In Search of Mochi

Posted on 2009/01/03 10:37:50 (January 2009).

[Thursday 1st January 2009]
Well Happy New Year everyone!

Despite having stayed up until around 3AM the previous night I woke up surprisingly early this morning - thanks to not one, but two very loud and inconsiderate visits from the bin men. Ho, hum.

New Year in Japan is quite a big deal, and in a sense a parallel to Christmas in the West - it's the time of year people are most likely to spend with their families etc. Chie had considered going back to Japan for New Year this year, but in the end decided to hold off given that she'd probably be going in Spring.

Anywho, among the many traditions of Japanese New Year, the one small thing Chie seemed most keen not to miss out on was eating Mochi. Unfortunately, we didn't have any in the flat, and so we set out today on a mission to try and find some in central London.

It turns out every single Japanese food shop in London is closed on New Year's Day - we tried the Japan Centre, Rice Wine Shop, Arigato, Mitsukoshi and that Japanese sweets shop on Piccadilly (Minamoto Kitchoan). Pretty much all the Japanese restaurants seemed to be closed as well. We also tried the Korean food shop next to Centre Point (also closed) and just on the off chance a couple of the Chinese supermarkets in Chinatown (which were open, but they didn't sell mochi - at least not the savoury type Chie was looking for).

So that was a bit of a disappointment. In an attempt to cheer Chie up, I suggested we go for dim sum instead - so we tried out Yauatcha in Soho for the first time. It's a fairly upmarket and swish sort of dim sum place, quite different to our usual favourite Royal China. Overall I think we both quite liked it, they did have some interesting things on the menu - Chie was pleased to find Congee (or okayu as it is known in Japan) on the menu, and I enjoyed the Cheung fun filled with mushrooms quite a lot. The deep fried yuba rolls with enoki and cloud ear were also very good. I thought the pricing was a bit bizarre though - it was generally quite expensive - a small bowl of fairly average hot and sour soup was a nonsensical £7.50, and yet the Congee which was almost a meal in itself was a much more reasonable £4 something.

My other slight complaint would be that they didn't have any kind of sake on the wine list, and I have a pet hate of places trying to serve grape based wines with East Asian food... but I guess that sake is more of a Japanese thing - so far as I can tell they don't actually seem to drink much of it in modern day China (which I think I read somewhere recently is the world's biggest beer consumer - although I guess that isn't difficut if you have the world's biggest population!). Anyway, dim sum is supposed to be served with tea, so we had tea. Which also seemed a bit overpriced in my opinion, but there you go - I guess we were paying for the ambience or something.

After a bit more of a wander around the shops, and a brief dalliance with the idea of going to the Comedy Store in the evening, we headed back home.

I spent most of the evening writing a summary of my blog for 2008, which was quite an interesting exercise for me, even if the end result probably doesn't make very interesting reading for anyone else!

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