No Tomatoes

When meals are followed by whisky sours, what one ate usually slips behind. I have been waiting a day or so before writing this hoping that some fervent detail and gnarled recollection might surface, but it was only last night when Peter hauled out his memory of the fat that I could piece together the other mouthfuls.

Before one eats here, one has to cook. There is a heavy black iron dome centred on the table beneath which there is fire, above which there is a lump of fat. Other food came and went, and by the end of the meal the fat had slid into the surrounding gutter. Peter and I ate the two pieces that remained once the vegetation had disappeared, leaving me as I write this to sadly muse that Mina missed out on a sublime morsel. It is normally here that I would inject a peaky metaphor, the hah-ed and brushed finger-nails of my witty repartee to evoke its ingestion, but the best I can do is compare it to pork scratchings, except tasting sweeter, not too sickly, with mirror-like depth. However, to align scratching-to-scratching does the lamb a great injustice, for the bit of bleater equates more accurately to a hundered swine patches, it really was that intense.

We were already pretty impressed by this restaurant on the canal next to Combine. Having frequented this secluded path for the past couple of years, it seemed due to eat and not always booze up with French architects and leer at the staff. And lamb is so seldom found in Tokyo, that why wouldn’t one? I think Peter is discovering that not just fish is left uncooked in Japan, the lamb that we began with a simple carpaccio with chives and soy sauce. Again, insert simile here, something along the lines of seal skin and Nivea and kittens –and beef actually; it was bloody red, if mercifully not bleeding. The rest of the meal’s meats also arrived freshly torn from a little glib bounder, but here we used our heated dome to singe the shards, allowing each to enjoy to our preferred rareness.

Back to those plants, whenever I see bean-sprouts I see a redacted idea, a superior ingredient that has been blacked-out in the menu: a sprout alone never seems worthy enough to be first choice. That still stands, despite the dribble of fat brandishing them: how wonderful it would have been had some thuggish courgettes appeared to sponge the juices instead. With that wry observation I shall leave that there and try to find the words to describe the drinks at the bar that came next. Strong might be one of them…

McCoy’s is the real McCoy’s. Who still says that? Is anything the real McCoy’s? And other than McCoy’s what else could be a McCoy? …I see: a quick visit to Wikipedia reveals etymological roots in MacKay’s, referring to a whisky in the 19^th Century. I hadn’t meant for that to tie in so neatly with the subject of this entry, but perhaps the barman knows more than his shaker-spinning lets on. I say shaker, but our drinks were stirred: Martini for myself, Horse’s Neck for Peter in this little Dickensian burrow beneath the stomp and cajoles of revellers on the Roppongi strip. Strip, because that’s what all the bars offer. Except for this one, I hasten to add, though I would not have objected had the girl next to us done so.

One doesn’t swap glasses and taste each other’s drink in occluded whisky dens, it isn’t proper. Far better to judge by reaction: after all, anything that can’t be said with an eyebrow isn’t worth saying. Mine were raised when the flourish like incense over a child ended the swift implication of zest, and the drink was pushed by its base towards me. I think I offended him moments before as I tried to halt the input of too much Vermouth. A brief handshake, nothing more thank-you. But the care is infinite, the drink more mellow, subdued and feminine than my own barbaric slugs of alcohol. I also greatly appreciated him stirring, not shaking, as is correct with translucent mixes ‘Shake if opaque’ is my motto, though as I don’t yet have a twizzler, I also shake if clear. But that’s not a motto.

If I were still in the practise of casting a critical eye, I would have appreciated the wait, the surgeon-like process that produced our drinks, and the chilling of glasses and cuff-flicks. More importantly I would put more bearing on the drop of Hermes citrus essence added by pipette, and the racks of whiskies that surrounded us. But I’m not, and have already spent too long on this entry, and, perhaps, Wikipedia.

Noting the date on this entry, you will have immediately recognised that this is my birthday. It didn’t seem like others had: they had not brought a present dammit. Nothing makes you feel lower than repeated shelling outs followed by gormless grins as friends fail to read one’s ‘where on earth is it’ expression. It turns out there was some logic to this, albeit one I don’t agree with: as everyone in our pack has had one gift, they decided not to go around again this year; dinner and party thought to be enough. That’s a mean way to judge a celebration: I would have partied harder last year had I suspected. Nevertheless, dear Felix and Honda newbies usurped their –ahem –cautious counterparts: I got a pink tie, fuchsia belt, and depending on whether you ask me or Lyndsey, a Union Jack cravat/bandana.

This blog is meant to be about food, so I apologise if it seems a page torn from my diary at times. What I intend to be a lead up, an aperitif to the meal, often dissolves into mumble, and in this instance my latest wardrobe expansion. I really mean to focus on the day: it was superb. Before the disappointment there was some hesitation about going to Kamakura, a town on coast below Tokyo. It is, after all rainy season. I bullishly stated stop worrying –and I wish people wouldn’t. Much healthier just to go with it and roll with what comes. Preparing for the worst (rain) on a beach picnic already dilutes some of the joy of hoping for the best, which is what a birthday is all about.

