Shuka

The evening before my birthday, we dumped all the kids with their grandparents and went out for a nice dinner. We chose Shuka, a few blocks from our house, run by a friend of ours, who also owns the Japanese umbrella factory next to our house. She was also my drinking buddy way back in pre-kid days, but that's another story, another lifetime!

For having pre-booked only the day before, we were very lucky to get this very special upstairs room. We were told it was the old study by the waitress, who must be a local because she seemed to know everyone and everything and managed to extract all our vital details out of us before we left to, to enlighten the next bunch of guests I suppose

Kampai! This is draft beer in this fancy cup!










The gorgeous platter of starters, with a tiny soy sauce bowl for the two tiny pieces of sushi, and the obligatory complimentary towel.

Left: the sashimi platter. The dinnerware in this restaurant was gorgeous, each piece a conversation in itself, not to mention the exquisite food so artfully arranged on top. the cuisine was Japanese/French fusion.
Right: an umbrella lamp. Fitting the establishment's other purpose as a paper umbrella shop, umbreallas in various stages of manufacture were used as decor. This is the bare bamboo ribs used as a lamp.

Left: the soup, the only thing I wasn't all that impressed with, as it was cold corn soup. Nice bowl, but!
Right: the salad. Average.

Divinity in a glass. A perfect glass of wine, and there's nothing better really is there, when you are relaxing in a fine restaurant with someone you love, than sipping a nice, crisp wine.

Left: The fish course, a very elaborate eel pie. I love this plate!
Right: The meat course - very lightly braised steak, almost sashimi!


Left: No Japanese dinner is complete without bowl of warm, fluffy rice and some miso soup.
Right: Dessert and coffee. The dessert was a mango pudding, in the cup, 'youkan', a kind of jellied sugar-bean paste (I love it!) and 'mochi', rice pounded into a sticky cake, here flavored with green tea, and brown sugar.

A meal is also not complete in Japan without a final cup of tea, after which we stumbled off in the moonlight to visit the Irish bar and drink Guiness!