- We are SORTED, a group of foodies from London,
who today, (record scratches to a halt)
are way out of our comfort zone.
- I feel like I need some moral support.
- We've been sent to Tokyo in Japan
and tasked with cooking up
a food and sake pairing menu for some locals.
I'm so nervous.
So first job is to immerse ourselves
in the culture, food, and sake
to work out how we achieve
probably our biggest challenge yet.
- This might be the hardest thing we've ever done.
- Hello and welcome to fridge cam,
this is Jamie, and I'm Ben,
and today we're on the second part
of our journey throughout Japan.
If you missed the first part, it launched last week,
what are you waiting for, go and watch that
then come back to this and watch this.
- In our last episode we had experienced
the unique umami flavor you get
from pairing the right sake with an incredible seafood dish.
- So today all we had to do was choose the right sake
and invent an incredible seafood dish, easy!
- Yeah I think we might need
to eat, drink, and learn a lot more.
(upbeat music)
- [Mike] So in order to do this,
Jamie and I traveled to the country side,
fire a 45 degree onsen.
(screaming)
For a traditional Japanese set lunch.
- [Jamie] Is that the best you can do?
- That's all I can do.
With the president of the Masumi Brewery and his colleagues.
Of course there was sake,
and J even tried his hand at speaking like a local.
(speaking Japanese - ish) (laughing)
- Oh no!
(gives it a second go)
- Oh, perfect. - Yes!
Ebbers is going to be gutted.
- [Mike] The food was amazing, the sake was amazing,
the whole experience was just incredible.
- Not only did we want to eat like a local,
but we thought it was important
to travel like one too, or try.
(rock music)
- Shinjuku station,
used by over 3.5 million commuters a day,
making it by far the world's busiest transport hub.
With 53 platforms, over 200 exits, and a complex map system,
it'd be tough for two teams of dweeby tourists,
split either end of the station to navigate
to this statue using no devices, wouldn't it?
Ebbers, you're learning to read Japanese,
what does that say?
(speaking foreign language)
- Why don't we just ask someone?
- [Jamie] Oh wait, mate,
there's a tourist information center.
Should we get a map? - Let's get a map.
- Been told to find the golden lion.
- [Staff] Cross the road to this area.
- Brilliant. - Were you impressed
with that? - Oh no,
did she say something? (speaking foreign language)
- I guessed. (laughing)
- I can't believe that actually worked.
- I'm gonna have to get in the map like Joey.
- [Mike] Where did the E square go?
- Well the sign post seems to say that way,
but then that's a mirror.
Anyone know where the golden lion is?
We don't have time to make a video!
- It's there, it's there!
That's that triangle, that's the triangle.
- I do not want to lose to Ebbers.
- We're here.
Here, Mike, Jamie!
- It's the first time Barry's won anything,
he's very excited.
- [Mike] It's supposed to be here, right?
Look, that, look!
- So we got to walk around and see if,
there's a lion!
We found the lion!
We found it!
Yes! - But that
was only one part of the challenge.
Congratulations, team Hurry Currie.
Quick Spaff was not quite quick enough.
Next instruction,
both teams have been given some information.
Together these make up the address of your next restaurant.
So we have 33 minutes to find--
What's your information? - That's what
we've been given.
- We were given 1-1-1.
- Turns out, 1-1-1 was an address.
We just have to work out how to find it.
(Speaking Japanese)
- I am very hungry.
- I am literally no help.
Terrible with directions.
(ichi-ichi-ichi)
- He needs some cream.
He speaks English.
I think we're close.
- [Group] So many ones!
- I'm trying to recognize characters
and I'm not getting very far.
My hunch is that "cha" will be written with two symbols.
- His hunch has taken us about five times in a circle.
- It's the second to last symbol I'm looking at.
If it looks like a "ha" then we're good.
- We've found the group.
We've lost Ben, but it's okay 'cause he knows Japanese.
