Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun: Icchou Revisited

Icchou Revisited

Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 | 0 comments

Seeing as it's an incredibly slow week here at our place (Yuki is confined to the second bedroom with a lovely case of influenza A, which Keila and I have so far avoided), I thought that I'd finally get around to posting some pictures from our birthday dinner in November. Better late than never, right?
We ate at our favorite restaurant, Icchou, which is pricey but well worth the money. I posted about it once last year: http://tofubunny.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentines-sushi-dinner.html
This time, we again chose the 6000 yen (per person--which is why it's a celebration-only type of restaurant) course menu, and it was wonderful as always...for the most part.
I do have to admit that this time, one item on the menu threw me for a loop, though...I will try, and usually enjoy, eating almost any food (dolphin, whale, deer, bunnies, etc. excluded) but for this meal, they served us shirako.
Shirako is a dish consisting of...let me phrase this delicately...the male fish reproductive sack (and its contents). Now imagine me gagging if you're not already doing so yourself. It was pointed out that most people have no problem eating fish eggs, or any type of eggs, for that matter...so what was the difference, exactly? I couldn't argue with that logic, but somehow it just didn't seem like the same thing!
Well, to cut this short, I did end up eating it. I did NOT, however, enjoy it. Squishy, somewhat rich, and warm, mehhh! Not the worst thing I've ever tasted, but I'm rather certain that I wouldn't have liked it had I not known what it was, either. Good thing the chef at Icchou takes requests, because I definitely have one dish I'm going to ask that we skip next time!

Icchou. Apparently the sign of a great sushi bar is that they try to hide from the general public: this place is hidden off a side alley.