jet lagged and sleepy self off to the airport at dawn, I vowed that I would enjoy this trip, client meetings and all, and that I would make sure to try the local cuisine.

This was just my second time in Indonesia and I didn't see nor eat much the last time I was there.

When my colleagues asked me what I wanted to have for lunch, I said "Nasi Padang".

They all heartily agreed ... it was a popular choice!

We went to Sari Ratu, a very well known chain specializing in nasi padang. This branch we went to was at the basement of Plaza Indonesia, Jakarta's very premium and high end mall.

This is Sari Ratu's menu which lists all the padang style dishes available.

However, you don't need the menu at all because the minute you sit down at the table, the waiters come and place all these small plates of all the dishes available in front of you.

This is what nasi padang is all about -- nasi or rice, with a wide assortment of meat, seafood and vegetable dishes, mostly cooked with chili, spices and coconut cream.

Nasi Padang originates from Padang, the capital of Sumatra.

Without even having to think of what you want to eat, you get all these yummy makan -- from fried chicken to curried squid, assorted satay, stir fried veggies, pickled hot hot hot chili -- it's your own personal buffet on the table!

Since they knew I don't eat meat, this big casserole of fish head curry was deemed as my "own" and hardly anyone took a bite. I must tell you, this was very good, spicy fish head curry made of red snapper and very fresh and flavorful.

Fat fish cheeks too! So good, I had two of those fish heads!

According to my colleagues, I missed tasting this juicy fried chicken. They call it "pop chicken" and it's steamed first then very quickly and lightly fried in boiling oil. That oil dip makes it slightly crisp and locks in the juice.

We had exotic things on the table too like this piece of fried beef lung. I'm not a stranger to this since is also an ingredient used in our very own bopis.

Dishes are placed on top of each other, to maximize table space since there are about 15 to 17 viands served at a time.

The small dish on top is stewed cow's brain which according to my Indonesian colleagues is buttery, creamy, delicious and extremely high in cholesterol.

They call it "dangerous" food and laughingly admit to eating it just once a month.

I also got a small dish of ikan bilis or dilis to us -- crisp fried with lots of hot chili, it was so good!

This would go well with beer but Sari Ratu is a strict Muslim establishment so no alcohol on the premises.

Besides, it was just lunchtime.

Here's what my plate looked like -- I had squid, the fish head curry, vegetables, the ikan bilis or dilis and heaps and heaps of rice -- which you won't see because I had seconds and thirds after I took this relatively innocuous looking photo!

Day 14: Bistro La Petit Carreaux and Boulangerie Eric Kayser

One of the key rules when shopping is never shop on an empty stomach as you tend to buy more than you need or even want.

Keeping this in mind, we made sure to have a good lunch before we took the Paris Walks' Tasting Tour of the old Les Halles district.

I knew that we would be visiting a lot of food shops and I was afraid of giving in to the temptation of impulse buying.

Just as we exited the Sentier metro station, we saw La Petit Carreaux -- a typical looking french bistro. It was drizzling and very cold and it looked like a good place to get in, get warm and get well fed.

The restaurant was cozy and comfortable and full of locals when we arrived.

This photo was snapped long after our meal, when the lunch time crowd had thinned and it was only the tourists (like us) who were dawdling over coffee and cookies.

Even if it was a cold and rainy day -- it was our last day in Paris and I had my last glass of my favorite beer -- 1664!

This is what I ordered -- in the menu, it was filed under "salades" and was described as a duo of tartare of salmon and Coquilles Saint-Jacques or scallops. It came with a mound of fresh greens with a very refreshing dressing and handmade potato "chips" which were so perfectly sliced and cooked that I ate each and every one!

After that delicious lunch, it was still drizzling outside so we ordered coffee - the better to stay inside and keep warm.

Right across La Petit Carreaux though, more temptations beckoned.

A branch of Eric Kayser's boulangerie was too tempting to resist.

Eric Kayser is a world famous french baker and he had a store right at the corner of Rue Montorgueil. It was serendipity to find it on our last day in Paris!

While there was a tempting array of macarons de Paris, I opted to buy the simple and typically french madeleines, six small pieces which we couldn't stop ourselves from eating right as we left the store.

Standing outside nibbling on Eric Kayser's marvelous madeleines, we savored these last buttery bites of Paris.

Merci beaucoup Paris -- and yes, we had a very joyeuses fetes!

Day 14: A Last Taste of Paris

It was our last day in Paris and we wanted to leave with literally the taste of Paris in our memories. So we took Paris-Walks' Food Tasting Tour which featured the old Les Halles district.

