I really had a mind to visit Chikuyotei; always saw it on the Instagram. I stayed at Osaka Excel Hotel Tokyu, and this restaurant is located in the same building as the hotel.
And when I finally arrived here, the place was pretty empty, so I simply sat and waited.
Unagi is not a food that I ate growing up, and really, I needed several trips to Japan before I learned to love it. It served grilled eel on rice covered with that sweet soy sauce they call tare, and after tasting a really good one once, it simply stays in your memory, so it does.
Outside the entrance they had the menu up with pictures and prices for different dishes. I noticed unagi boxes in the case, covered with a thick gloss on the eel; some long, others wider. They also had a grilled eel bowl and some kaiseki courses, but I'd already decided what I wanted, so I didn't waste time reading all.
My Unagi Meal at Chikuyotei
I found my table and waited.
My friend ans me ordered two bottles of Asahi beer. I am not used to drinking beer during a meal, but it seemed grand here and there, sure, except that Asahi is just about everywhere in Japan, so you cannot really escape it.
Then came the unagi bowl. The eel had a thick bright gloss, sitting directly on the rice, and it smelled smoky and sweet at first. It came with pickled vegetables and a seaweed side.
The eel itself was soft and a bit fat, and the tare that soaked into the rice below made every bite deadly tasty. In Japanese unagi restaurants you usually grill the eel over charcoal and dip it in tare many times during cooking, and you clearly taste that, because the surface becomes a bit crunchy, while the inside stays tender.
Another set we ordered is the Grilled wagyu, this set also comes with green onions and sauce. The green onions gave a stronger taste, that cut the sweetness a bit. The pickled vegetables on the side were simply ok (nothing to write home about).
But the wagyu was soft and had that deep smoky taste I. However the sauce was a bit sweeter here, really.
On the table they put instructions about how to eat the eel, which is the usual in unagi restaurant, because they use a special steps here that they want you to follow. First eat it plain, later with toppings, finally with broth poured over it. I didn't follow it carefully, but sure, whatever.
This is, grilled eel on rice in a box with miso soup and pickled vegetables. Hitsumabushi-style unagi comes in a box, and you must split it into parts to eat it in different ways, so it was. The miso soup was thin and not very strong, just ok, nothing special.
But the eel in that box was probably the best of the three altogether, because the rice below soaked everything from that tare and became sticky and sweet. Those burned bits on the edges of the eel had that crunchy feel.
After all those eels I took a matcha green tea ice cream. The soft serve was swirled up, and it tasted grassy and a bit bitter, which was lovely after all that sweetness.
Then came another ice cream dor my friend, this one is sesame flavour and two chocolate wafer sticks sticking out. I've no idea what gave it its taste, but it was yummy and somehow thick.
