we're in Tokyo, Japan this place has an incredible food culture and we're gonna
make a tonne of food videos here let's get food hunting for this one
we're hunting
down a legendary restaurant that's been serving the ugliest dish in Tokyo for
over 200 years: loach hotpot, we're taking you to a local
institution to show you a dish you've never seen before
you don't want to miss this video get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate, we hope you're hungry, let's eat!
we're really excited about what we're eating today we're having dojo nabe
which is loach hotpot in this restaurant that's behind me that has been
around since 1801, that's over 200 years let's get eating
hello
this is your shoe card
thank you very much
the restaurant is so beautiful the building is built in a style of the
period of the restaurant which is the Edo period it was from 1603 I think until 1868 and
we're sitting on the floor on the tatami met in the traditional style
thank you very much
our dojo nabe has arrived and it looks insane it looks incredible so the
dojo loaches are these things, they're a freshwater fish but they look a little
bit like a miniature eel, they're not the most appetising looking things I have to
say but we hope that they're really delicious and what they've come on is
over charcoal so it's sitting on a little like hotplate and then you can see that
there's charcoal in there heating up that hotplate and it's come in a little
wooden box as well, so the restaurant have already prepared the loach so what
they've done is first they marinate it in a sake broth and then once the bones have all
softened they then cook it in a miso broth and then they're put onto this hot
plate and served to us
so the loaches are bubbling away in a soy sauce mixture
and when we sat down on the table there was a pile of freshly sliced spring
onions and so the idea is you let the loaches bubble away for about three
minutes and start to heat through and then you pile them with the spring
onions so that's what I'm gonna do and they will just cook down ohhhh I'm so
excited about this, the smells coming from this thing are amazing so we'll let
that cook away for a bit and then we also ordered this, Yanagawa dojo so this is loach so the same
fish and it's cooked with some burdock root and also some egg
we ordered a
set menu so we've got some rice and then we have a miso soup which has also
got the loach cooked in with it and then some tofu
the tofu is just presented so
beautifully it's served alongside a stick of konjac which is similar to a yam and
then some sort of a sauce over the top and some greenery and then we also have a
little portion of tsukemono or pickles so I can see cucumber and
then may be that's some daikon or radish
the spring onions are cooking
down and you can see that the loach is just really soaking up more of that
soy sauce mixture they're becoming really plump, I'm gonna just sprinkle a
little bit of this uh shichimi on the top so shichimi is a
spice blend that's made up of pepper and chilli flakes and sesame seeds and umm what else
is in there I think dried orange peel so it's gonna imbue a
beautiful fresh flavour, spicy flavour on top and then let's just give it, I'm
so excited to try this so I'm gonna get this little guy here so you can see
it's still go it's head on but it feels like it's quite soft so the bones have all
cooked down you can eat the thing whole, I'm gonna put that in my plate and also get
some spring onions all right let's go for it
Oh man, that is beautiful, that's delicious
so you can taste the bones in the loach, but they just soften, they've softened
and they just like just disintegrate in your mouth and the flesh of the loach is
a little bit slimy but very soft and again the second it hits your tongue it just
melts away and it's got a beautiful flavour of soy let's just try this spring
onion
mmm so fresh oh and that pepper is so spicy
it's got a real spicy chilli hit and that spring onion oh it's really vibrant
the staff have just told us that we should drizzle this sauce which is some sort of soy sauce
mixture on top of the loaches so let's just pour a little bit on there it's a
quite a thin sauce, I need to get in I need to find my chopsticks there they are
let's break them up ohhhh I really really want to try these loaches so a pile of those
really soft now spring onions and I'll get a couple of loaches on here they're
much smaller than I imagined they would be so very small you can see the little
tail on the end so the complete fish like Sheena said
Wow
oh that's a flavour burst so it's quite sweet, the soy sauce has got a beautiful
sweetness but the texture of the loach is amazing, I'm just gonna go straight in
for another one, but I'm gonna add a whole lot of spring onion
mmmm
ohhhhh
these are delicious, really gorgeous the texture is stunning it's quite sweet
from the sauce going on top and that soy mixture that it's cooking in and then
it's gone it doesn't have a fishy flavour too much, it's just a quite a subtle
flavour, the chilli that we put on top and the soy are the bolder flavours and
the spring onions are beautiful and tangy because obviously it's only recently
got on there so it's still got a bit of crunch from being fresh so it's just
softening up in the thinner bits but the fatter bits are still crunchy that is a
really good dish
I want to eat the loach, burdock root and egg dish I've got a
