- [Narrator] If you're at all familiar with Japanese food,
you've likely heard of sashimi.
Thin slices of typically raw seafood.
Tuna, salmon, that sort of thing.
However, that's not the kind of sashimi
we're talking about in this video.
On our last trip to Japan,
we paid a visit to a restaurant in Fukushima Prefecture
that specializes in not seafood based sashimi,
but sashimi of the four legged variety
made from raw horse meat.
- We're at a Restaurant Leon that specializes in this today.
And the owner is serving us omakase style, chef's choice.
So when we sit down here,
the first thing he presents us with is the atorse.
And it's a set of essentially appetizers.
There's a set charge for sitting down
in a restaurant like this and includes these.
This is a Japanese radish, this is macaroni salad,
and this is a konnyaku, which is noodles made of taro.
The other thing that we've got to start
on the table right here, is a little cup of sake
with a neat little smiley face in it.
The best part about sitting at the counter is,
while enjoying our appetizers,
we can watch the sashimi being prepared.
And he's got six different cuts of horse, from the best,
the filet, even to the part that's not red, under the mane.
Of the seven kinds, this one's the filet,
this one's the most expensive.
I think the mane is the most unique,
cause I've never seen that before.
And I also love that there's a couple flowers on it.
And by the way, if you're wondering,
this is not all for me, this is a portion for four people.
So I got a little plate
to get my meat from the plate of four.
So I'm gonna get a piece of each here.
So one more step before we can eat, we've got some sauce
that goes in our little dish.
(gentle music)
And we add some soy sauce to it.
And stir it up.
And this makes our dipping sauce.
Kinda like soy sauce wasabi for sushi.
Okay, we've got our sashimi, we have got the sauce.
So we're gonna take a piece of this,
just twirl it around in there.
(bright upbeat music)
It's pretty good.
Now that makes it sound like,
I didn't think horse sashimi would be good.
I wasn't sure what to think of it but ,
actually its kind of a sweet taste to it.
Here, let me go for the filet, the most expensive piece.
I'm sure the sauce helps quite a bit too.
Cause it is a spicy sauce.
It's very tender.
You know, raw meat is something that you
wouldn't think would be tender, that it would be chewy.
I think that's probably what makes good horse sashimi
from bad, let's go for the white one, the mane.
We're just gonna dip that lightly cause I wanna taste it.
This one's more chewy.
Doesn't have a lot of flavor.
Almost has a consistency of like chicken skin,
or something like that.
Like if you were eating chicken skin that wasn't cooked,
I think I like the meat better than the mane.
Now you might be thinking,
how does this differ from
beef tartare or raw beef?
I feel like beef tartare or raw beef has a more bloodier
and heavy taste where this actually has,
this actually has a fairly light taste to it.
I feel like it's much like eating good sushi or tuna,
you don't really feel like it's raw,
like under cooked steak just,
something I don't like to eat but,
pretty good.
Now the other thing you might be asking
is how much does horse sashimi cost
compared to fish sashimi?
Well, let me tell you this whole plate for four people,
4,000 Yen, which is 1000 Yen a person,
which is the equivalent of 10 us dollars.
Really pretty inexpensive.
And speaking of sashimi, it almost tastes like tuna.
Like if you were picturing tuna,
you could almost think in your head
that you were eating some high quality tuna sashimi.
One last thing the owner said about horse sashimi
that makes it really good for eating compared to
say like pork, that you can't eat raw,
because pork and pigs have a lot of bacteria in them.
Well horses because their body temperature is really high,
actually all the bacteria is killed when the horse is alive.
So horse meat is very clean.
So while the horse sashimi is pretty good,
it's not a meal by itself.
So the next course we're having is karaage.
Spicy fried chicken, Japanese style.
So I got my couple pieces karaage
it comes with lemon,
so you squeeze this on here before you eat it.
And let's go ahead and give this
spicy Japanese style fried chicken a try.
(bell dings)
It's tender, it's juicy,
and actually not very spicy.
Though, the miso sauce that was with the horse sashimi,
was a lot spicier than this was.
But I love how juicy it is.
KFC, you should make your chicken a little bit juicier.
You can take a page from Japanese style fried chicken.
Course number three, the omakase is mutton.
This is sheep that's older than one year,
supposed to have an intense flavor.
And the way we eat this,
is we take a little bit of the mutton
plus a vegetable,
plus, I just want one vegetable piece.
Well, I'll take this, plus some manes here on the side,
Japanese manes, which has a taste a lot different than
American manes.
Its muttony.
I don't know how to describe mutton.
(bleeps)
Trying to have a couple more bites of the mutton
before I could fully describe it.
Sometimes people watching my food videos go,
"Chris, how can you say how it tastes immediately?"
I usually can't, or if I do that,
it's because I had a couple of bites
before I shot the video.
So, it's juicy, it's tasty and it is muttony.
So it kinda has a little bit of that gamey taste.
More gamey than beef.
But, it's a little reminiscent of a beef bulgogi.
Well that gave me flavor.
Course number five, agedashi tofu, fried tofu,
and we've got course number six coming up behind us.
Yakitori, fried meat on a stick.
One of my favorites.
So here's the yakitori course.
There's one beef, there's four chicken.
This is chicken meat, this is chicken skin,
and this is chicken cartilage.
But I think I'm gonna start with the skin.
I love me some yakitori, can't go wrong.
So if your travels bring you to Fukushima prefecture,
definitely check out Leon.
Because, the horse meat will make you healthy.
And it's really quite tasty and is from this region,
so you should totally eat it.
Well you know, one more thing to know is,
I've got more videos on Fukushima Prefecture,
and other things to eat around here too.
You can click any of these videos up on the screen,
you'll find the links in the description below
to my entire Fukushima playlist
and a hundred more on the rest of Japan.
As usual, I won't say goodbye because
I'll see you in one of those videos.