Ishigaki: Again with the football…

It’s early on Sunday morning and the terrestrial television choices are between the under-17 FIFA World Cup (Japan vs Brazil) and a short documentary about a traditional sandal weaver. Japan are 2-1 down with 15 minutes to go, but then Brazil are doing that football thing of collapsing on the ground in utter agony, only to pop back up a minute or so later. As for the sandal maker, hmm, well that’s now turned into a rakugo (humorous story telling) performance. Further choices would be available if I trundled down to the lobby and bought a card that would allow me two flavours of pornographic ice cream and a cable film channel that can somehow claim to be premiering Men in Black in late 2009. Let’s skip that…

Again with the football. I’ve eaten two meals in Ishigaki with European claims. I have no doubt that some of the very best Italian and French food in the world is available here in Japan. Neither of these places would claim to aiming for that Michelin-style excellence. Indeed, a new volume of the Michelin guide to restaurants in Osaka and Kyoto (and Kobe?) has just come out. How on earth Michelin judge these things I don’t know and I don’t really care anyway. The whole MIchelin thing seems ridiculous to me, that dependence upon a singular critical approval is essentially anti-democratic and top-down. A restaurant loses a star, something must have gone wrong, better never to have been given it. Anyway, as these two meals had me pondering, this finickity obsession by some with producing food to please Michelin, rather than themselves or the customers, is something restaurants could do without. Masterchef Professional, the television programme with which I have a love-hate relationship, seems obsessed with this Michelin way of things. If I ever opened a top-end restaurant, I’d call it FUCK MICHELIN and have some suitably lurid tableau in the window that changed on a daily basis. Of course, they’d sue me, but since such an idea is preposterous anyway, I don’t lose much sleep over it. I do hope some Kansai chefs refuse the stars like their Tokyo counterparts. We don’t need it, maaaaaaan…..

Having walked past Moustache before, I thought to give it a go. Moustache does yoshoku (Japanese Western-style food) with French leanings and a fair amount of local produce. The interior is what I can only describe as late Showa into Heisei-era poodle frou-frou. Every corner of the place has some wine bottle or other food container, most often decorated with some crafty lace item, there’s no empty space for the eye to rest. It suggests a certain European legitimacy, an idealised cozy homeliness. Mitchu, the chef-owner, works in the counter-kitchen alone with his wife doing drinks and front of house. It’s relatively quiet when I walk in. Just the one other customer. I take a seat at the counter. Like many places, people relax a little when they realise that I can probably read the menu. They won’t have to translate it. Menus in Japan are sometimes written in the Roman alphabet, but it’s not really that essential. if it is done, it’s not generally done with the foreign visitor in mind, but rather as another signifier of legitimacy or aspiration. Well, the price of the bill most probably!

I order a beer and look through it. As I expect, it’s a mix of Frenchy (sort of) stuff with plenty of domestic favourites that owe something to Europe in their inspiration. I order a carpaccio of local Ishigaki beef and then again some local pork after. The beef is really quite delicious, although it’s cut a bit thick for carpaccio. The problem is that the delicacy of the beef is a bit drowned out by the dressing. Again, the pork is cooked really well in some form of curious roulade, but is served alongside some pickled onions and gherkins. Eh? I start hearing Masterchef-style comments in the voices of Michel Roux and Greg Wallace:

Michel: “He’s got the ingredients, but does he know what to do with them?”

Greg: “They don’t belong in the same culture, let alone on the same plate!”

The woman next to me is joined by a friend and in due course another male friend turns up. He’s already half-cut by seven o’clock. They’re speaking in Japanese, but occasionally he says “I can’t speak effin’ Japanese!” when one of the women tries to refine his rather rough language. Ishigaki isn’t Japan culturally and NHK/BBC received pronunciation isn’t the locals’ language of choice. I find it rather touching. He slides off the chair eventually and makes his way somewhere or another. The woman to my right offers me a glass of awamori and we get to talking. Mitchu and his wife begin to relax. By nine o’clock, service is probably pretty much over. Despite the oddities of the food, I like the place. As one of the women says, we don’t get foreigners in here. I say I’ve come because it’s called Moustache and since I have a beard, that’s as good a reason as any to try somewhere.