massive bite
mmmmm
oh man
mmm that's sensational the loach is really beautiful and tender, the burdock root
still has a bit of crunch so it's got a real texture, it's adding a real texture and
the egg is just very creamy you can see that it's not cooked all the way through
and the sauce that it's in is very sweet, that's delicious
look at this miso, it's so thick looking and it's actually been sitting
for quite a while while we've been filming and it it hasn't separated like you
often see with miso, so it's very creamy
mmmm oh my god that is a flavour burst
it's got a beautiful subtle miso flavour, quite salty it's got more of that
burdock root I just got a big piece of that burdock root and it's got the, the
flavours that are coming from the loach dish the one that I've eaten already are in
here you can really taste that ohh that is good and now I want to chase that with some of
these pickles so we've got three types of pickles I'm gonna try the the
cucumber here I love these pickles in Japan they just
really cleanse the palate
ohhhh that is very lightly pickled it almost, almost
just tastes like a fresh piece of cucumber actually that's really good, it's
fresh, lightens your palate up, look at this miso actually I thought it had
a loach like broth in it and that's why it had the beautiful flavour but actually
it's packed with the loach so there's about three whole loach in there so let's just
have a lot of burdock root, a loach coated in that miso soup
mmmm that is glorious it's
really nice and sweet, a little bit salty the roots just a little bit crunchy
which is good and then the loach is very soft and just a beautiful texture and
these ones down in the cooking over the charcoals here are really, really
getting cooked down now so they're getting very soft and I love that this
is over these charcoals and this burner because it's giving a really even heat
this is a really thick piece of cast iron and so it's just slowly bubbling
away, they're not burning, the sugars in the in the soy mixture, the sauce are
not caramelising and getting burnt, they're just slowly reducing down and getting this thick
sticky sauce all over the bottom of this pan, look at this side just bubbling away
let's grab a whole lot more, spring onions, some loach so the loach is really soft now
it's breaking up when we try and pick it up
ohhh the flavour is super intense, it's gone up many levels since we started eating so as
that reduces down as it bubbles away it's just infusing flavour, it's getting
stronger and stronger, the loach itself it feels like it's taking on all that
flavour but it in turn it's imparting its own flavour so it's getting a sort of a
slightly seafood little taste going on it's got this just super sweetness the
saltiness is really ramping up as well as it reduces down, oh my god
this is an unbelievable meal, I love the location, theis incredible beautiful
old building, sitting on the ground here eating these dishes it's, it is
incredible, it's very very good
this meal is just a feast for the senses
it tastes delicious and the surroundings are beautiful, there's a really happy buzz of
chatter while everyone's enjoying their meal and the way everything is set up it is
just so beautiful so check out how stunning this tofu and this konjac looks
so I'm gonna just try the tofu so it's been I think slightly grilled and then
there's that sauce on the top I'm not sure what it is, let's just give it a bite
mmmmm
the tofu is quite warm and that sauce on top, it's got black sesame seeds in it,
it's quite sweet I can't tell what it is but it's tasty and then this konjac
here, so konjac is a plant but the and it looks a bit like jelly let's just
see what that tastes like
very jelly like
mmmm it doesn't have a very strong flavour by itself but I got a bit more of that sauce
and a bit of citrus flavour came through
the konjac is just a very interesting texture it's like a bouncy jelly
I just tried this konjac that Sheena just had and the texture is incredible
it's so jelly like and that sauce is very sweet and it has a real citrus
flavour to it and it's actually a little bit bitter in the after taste the sauce
too so I think it's a yuzu sauce which is quite a widely used citrus fruit
here in Japan that is very tasty side dish, really light and quite fresh
tasting
this has been such an amazing experience so far it's pretty cool to
be eating a dish that they were eating 200 years ago so the recipe hasn't
changed and this restaurant has been here since 1801
and so they're still serving up what they served back then and loaches back
then were very very popular and very prevalent and it was sort of
regarded as the working man's unagi or working man's eel and ohhh they're really
really tasty
Thank you very much!
that was an absolutely incredible dining experience, amazing food but just the
whole thing about it like the atmosphere in there, the style of eating, the service
quintessential Japanese a really interesting couple of dishes too
something we've never tried and loved awesome, awesome day of eating, I would
repeat that dining experience all over again, right now I'd happily go straight back in
there and do it all again it was that good we really hoped you enjoyed this
one remember to hit that subscribe button we've got heaps more videos
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next time, mata ne (see you)