Les Halles up to the 1970s was this huge wholesale food marketplace in the first arrondissement that was known as the "belly of Paris". With streets and streets of food suppliers, merchants, produce suppliers -- you name anything that had to do with food, Les Halles was the place to go.

This wildly colorful and unique market was moved out of the city center to the suburbs.

Today, Les Halles has become a major train station with a depressingly modern underground mall that features the usual chain stores, fast food outlets and (shudder) a Starbucks branch.

Our walking and tasting tour started at the exit of the Sentier Metro Station. Taking the Petits Carreux exit, we got out of the subway and found ourselves at the very start of Rue Montorgueil, one of the streets in the Les Halles area that continues the food tradition with its number of high quality shops, bistros, bakeries and cafes.

The entrance to Rue Montorgueil is at the corner of Rue Reamur.

Our guide, Mary Ellen starts off the tour by telling us that Parisians eat what is in season.

They shop for food everyday because they want their food always fresh (and also because they have small refrigerators in their equally small apartments).

Clementines are a variety of mandarin oranges and are the fruits in season this December.

As we listen to Mary Ellen do her introduction, she passes out these sweet, brightly colored fruits.

They look like they've just been picked from a tree -- the leaves are still a fresh dark green.

As we walk slowly down the street, I can't help but peer into the very attractive shop windows. Bacchus is a high end wine supplier according to Mary Ellen.

The real stop of the tasting tour is a fromagerie or a cheese shop. Outside the store is a glass chiller where a variety of cheeses have been packed. A sampler of 5 different cheeses is just 9 euros -- very affordable!

Inside the shop you see a wide variety of cheeses on display. These are mostly from artisanal farms, where producers make small quantities and deliver them to this store.

The shop keeper assembles a large tray of various cheeses for us to try, starting from the mildest, we work our way up to the strongest, oldest and smelliest.

Yum. I dearly love aged, smelly cheese!

Next stop is at La Mere de Famille -- this is a branch of the oldest sweet shop in Paris. It's been around since 1761!

There are a variety of sweets, confections, chocolates, marrons glaces -- if I had a sweet tooth, I would have gone into sugar shock.

But I did enjoy these small tidbits called Calissons -- made of almond paste and flavored with fruit essences, they weren't too sweet but deliciously nutty and chewy.

I particularly liked the non-fruit flavored variety.

These are a specialty of La Mere de Famille.

This is our guide, Mary Ellen and behind her is Stohrer, Paris' oldest bakery.

It was founded by Louis XV's pastry chef -- whose daughter eventually married into the royal family.

Stohrer is famous for its baba au rhum, which incidentally, was invented by the founder.

Today, it still sells the same cake, made with the same recipe.

The store is jam-packed with holiday shoppers and we move on to our next stop...

... Which happens to be perfect for this slightly damp and very chilly afternoon. We make a pit stop for hot chocolate, something that Paris is famous for.

L Atelier du Chocolat is not an ancient, historic shop but it treats chocolate very seriously.

These ladies explain their method of cooking hot chocolate and we get to try two varieties -- the sweeter caramel and the dark and spicy variant, which I prefer.

Aside from hot chocolate, the shop sells all kinds of chocolate confectionaries, bars, candies and even chocolate bouquets.

From sweet we move to something savory.

We leave Rue Montorgueil and head off for the small side streets still within the old Les Halles district.

We stop at Godard, where foie gras is the star of the shop. Everyone gets to try different kinds of foie gras on crackers and canapes -- I demur since aside from not eating meat, I am completely disgusted by the inhumane practice of how foie gras is produced and harvested.

Apart from foie gras, Godard also sells truffles -- at the astronomical price of 1,300 euros for one kilo! If you just want a sliver, 10 grams will cost you 13 euros.

Finally, we wind the tour down with a visit to a wine cellar.

St. Honore does not carry large quantities of wine but their bottles come from small, very exclusive and artisanal wineries.

What a fitting way to end our Paris vacation -- a toast to all the things we had eaten, drunk, enjoyed, experienced during these last two weeks.

Au revoir Paris -- as Hemingway said, wherever I go, you will stay with me -- for you are my moveable feast!

Day 13: The ultimate penultimate lunch at L As du Fallafel

I thought it would be difficult to maintain my diet of not eating meat here in Paris.

When I was about to leave, I told myself not to be stubborn and just give in -- maybe succumb to a good andouillette sausage or a hearty beef bourguignon or a plate of charcuterie.

But surprisingly, I wasn't tempted that much.

I was probably saving myself for a meatless reward -- on our penultimate day in Paris, we finally found our way back to the Marais, to Rue des Rossiers and to that sandwich shop recommended by all the guidebooks, the food writers, the food bloggers...