Part of the plan was to see the Buddha Kamakura is famous for, or in my case be reunited: its about 25 years since I was last mistaken for him as a plump white blue-eyed baby in Bangkok. Mum tells of how she forged her way through well-wishers and worshippers all attempting to place gold on my forehead. Alas these days it is just Mina who worships me, though I note that I have yet to be given gold. Perhaps in another 25 years when I’m round enough again.

We didn’t see Buddha –instead we had awesome sandwiches in a cemetery. That sentence would deserve an exclamation mark, but in Japan one can omit such fripperies. Cool, calm, peaceful, green: graveyards here are not the raven-stalked lands that scratch your fears in Britain. Here, your mind conjures souls not bodies.

By this time we were running late for meeting the others, as I am now for work: damn, I wanted to revel once more in receiving my tie and belt, watching Peter picking at the sashimi (highly enjoyed), and the stream of beers and conversation in a restaurant Yuuki recommended and Mina booked. As everyone else is still talking about the immense tuna steaks almost a week later, I shall not comment that I found them a touch dry. The potato salad however was a perfect accompaniment, but I feel the sashimi worthy of more inches than I have allotted so far. Imagine smoke from a camp-fire in still morning air, not quite rising and at times quite motionless. Now imagine a fish. If possible overlay one upon the other, and you might see our plate of corpse curling to ceiling, stripped of flesh that instead lies piled around with micro-garnish. I recommended it with yuzu paste, which Peter likened to a gin. With that thought, I shall buy this citrus tonight for our drinks, though hoping they won’t taste like fish.

Ping pong bar is the name of a bar where ping pong is played. Sean mentioned it when I first met him, a naïve Westerner unable to decode the knots of Tokyo. He had a few years head-start, and was brought here by some friends. It seems extraordinary now, that I did not once know Ping Pong’s. All I had was the vivid description of a secret bar down a backstreet on the first floor in someone’s flat. You had to ring a bell to enter, and once within one encircled two central tables: one with bats, the other a bar. I was enthralled. This was a time when I still could not distinguish different Asian faces, when I thought everyone stylish and mistook manners for friendliness. It was also the time of serial dating, with business cards flung to helpless strangers, not always with success, I hesitate to add, and for those times when a girl said yes, so Sean’s ream of recommendations proved quite handy. Alas my first time there was with him.

From Nakameguro station we crossed the main road and walked up the street with the rail to your left. Over the bridge, take the second street on your right and walk for 100 yards. At this point there is a car-park with some bins just yonder. With these bins to your immediate left and a residence just above you, take the path between block and lot perpendicular to the street. At the end of this path enter a foyer and climb the dog-legged stairs. Ring the buzzer in front. The door will open a crack, and more often than not you will be told it’s full. For somewhere so out-of-the-way, Ping Pong’s is exceedingly popular.

With Oriol visiting it was my turn to pass down the knowledge. That bin bit always gets people wondering, their reaction always amusing me. I don’t come here nearly so often, and probably won’t again since table charge is now by the hour. For five people, two of whom left early, we paid Y15,000 for approx ten beers. Outrageous –especially split between three, one of whom refused to pay more that his own meagre share (not me for once). Tokyo lacks its mystery now, and places that I don’t know I seldom visit. I like having a nest and having a range that I know intimately, but I wonder if I will ever find something like the legend of Ping Pong’s. Best ask Sean.

A dull green top undermines Mina as we spool from Yutenji to Gakugei-daigaku, the stations that frame me in Tokyo. The latter is a curious spot: it is where we have been recently enjoying our whales with imported Yoshikai’s, and also an unexpected Canadian momento store, replete with fossils from Calgery, bears in red coats and waffles and stone rings. Such things are nations made of: it was great to see Mina in her territory at last –and the vivid turquoise top she had just bought. Suddenly her skin and colour and face is alive, the green thing safely shunted in her bag. She looks terrific.

We were in search of the English store Mina’s mother had mentioned that lurks one station farther. We should have just stopped in Canada and made do with Celine Dion records. I should know by now the feeble compass instilled in Japanese, and, after Yakitori Alley, Canadians too. A long, delightful walk took us past nimble streets and a regal lake, cars being washed, and most fortuitously, Ferraris being serviced. Some compensation then for there not being the slightest sausage-tinged whiff of an English store, no black troll of Bovril nor crackle of Walker’s and the only Union Jack belonged to an English language school. Mina, enterprisingly, enquired within. They had never heard of it, though I was pleasantly surprised to see Weekender lying on the table. I did not have time to reach the food section within, though Sean, unprompted, said the new restaurant reviewer is awful. Matches their conduct then: I did not even know I had been replaced.

Mina refused the gesture of McDonald’s, and we instead wandered until we saw frivolous Seventies furniture crowding stiff timber walls like children sitting cross-legged around a teacher. We therefore approached, and finding we were ten minutes away from the dinner menu being served settled inside. Many places like this exist, serving pasta, beer, and bought-in cake. I used to think it special, but the quality is often weak and sauces miss urgency. Not here: my sausage and gorgonzola cream sauce was really good, and I liked my sausages being torn and warted bangers rather than cleanly sliced franks, while the gorgonzola too was a welcome return to the palate. It was eyes wandering while waiting though that unveiled the biggest surprise: behind the counter sat shrouded detergent and fruity brews bought-in from Britain.

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