Kobe Beef!

Yeah, I know, another post about eating. What can I say? We like to eat!

We decided to celebrate our anniversary by going out for some Kobe beef at a local teppanyaki grill - unfortunately, the name of which eludes me at this time. Well, whatever it was called, I'd highly recommend it; friendly staff, businessmen dining with what appeared to be high-priced call girls, and awesome, AWESOME food!

Updated later: the name of the restaurant is Mikaku.

First, the chef asked us if garlic was OK. We told him it was, and he grilled up a bunch of surgically-sliced garlic chips for us. Fortunately, both of us were eating the garlic. If it had been just me eating it, Mrs. TBF would probably have made me go sleep in the ice machine room.

Then, we ordered the beef, and the chef sliced off a big slab for us. Next time, I'll warn him that I'm taking the picture because the flash went off right when he was slicing and he kind of looked up with a...um...not-to-happy expression on his face. Sorry! I think I almost caused him to slice off his finger.

But no harm done, because (after being weighed to make sure we weren't being cheated) the beautifully marbled hunk o' heaven was sizzling on the grill a few minutes later, and was sliced up on our plates a few minutes after that.

Oh, and the best part for me? The chef didn't waste the fat. He actually cubed it up, fried it up like bacon, and then mixed it with some bean sprouts. The memory of it makes me weep!

Add a Kobe beef chef to the list of things I want if we ever win the lottery!

When we were finally finished with the meal, we walked out to the typical chorus of staff saying stuff to us in Japanese while bowing. Outside of the restaurant, I stopped to take a self-portrait of us...

...with the Kobe glow.

I Want..I Want...I WANT!

Here's my latest addition to..."The Official List Of Things I Want If I Ever Win The Lotto": my very own Japanese tempura chef.

Oh, and don't give me that crap about fried foods being unhealthy for you. I mean look at our tempura chef from our first night in Kyoto. Surely he makes tempura for himself a few times per week, and...HE'S TINY. I'm not saying he would be my very own "pocket tempura chef", but he would definitely fit into the 1-liter Ziploc bag that holds the liquids in my carry-on bag. If I had to venture a guess, I would put him at less than 5' tall and well under 100 lbs.

The tempura meal was great. The chef was in charge of cooking for about twelve people, and he somehow managed to keep straight what he was cooking for each person (with nothing written down), and managed to time the food so that everybody got everything in a well-paced manner. For example, he'd put some things that looked like fried grapes on our plate while saying "...gingko nuts". Then, he'd serve other people, throw more things into the copper vat of oil, walk out the little door located behind him in the picture and disappear for about a minute (to do god knows what) and eventually put a few more things on our plates that turned out to be "...some kind of mushroom".

"Some kind" of mushroom? What the heck does that mean? Poison mushrooms? Well, obviously not because I lived to tell the tale. Unless, that is, that they're poison mushrooms that cause a delayed....and sudden...

...dea