Last night, we couldn't decide what we wanted for dinner - a typical and common issue when dining out with two or more people. Lucky for us, we are in the land of plastic food displays, so all we have to do is take a short walk and window shop for what we want.
Nearly every restaurant in Japan has a display case out front with all of their menu offerings in plastic form. Every detail is the same as the real deal, so there's no risk-taking involved. Yesterday we walked around a gourmet "arcade" (an indoor shopping/restaurant mall, but much less grandiose as the ones in the U.S. and much better in my opinion) and saw our options. There were several Italian places showcasing all kinds of pasta and pizza dishes...
...dessert-only restaurants displaying beautiful ice cream and cake concoctions, as well as sandwich shops, Indian restaurants, coffee cafes and sushi places all showing off their appetizing dishes. We finally settled on a katsu restaurant, which specializes in breaded, deep-fried pork and shrimp dishes.
As we have with most of our meals in Japan so far, we started off with an ice-cold beer. Beer is hugely popular here, with Japanese beer being some of the best in the world (again, in my opinion!). It's common for groups to always start with a round of beers before moving on to sake or cocktails.
My katsu "set" ("set" meals means they usually come with the main course, salad, rice and some other little dishes) came with a little vegetable appetizer (above)...
...plus some pickled vegetables like cucumber and daikon (Japanese radish), as well as a plate for dipping sauce for the katsu.
The katsu was crispy, juicy and not greasy at all. This is a very traditional Japanese dish that I haven't had in a very long time, and it was well worth the wait.
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