How do foreigners relate to each other in Japan? It’s an intriguing question. Often we ignore each other. A sense of “How dare you be in this little town or village I claim as my own! I don’t want my Japan experience tainted by interacting with outsiders!” is often pervasive. We blank each other. Look away. Don’t mess around with my powers of invisibility. As long as you don’t see another foreigner, don’t look in any mirrors, you can almost believe you are Japanese, even if no one else is convinced for a second. Over the years, I’ve caught myself feeling that way.  I now make a positive effort to smile at other foreigners, say hello, nod at least, anything other than the blanking. It’s offensive. Okay, maybe in Tokyo that’s not so essential, but here in the periphery, I think it is.

The women invite me out to sing karaoke and the night dissolves away with bottomless glasses of awamori and some light snacks. I like them. They’re about my age, probably a bit older, but wiser for it. The best word to describe them is blousy. They dress in a distinctly Japanese way, a bit like the restaurant interior, with little of that teenage cutesiness or affectation. One of them exhorts me repeatedly to marry her single friend, the single friend says it’s out of the question, the single friend and I sing sentimental enka songs together into the small hours. Songs that are all unresolved longings, bittersweet disappointments, heartbreaks and sudden partings. I’ve been in similar places before, having lived in small town Japan, but it’s the first time I’ve seen people actually dancing in them. There’s some drunken swaying, the scent of perfume, a hand upon one’s back. No one disgraces themselves and they walk me back to the hotel before jumping into a taxi together. No harm done.

A few days later, I return from Iriomote and finally break my okonomiyaki fast. I eat at Maru-Ju, a place run by an Osakan. Ah, that’s better… Outside, Typhoon Number 20 is making itself felt. It’s still a ways from here but close enough. Along the rain-lashed harbour front, I stop in at Ishigaki Gelato, a rather stylish ice-cream parlour that used local ingredients: seaweed, tofu, seasalt, black vinegar and so on as well as local fruit such as pineapple, papaya, and passion fuit. It’s good ice cream, but if anything I think they could go for it a bit more with the marine flavourings.

In the evening, I decide to head to Chez Didi (there’s a Myspace page with various videos). I spotted this place on a map earlier and looked it up. There’s an unreliable wireless connection here in the room and I managed to get a page of Google results before it conked out. The restaurant was opened by one Marc Panther (no, me neither!), a sometime model-actor-singer-producer of French-Japanese extraction who was born in Marseille. Oh? Could be good. There’s plenty of seafood around, Marseille inspiration, it’s on the harbour, maybe a glass of rosé even, pretend there isn’t a typhoon on its way…

There’s a few things that put me in a hesitant mood straight off. The welcome’s a bit off. Who is he? Will we have to explain? Can we explain? It’s understandable. This blog, for what little its chatter is worth in a world of such, purports to be about eating and food. Well, surely the traveller to Japan is always scaling the heights of gastronomic adventure. Wow! Blimey! Good Lord! Well, I’m not at all ashamed to admit that it’s not so. In Fukuoka, sometimes I was quite happy to pop down to the convenience store and sit in the hotel room watching tv and eating take-away snacks: crustless sandwiches, instant corn soup, cold noodles, curry rolls, chocolate snacks and whatever. The thought of going out and possibly facing a cool, yet polite, reception in some restaurant or street-stall where it seemed I’d have to do all the work putting people at ease. Sometimes the single diner finds it easier to eat alone and it’s not as if convenience store food is any less “authentic”. I make no excuses. Eating alone in Japan can be taxing. There’s a difference between a warm reception and a reception where every phrase from the waiting staff is by rote.

Chez Didi was a bit like the second of those. The rosé is off. Pastis? There’s Pernod. FFS! It’s not as if you can’t buy Ricard in Japan. Bouillabaisse on the menu, but not being cooked. Okay, that’s not unknown in France either. There’s far too much beef on the menu and no fish, just some seafood. The BGM is accordion music. Despite Chez Didi’s perceived (by me!) claims to French provenance, the menu is not so different from Moustache’s. Moustache offers omuraisu (a light omelette wrapped around rice). Chez Didi offers hayashi rice, a sort of beef stew stir-fry. Both of these are very tasty, but certainly not French as you know it.

The wine list is short and not Mediterranean, let alone French, enough for me. I want something crisp and light, I get an oaky New World Chardonnay by the glass. Eurgh… First up is a dish of scallops in “marinara” sauce. The scallops are okay, they could be seared a little better, but again the sauce drowns them out and the pungent garlic bread doesn’t help there either. The second course of clam pasta, on the other hand, lacks oceanic punch and is rather bland.