Here I am in front of L As Du Fallafel (or if you want to call it "Ace of Fallafel"

you'd be right on the money).

It's bitingly cold and we walked all the way from the Bastille Metro, to the Place de Vosges

and by memory and feel, found this famous sandwich shop that was closed the

last Christmas that we were here.

Thankfully, it's open and even if it's just past 12 noon, we're ecstatic that

there is still no line outside.

We get a ticket from the guy in front but this is just a formality as we are led in immediately.

The small tables for two are branded with the colorful logo. I know just what this much awaited experience needs and that's a glass of Kronenbourg beer!

I order a fallafel sandwich, the one that started this all and made them famous.

The sandwich of crunchy yet soft chickpea burgers (about 5 or 6 generous balls) comes slathered with yummy, creamy hummus, lots of slightly tart julienned red cabbage leaves, cucumbers and roasted eggplants.

It's a vegetarian's dream!

You're given a paper plate, a napkin and a plastic fork -- so I alternate between

eating the contents with my fork, to keep them from dripping over and

taking very large, unladylike bites.

Somehow I still manage to get bits of fallafel and hummus on my chin, my cheek and at one point, on the tip of my nose.

It's the best, the largest and definitely the messiest fallafel sandwich I have ever had!

The restaurant really started out as just a take out stand. Today, it has grown into the back room and they've also rented the next door space -- yet you can hardly find a table during crowded mealtimes.

As we leave, the line is over 20 people long. Even if service is brisk and the

sandwiches come as fast as you can order them, and diners eat and leave

(this is not a place to dawdle), the waiting in line can still take up to 30 or 40 minutes.

I'm really glad that I didn't have to line up to eat -- although this is one sandwich I wouldn't mind queuing for!

Day 12: Rue Mouffetard, 605 meters of history, culture and food

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast"

Ernest Hemingway wrote that in his memoirs of his life in 1920s Paris.

I consider myself just as lucky as Hemingway for I may not have lived my life as a young (wo)man in Paris but I have been blessed to have visited Paris every year, for the last three years.

And each year, we have chosen to stay in an apartment in the 5th arrondissement, in the Latin Quarter -- a few minutes walk away from Rue Mouffetard, one of Paris' most famous and oldest streets. It used to be part of an old Roman road that led all the way up to Italy.

Today, it's known for its lively street market scene, for the variety of restaurants and shops lining the street and of course it's famous because Ernest Hemingway used to live here in the 1920s and he and his many artist friends frequented the cafes along this road.

The center of Rue Mouffetard is Place de Contrescarpe, a nice little rotunda with cafes and a pretty little fountain in the middle. Have a coffee or a hot chocolate or a glass of wine, sit outside and watch the world go by.

Close to Place de Contrescarpe is the building where Hemingway and his wife used to live, in a small very cramped apartment that they rented for $10 a month.

In this photo above, it's the one with the rolled up drapes. 3rd floor for the french, 4th for Americans.

Friends and admirers wondered why Hemingway chose to live in this area, known as a place where the working class and poor students lived (it's also near the Sorbonne) since he could afford to live somewhere else.

But according to Hemingway, he chose Rue Mouffetard because he wanted to live among the locals - and not with the rest of the American expats in Paris.

From the center or Place de Contrescarpe, walk down the gently sloping road and see all kinds of stores like small boutiques, fromageries, boucheries, boulangers, patisseries, fleuristes.

While Rue Mouffetard has become one of the main tourist attractions of Paris, it retains its staunchly loyal local clientele.

Here's one of the charcuteries right on Christmas eve -- see the carcasses of pigs, pheasants, rabbits and other fowl hanging from hooks.

For those who don't want to roast their own noche buena or as the french call it reveillon, there are ready cooked roast chicken and pork for sale.

At the end of Rue Mouffetard is the old church of St. Medard. The church is very much an active parish and we have attended Sunday mass here a number of times.

The area in front of it is known as St. Medard Square.

This being the Christmas season, there is the traditional carousel, with free rides given by the mairie or municipal office of the area.

It's always full of laughing, excited children -- during sunny days, rainy days, even at night.

Everyone loves a carousel!

And the 605 meter walk, from Place de Contrescarpe winds up at this little fountain, at the very end of the road. Christmas trees surround it and fairy lights are lit up at night, welcoming everyone to Rue Mouffetard.

This little street is one of the reasons why we always choose to stay in the same apartment in when we are in Paris.

I heartily agree with Hemingway. Rue Mouffetard is my moveable feast!