Thanks to “Respect for the Aged” day we had three full days of relatively cool, clear weather to enjoy on our own. As you might expect we cooked some good food, but we also managed to get outside and even eat at a few restaurants in Kobe.
Saturday I had expected that Kuniko would be working in Osaka, but thanks to an errant typhoon they cancelled the plans and she instead worked from home. I focused on cooking an Indonesian feast. We had fish and spinach stewed in a spicy coconut turmeric soup, chunks of pork stir-fried in ginger and spices, and also a big wok full of nasi goreng, Indonesian fried rice.
All the dishes were good, although for the future I think I’d add even more ginger to the pork dish. The fish stew was tasty, although the spinach left a little bit of bitterness that may be off-putting for some. The nasi goreng was the simplest dish but was just as good as I imagined it would be – yum!
On Sunday Kuniko requested gumbo, so I made a hybrid of a few recipes and ended up with a huge pot of shrimp and okra gumbo. We ate it with rice and cornbread, and there’s still plenty of leftovers to keep our dinner covered for the next couple of days.
Finally, on our Monday holiday, we ended up going in to Kobe to buy some presents for some people, and we ended up walking by the Sannomiya station near the Hankyu line. There were a lot of new restaurants added there, in a cafe style with plenty of seating outdoors. The lack of outdoor dining in Japan is something we often complain about (I understand the weather has a lot to do with it) but here was a lot of new places offering just what we were looking for. Since the weather was comfortable we took a seat at a Chinese restaurant, and had a couple of small dishes.
We were the first people to sit down, and soon after we broke the ice a lot more customers came in. This happens a lot – I think we should get free appetizers or something for bringing in all the business! The food was pretty good – Taiwanese style – but I found the chicken on the bone was a little hard to eat with only chopsticks. We also had some shumai and sui-gyoza, and those were quite tasty. Unfortunately we are still under the governmental emergency declaration, so no alcohol was served. Still, if the declaration is lifted in two weeks as expected, I’m guessing these places will see a lot more business.
We tried to go to one more place, our favorite grumpy soup dumpling place (called “Shorondaiyo”) but they were completely closed and waiting out the end of the emergency. We cut across to another place that we might try and ended up stumbling on a new shop for another of our favorite Chinese places in Kobe, Man En.
The original shop is farther south and doesn’t serve lunch, but this new shop (Man En North?) was open and serving. We gladly took a table and were very happy to eat my favorite dish of theirs, steamed chicken with ginger/onion sauce.
The dish is served cold, so it is great for hot weather. The sauce is rich with ginger and is ice cold on top of the chicken – it is so refreshing! We also ordered more sui-gyoza and also some soup dumplings that we delicate and perfectly made.
We didn’t expect to run into another Man En restaurant, so it was very good news to know that they had opened a new store. I guess that many shops have gone out of business during the pandemic, so other shops are taking advantage of the newly available real estate.
Three day weekends are the best – but we’ll have to wait until January for the next one. Unwilling to wait so long, we have arranged our own private four day weekend in October. Looking forward to it!