Michel: “No, that’s no good. You’ve wasted some delicious scallops there.” (Young chef’s crushed expression)

Greg: “It needs an extra something to help bring the flavour out.” (Vague attempt at consolation)

I try to block out the accordion music by recreating Morrissey in my head: “In a seaside town, they forgot to close you down. Come, Armageddon, come, Armageddon, come…”

To be fair, both Moustache and Chez Didi fail in some way. However, I liked Moustache, the kitsch interior, the chat of the locals, the owner’s slightly weary yet gentle face. He’d placed his catering certificates from a college in Okinawa on the wall, Chez Didi was all about Marc and his Marseillais dad, there was even a book for sale. If you wear that as a restaurant, if it’s part of your claim, you have to live up to it. Taking care of little details (choice of pastis, an Olympique de Marseille poster or two) would greatly help.

The coffee, Nespresso, was welcome though! And hard to fuck up. I see on one of those videos that it was Illy previously.

I walked back towards the hotel and popped into Amurita no Niwa for desert and a final chat. I got the impression from them that Chez Didi was somewhat out of Marc Panther’s hands these days. As one local information booklet has it, it’s “Marc Panther’s produced restaurant”. Although that probably actually mean Marc Panther the [music] producer’s restaurant. Anyway, he’s effectively put his name on it, written the book, the first version of the menu and possibly more or less walked away with the cultural, if not financial, profit. Quite possibly, there was a more Marseillais thing going on at first and it didn’t work out. Tourists didn’t find it French enough. More accordion, please! Marc is probably a pleasant enough bloke, but he needs to stop fannying around his luxury villa and keep a closer eye on the kitchen and the rosé supplies. To be frank, part of my issue with this place is (regardless of the current extent of his actual involvement) that it is a restaurant born out of financial privilege, whereas Moustache does not enjoy that cushion of advantage. He can afford to do better.

The festival is cancelled due to the typhoon. I had an excellent chocolate pavé with ice cream, some iced chai to finish. They are doing everything right there! I suspect that they possibly speak more English than I let them so fear not, lonesome traveller!

What to do today amidst the wind and rain? Well, there is an invitation from a certain lady of a certain age for lunch, but Ishigaki, like anywhere in the world, has its share of drunken promises and I shall not be too crestfallen if that comes to nowt.

There’s always A&W…

Ishigaki: A Game of Two Halves

After five days in Fukuoka, I head down to Ishigaki. It’s a two hour flight and after checking in at the somewhat Provencal-coloured Abyiyan Pana hotel, I take a stroll around town.

On the plane, they show a twenty minute “gourmet” tour of Hawaii. Hawaii shares some features with the Okinawan islands. They’re both places within a country that offer the thrill of exoticism (and white beaches, turquoise water, scuba diving, fantasy weddings, spa treatments, luxury resort hotels, the possibility of an island) without the need for a passport. In fact, plenty of Okinawans emigrated to Hawaii in the 20th century. The food in Hawaii looks unappetising. There are huge slabs of steak thrown onto hot grills, but the American beef doesn’t have the camera appeal of the Japanese wagyu. It’s a sexier looking meat with all that fat marbling. Why not try loco moco? That doesn’t look good either. It might be good food for a hangover. A large fish (opakapaka?) has its body sectioned, battered and then deep-fried in the one piece. Rainbow-hued shaved ice. It’s holiday destination food. I too am going to a holiday destination.

I go into a t-shirt boutique on the shopping arcade called Achicoco and buy a couple of Okinawan pro-wrestling t-shirts. It’s some sort of cartoon parody (?) of Mexican lucha libre, although I see a poster for an actual bout later on. The wrestler has the word “Love The Beef” on his outfit, there’s the phrase “Healthy Food is Maximum Enemy”. Sold! Maybe my hopes are a bit high, but the shop owner seems a bit miserable and rather unengaging in conversation. There’s a poster for the Tropical Lovers Beach Festa this Sunday and the singer UA, who I mentioned in a previous post, is playing. Maybe. Oh well, I think, it’s off-season, you’re possibly fed up with tourists by now, looking forward to a break.

My wandering eventually takes me back to a place I spotted earlier that serves the local Ishigaki beer. The beer is good, but as for the rest of it. There’s only one member of the staff that remotely smiles. Their only real interaction with the customers is “How many of you are there?” and taking orders. They suggest eating sashimi. I decide to try kuruma (car/wheel) shrimp. Why so-called I ask? No one knows. And this is the mimiga? Yes. It’s pig’s ear, isn’t it? Yes. Come on, describe a little, tell me it tastes good, something. A smile, perhaps.