- Cha Cha Hana was a restaurant
specializing in Kyoto style cuisine
which we were told was very high end and refined.
So the only thing I've never particularly enjoyed in Japan
was natto, so fermented soybean, and that's what this is,
but mixed up with tuna, and some roe,
and some plum, and spring onions, and okra, lots of stuff.
You wrap it in a nori sheet, enjoy.
- Barry's up first I heard.
- I heard Barry was up first actually.
Did you hear the same thing
I did? - I heard the same thing.
- [Ben] I nominate Barry first, how about that?
And yet the sake managed to do its magic.
- It was delicious.
- Is it? - Mmhm, honestly.
The fresh tuna, the okra,
the tofu just brings it all together.
- Take a bite.
(calm music)
- That mixed with all the, that's incredible.
(hip hop beats)
- We needed to sample some more sake
to get an idea of what we liked and thought would work,
so where best to do that than an all you can drink sake bar?
We bought our own food to experiment with and got tasting.
I found the one that I think was most local,
it's called Shibuya Crossing.
Think I might've found my new favorite concept.
Like 50, 60, a hundred sakes and you can just keep trying.
- Oh damn that's good.
This is I think the favorite so far.
- Super geek time.
Here we were told about the sake brewing process.
The water used has little to no iron in it
because that gives an undesirable taste to the sake
and iron also tends to amplify the fishy taste in seafood
so you can end up with a fairly unpleasant aftertaste.
Therefore, lack of iron in sake
is what makes it pair so well.
- You will never understand
how much he enjoyed telling you that.
(laughing) - Science!
- [Mike] Remember the sake brewery president from earlier?
Well, he very kindly showed us around his Masumi Brewery
to help us understand so much more
about sake than we currently knew.
- [Jamie] Miyasaka-san talked us through
how even though this is a family run brewery,
it's still very small, it's actually one of the best
and most successful in all of Japan.
In the 1940's they won the best sake in Japan competition.
- Sake competition there, (speaking Japanese).
- Secondly they discovered
that they were using a unique yeast to make the sake,
it's called number seven yeast,
and nobody else was using it at the time.
Now 60% of all sake brewed in Japan uses that same yeast.
This is the exact location
where the number seven yeast was first "born".
One of the biggest questions
that we've had since we've been here is
why is sake so important to Japanese people
and to Japanese culture overall,
and Miyasaka-san was able to talk us through.
The big thing is rice and how connected rice is
to the gods that the Japanese people believe in,
which I think is really interesting
'cause you see why there is this dedication
to getting sake right,
and Miyasaka-san talked us through kaizen,
constant innovation, always looking to improve
on what they're doing.
Mike and I were then treated to
the best sake tasting we've ever done.
(speaking Japanese)
Wow, you're gonna love that one.
You're gonna love that one.
We've chosen two of the sakes for our food challenge.
The first sake is a Junmai Daiginjo
that uses the number seven yeast, that's important.
That's lovely, very clean.
And the second one is a sparkling sake
and we think that's gonna go really well
with some of the seafood that we might have in mind.
(speaking Japanese)
We should've brought James and his arms.
Earlier in the day through an amazing lady named Rebecca,
who you'll meet in a sec,
we managed to secure, quite literally,
a once in a lifetime restaurant experience,
but we kept it from the chefs until now.
It's quite a new restaurant, it opened only in June 2018,
was opened by a guy called Thomas,
he was the head of research and development
at a restaurant called Noma.
We are being invited in to the test kitchen
to meet the team who creates all of the recipes
for the restaurant for a completely unique dining experience
and that was the guys finding that out for the first time.
- Happy birthday!
- As if this trip to Japan couldn't get any better!
Wow.
(laughing)
- That's it, that's it, wow.
- Genuinely lost for words. - He's lost for words.
- That meal was crazy.
The first person we met was Rebecca,
she's a sake expert, and a passionate advocate.
She sat down with us and told us more about sake
and the meal than we've ever learned before.
