Syun
Izakaya Japanese Restaurant & Saké Club
209 NE Lincoln
St., Hillsboro, 640-3131
Open 11:30 am-2 pm Mondays-Fridays, 5-10 pm daily. Moderately
priced.
Picks: Monkfish paté, fresh tuna with grated
mountain potato, squid and flying fish eggs, gyoza,
all the sushi, the Momokawa sampler set of saké.
Nice touch: Hundreds of beautiful saké bottles
form the major element of the decor.
Koji
Osakaya
1502 NE Weidler St., 294-1169 11:30 am-9 pm daily. Moderately
priced.
Picks:
Beef rolled around green onion, skewered crispy chicken skin,
panko-coated
oysters and wasabi tobiko.
Nice touch: Comfortable, neutral atmosphere.
I'M A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY...
BY ROGER
J. PORTER
243-2122 EXT. 371
You journey across the meadows and farms of rural Washington
County, past the parks and Little League ballfields of small-town
America, to the basement of the 1915 Hillsboro library.
And suddenly, amazingly, you step into a restaurant that
makes you think you've been transported directly to the
Ginza in downtown Tokyo.
Syun Izakaya (the words mean "fresh seasonal" and "saké
pub") seems like an anomaly until you realize that a number
of high-tech firms have located to the area, bringing with
them a cadre of Japanese workers. But it's not just the
famed salarymen who line up for this wonderful new spot:
People of all sorts are thronging this most sophisticated
and yet homey of restaurants. Though 1,800 saké breweries
flourish in Japan, only seven do in America, and one of
them, the Momokawa Premium Saké Brewery, resides
in neighboring Forest Grove. Syun (pronounced "shyuun")
offers some 20 varieties of saké, and the evidence
of its consumption constitutes a major feature of the establishment's
decor. Hundreds of splendid bottles ring the two rooms and
the sushi bar, lined up like so many Japanese character-emblazoned
bowling pins.
Syun serves some familiar dishes, such as tempura, donburi
and noodles, but it is essentially a place to have unusual
small plates (as well as sushi) to accompany saké.
Think of it as a kind of Japanese tapas bar.
Roland Barthes once noted that on the Japanese table, "everything
is the ornament of another ornament." The order of the dishes
is largely irrelevant; there is no linear itinerary of dishes,
and a meal here is inevitably an assemblage of randomly
selected fragments, the "design" of the meal dictated by
nothing but color, composition and the whim of random consumption.
You never know in what order the dishes will appear, and
it hardly matters. As Godard once declared about his films,
"There's a beginning, a middle and an end--but not necessarily
in that order!"
Assuredly, however, you will begin with a generous and
gratis wooden box mounded with edamame, or fresh
soy beans. It would be a crime not to enjoy the saké
menu, which not only describes each style but gives its
"saké meter value" of dryness and sweetness, its
state of origin (whether Hyogo, Shizuoka or Oregon) and
whether it is best served cold in a wine glass or warm in
a ceramic tokuri. (When warm saké is delivered
to the table, your server will bring a basket of multi-hued
tokuri, or pottery pitchers, for you to choose from.)
I'd recommend the "Sampler Set" of the locally-produced
variety, with four 2-ounce glasses on a black lacquer platform
tray; the sakés are named ruby, silver, diamond and
pearl. The first three are clear as icicles, while the latter
is a creamy-looking affair, much like ouzo after water has
been poured in. It's richly sweet with an almond-coconut
taste, a perfect saké to conclude the meal.
The spanking-fresh fish is flown in daily, direct from
the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, the largest in the world. Every
one I tried was superb, especially the sea eel, the geoduck
and the amber jack. I'm normally not a fan of sushi rolls,
but the "spider roll" made with softshell crab is marvelous;
the crunch of scallion and radish sprouts embedded in the
succulent crab meat is immensely satisfying. Appetizers
are the real stars of the show. For blissful decadence,
try the monkfish paté, delicate disks of soft and
mild meat from one of the world's great fish. You'll feel
like an emperor who has commanded the sea's exotica. Another
gentle but tantalizing choice is the egg-and-chicken hot
custard, the broth flavoring the egg with exquisite subtlety,
making the dish a worthy candidate for Japanese penicillin.
Two other fine appetizers include fresh tuna with grated
mountain potato, and the squid and flying fish eggs combo.
The former resembles crystalline tapioca or showers of snow
laden with strips of seaweed and raw tuna and set off by
deep-jade wasabi paste. Flying-fish roe scattered upon gleaming,
almost porcelain strips of squid, creates the illusion the
fish is speckled with orange, each dot of color a tiny egg
that crunches and bursts against your palate. Even the salads
surprise: Daikon salad plays the peppery radish against
a sesame-and-ginger sauce, while a briny sea-vegetable salad,
with its slippery kelp and slurpy seaweed, goes down with
ease yet retains a crunch. Another unlikely appetizer is
roasted elephant garlic: The large segments have the texture
of boiled potato, are more nutty in flavor than astringent
and may be eaten just as they are.