The lovely ramshackle wood interior is wasted. The restaurant is filling up whilst I’m there. I sit at the the counter, looking into the kitchen, seeing how the staff work together. I get the feeling some unresolved feud is going on. The cook’s face is sour. Everyone looks nervous. The food is edible, but I get the feeling the prawn may well be frozen from Thailand, the mozuku (a local seaweed doused in vinegar) is okay, the mimiga is drowning in a sauce that cuts out any possible taste of ear. It’s like vaguely cooked bacon rind, where I think it would be better heading towards pork scratching. A touch of crunch on the outside, melting within.

The salad dressing is decanted out of a supermarket bottle, I can see packets being opened, pre-cooked tofu flash fried in a pan. Kitchens all do it, but do you want your customers to see it? There’s nothing here that you probably couldn’t get off the shelf in any mainland Japanese city. Indifference.

A golden rule of this counter-style eating is that it’s a stage. A performance, it needs interaction between staff and customer. If the staff are silent, fine, but they need to be pre-occupied, putting their focus into something that looks like you want to eat it. They have to look like they know what they’re doing, rather than glaring at each other behind their backs. If the food is average, okay too, but then you need to compensate with some good humour, a welcoming spirit.

I send a text to a friend in the UK with this mobile phone picture: “The local beer in this place is great, but the food lacks soul. It feels like a scene in Tampopo, how not to run a place, their welcome [there’s a section in that film about ways of saying “Irrasshaimase!” when customers walk in] convinces no one, well, not me. Fuck it, I’m going up the road for okonomiyaki!”

NOTE: Now that I’ve got a connection, I find that this place’s name, O-ri To-ri (おーりとーり) is in fact welcome in local dialect. Yeah, like whatever…

So I pay, unsatisfied, and try to find somewhere else. I consider “Moustache“, a French looking menu, just because it’s called Moustache. I’m sure you’d do the same. There’s one place I pass by once that looks promising and as I pass it by on the second trawl, I decide that they could probably manage a gin and tonic to cheer a disconsolate Englishman up.

They do! Amurita no Niwa is on the western end of the street with main market on it. A stretch of tourist tat with a local food market, as well as a few more upscale places dotted around. The gin and tonic is good, let’s wash away the taste of the previous place. I end up eating a spicy curry soba noodle soup [There’s an article here] on their recommendation. There’s an Okinawan dish called champuru and that word means mix and refers both to its blend of ingredients as well as cultural borrowings. This particuar noodle soup is a similar mix of local island produce but with a Thai-style curry base to it. And a well-executed fried egg on top to mix in. I finally start relaxing. Could be the gin, my stomach is happy, but above all, it’s having amicable surrounds.

The restaurant was opened last year by the Miyamoto husband and wife team of Shingo and Sayuri. She’s from Ishigaki, he’s from Kyushu, they met in Tokyo. It’s a modern sort of space, light, spacious with some good art work, nice choice of books and excellent music in the background. I suppose one might think that it’s somehow not “authentic”, whatever the hell that is, aside from being consigned to a museum. No, the menu is not traditional although it’s certainly local. It’s not ur-Yaeyama cuisine, but it is being cooked by a local person and, always a good sign, she tastes as she cooks!

Later, as conversation flows, I spot a bottle of local coffee liqueur on the counter. It’s made with a base of awamori (the local rice spirit) with cocoa, local “black sugar” and coffee. I wonder whether it might make a decent alternative to Kahlua for a White Russian. We taste compare Kahlua against the local, end up making two versions of the cocktail. Suffice to say, as we suspect all along, awamori and milk are not natural bedfellows.

It seemed a popular enough choice for young people over the course of the night. People came for take-away, chatted, left. The owner of the t-shirt shop popped his head in. His shop was burgled yesterday, Shingo mentions. Eh? Yes, all his silver was taken. I say that he seemed a bit miserable when I was in there and now I can appreciate why. There was this shelf of little empty cushions with price tags. Lucky I didn’t congratulate him on his conceptual art piece. I almost did…

Later, as conversation carried on, I realised how tired I was after a sleepless night before and also how I forget how tiring it is to speak a foreign language. Two hours and I need a sorbet of English or silence to refresh the brain. With my conversation clearly turning into Japlish babble, however much I was enjoying it, I made my goodbyes and left.

Anyway, Amurita no Niwa gets my unreserved recommendation. I may very well head back this evening.