Stacked like green bamboo shoots, bound like jade columns. A moat of your favourite goma sauce, sweet and aromatic. Who knew spinach, blanched and chilled, could tease and titillate so?
We are sitting at our favourite table, the one next to the large window where we can watch passers-by go about their way in Soi Ari 2. The small restaurant, almost the size of a diner, is called Kasa. You had hazarded a guess what its name meant, from the Japanese signboard, but I have already forgotten it.
Maybe let us just call this our sweetest spot for date nights.
It is an easy walk over here from our condo; a couple of blinks and we are entering the restaurant to the chorus of “Irasshaimase!”
We must have memorised their menu by now or perhaps there’s little need to for we nearly always order the same dishes – your beloved chicken nanban, creamy and crispy in equal measure; my yawaraka tonkatsu with plenty of rice; some shirauo karaage or deep-fried icefish and, of course, the horenso goma.
Sometimes we cannot resist the soothing, slippery, slurp-worthiness of noodles – bet it the fusion chasoba peperoncino or the spicy mentai yaki udon. Other times only a rice bowl will satisfy, especially topped with marinated raw tuna and fresh wasabi.
A slow, fulfilling time. We catch up on each other’s day; as we discuss work the work itself melts away. Soon nothing remains but the food before us, arriving dish after dish like a languorous litany.
Then we are done. Only, as the server clears the empty bowls and plates, we realise, not quite. There is still the matter of dessert. How could we forget? Is this not the highlight of our visit?
We ask the server, in unison, whether they have ichigo daifuku this evening? Some nights she apologises: Not available, sorry.
We are lucky tonight; she nods with a big smile. Ours soon matches hers as we inform her we would like two, one for each of us. (Why share, when we both can have one all for ourselves?)
The pair of ichigo daifuku arrive, as they invariably do, already sliced into almost-quarters so that the mochi dumplings open up like winter flowers in full bloom. White mochi, dark adzuki bean paste, and a heart of sweet strawberry. A beautiful, delicious treat to end our work day.
We will walk around the neighbourhood, perhaps tempted by the crêperie with the fragrance wafting from the hot griddles, before we return home. To walk off the dinner and the happy bellies, sure, but mostly to allow the taste of our evening – the luscious sesame of the horenso goma, the sweetness of the strawberries and the sticky mochi – to linger just a while longer.