- So it's always been part of societal tapestry
and the cultural tapestry,
but it's also part of the environmental tapestry of Japan.
It's very much an agriculture based product.
It looks like just a beverage, it drinks like a wine,
but it behaves like a craft beer.
- Sat in the development kitchen,
and we had course, after course, after course
each paired with a sake,
but the first one was I think new to us all,
Monkfish liver with a berry shard,
and some beech nuts paired with a sake
that just took the whole dish to some different dimension.
- They're both so mellow so they're not warring together
they're pairing really well together.
The sakes aren't taking anything away from the dish
which I feel like it could if it was the wrong pairing
because the dish is just, it does just melt away.
And the courses kept on coming,
each one of them was paired with an amazing sake
and Rebecca took us into more depth
of why each sake worked with each course.
- With sake, it doesn't fight with food,
because it doesn't have that harsh, citric, acidity of wine
it's really quite easy to pair
with quite a wide variety of dishes,
and a good pairing to me is really also a sake
that supports the food and elevates it
into something much more gorgeous,
but it doesn't overpower it,
it just supports what's already there.
- What struck me about all of the dishes was the intrigue,
the curiosity, the unknown.
I think there was so many ingredients there
that we've never heard of before,
but the chefs explained them with such passion.
They didn't just tell us what they were,
but where they come from, why they've gathered them,
and what they've done to them
to make them as exceptional as they were on the plate.
- [James] And you're just kind of enjoying food
rather than thinking too much about it.
- That was quite possibly the most exceptional piece
of fish I've ever eaten.
- Unbelievable.
- I never thought I'd see the day
when we'd be served mille-feuille made from seaweed
that's been cooked with pine, and honey,
layered with cream and yuzu.
The seaweed is just umami, and sweet,
and citrus-ey, and zingy.
- That is so good.
It is.
- We have an aged sake to finish.
It is sweet and syrupy and sherry like.
Could there be a more perfect end to this meal?
We were sat at the table for a good couple of hours
and yet it absolutely flew by
'cause we didn't stop talking about food,
about the sake, about the ingredients we didn't know.
I can honestly say
it was some of the best I've ever experienced,
not tasted, experienced, 'cause that's what it was.
- I think that might have been one of the best surprises
we've ever had on SORTED ever, we're so lucky.
- Full stop and yet tomorrow
I think we probably have our biggest challenge ever.
- You can't look at sake as just an alcohol, it's far more
complex and beautiful than that
and for me it's a life enhancing community
and culture to be proud of.
- Judging from everything we've eaten,
this might be the hardest thing we've ever done.
- Okay so we've learned a lot in our 48 hours in Tokyo
from everything from the amazing respect
and attention to detail
that Japanese people have for their food,
to the amazing umami explosion
that you get when you pair an amazing sake
with an amazing seafood dish.
- But now we have to put that all into practice
in the most stressful way possible.
- How did he get in the kitchen?
- Oh my god!
- One batch of mushrooms burned.
- One o'clock, it's go time.
Here we go.
Open the doors.
- Ooh it makes me nervous just watching this back,
and I know how it finished.
- If you're lovin' the journey so far,
make sure you give the video a like,
get down into the comment section,
tell us what it is that you're liking about it.
Do you think we're having a proper authentic experience?
- Trips like this push us out of our comfort zone,
and we couldn't do it without JFOODO.
So big thanks to them.
Don't forget make sure you're subscribed,
and you got notifications switched on
so you can follow part three coming to you on Sunday.
- It'll all be fine, it'll all be fine, sure.
- As we mentioned,
we don't just make top quality
YouTube videos. - Lol!
- We've built the SORTED Club,
where we use the best things we've learned
to create stuff that's hopefully interesting
and useful to other food lovers.
Check it out if you're interested,
thank you for watching, and we'll see you in a few days.
Oh it's gone in the beard,
it's gone in the beard! - Oh no, it's on his T-shirt!