The specials, not all of which are available each day,
are written only in Japanese, so you'll have to ask for
help if you don't read characters. There seem to be more
than your server can remember, so keep pressing if you want
the largest possible selection, though what you hear about
may be as arbitrary as the order of the meal. The specials
tend to be cooked rather than raw dishes. Though I usually
avoid deep-fried dishes other than tempura, I suggest the
deep-fried tuna, which is served with a powerful plum sauce
that cuts through the breading and enhances the deep red
meat. Another fine special, thin strips of tender beef doused
with steamed garlic buds, has a surprisingly sweet taste.
Anything to avoid? If I'm told that Westerners won't like
a particular dish, I'm instantly intrigued, and seven samurai
couldn't keep me from it. But the minced squid in sour plum
paste, looking like a miniature brain, has a reeky taste
that may take eons to acquire, while the squid in a natural
squid dressing is slimy, sticky sweet and redolent of lands
unknown.
In a nice ecumenical gesture, Syun serves the Korean national
dish kimchi, here made with pork and milder and more
flavorful than I've ever had it before.
If culture shock strikes you upon entering Syun Izakaya,
by the time you've immersed yourself in a superbly ornamental,
delicious and leisurely meal and have experienced the restaurant's
sweet--though harried--hospitality, the shock upon leaving
is even greater. But the strains of Madonna singing in Japanese
will accompany you into the night air of small-town America,
a guardian and transitional spirit.
I'M A LITTLE BIT
ROCK 'N' ROLL
BY JIM DIXON
jdixon@realgoodfood.com
Koji is one the newest restaurants in the Lloyd district,
but it's been packed since it opened a few months ago. The
Northeast Portland incarnation is a casual storefront, more
akin to the downtown branch than the expansive layouts of
the Koji outposts on Southwest Macadam Avenue or in Beaverton.
Exposed ductwork and concrete paired with simple woodwork
and fabric panels create a comfortably neutral atmosphere
that focuses your attention on the clean, vivid flavors
of the food.
There are plenty of choices if your dining companion makes
a face when you say "sushi." The predictable avocado-filled
California roll, a blatant but successful marketing ploy
by restaurateurs, is a good start for the novice. More adventurous
choices include inari, deep-fried tofu filled with
sushi rice; unagi, made with grilled eel flavored
with teriyaki; and baked yellowtail roll.
The majority of Koji's extensive menu listings have nothing
to do with sushi. The list of appetizers offers plenty of
options, starting with a small bowl of cool, creamy tofu
marinated in ginger-spiked soy and sprinkled with green
onions and salty dried bonito flakes. Warm soy beans are
perfect for munching with a cold Sapporo beer; bright green
and salted on the outside, they pop open and yield tender
pealike morsels. Thin slices of beef rolled around green
onion, skewered and grilled are called negimaki--dip
them into the bowl of togarashi (a blend of hot red
pepper, sesame seeds, seaweed and other Japanese spices)
for extra crunch and flavor. If you've ever wondered where
all of the skin from those denuded low-fat chicken breasts
goes, the answer is kawa yakitori, skewers of wickedly
rich chicken skin crackling with crispiness.
Another dimension of crunch comes from tempura and katsu.
Tempura everybody knows--shrimp, squid and vegetables are
coated with a simple flour batter kept icy cold, then flash-fried
in hot oil. Katsu dishes, also called furai in
the appetizer section, have a different crunch--more textured
and hearty than the ethereal tempura--from the superfine
bread crumbs called panko. Ebi (prawns) and
ika (squid) furai are good, but panko-coated
fried oysters are amazing. The initial resistance and earthy
flavor of the crisp panko contrasts delightfully
with the meltingly tender bivalve. The fried medallions
of pork tenderloin called tonkatsu may be the most
well-known panko dish, and they're available as an
entree or in a donburi, a deep bowl filled with lightly
seasoned rice and topped with the finely shredded seaweed
called wakame.
Try the Japanese curry, dark reddish-brown and tasting
more of red pepper than the coriander and turmeric flavors
in Indian-style curries. The thick sauce, in either hot
or mild versions, tops a generous mound of rice and your
choice of vegetables, meat or seafood. An array of noodle
dishes offers even more non-sushi choices. Wheat-flour udon
or buckwheat soba noodles come with anything from
raw egg or grated mountain potato to chicken or beef, and
the soba is available cold with the sharp bite of
green wasabi paste.
Most of us think of ramen as cheap, quick-cooking
noodles flavored with a mysterious powder, but Koji gives
the popular Japanese snack food proper respect. The fresh,
homemade noodles are served with either a simple soy broth
or pork stock and topped with barbecued pork or wakame.
Fear not, lovers of raw fish won't be disappointed. Master
fish cutters called itamae preside over the sushi
bar, slicing impeccably fresh yellowtail, tuna and other
briny delights. Experienced sushi eaters will find their
favorites, from maguro (tuna) to hamachi (yellowtail),
along with a few little surprises, like the crispy deep-fried
shrimp heads that come with an order of the sweet shrimp
called amaebi. Check the whiteboard for daily specials,
such as wasabi tobiko, a nigiri sushi that
tops a ball of rice with bright orange flying-fish roe mixed
with the fiery green horseradish. The tiny fish eggs pop
and crackle, the wasabi rushes up your sinuses and the vinegared
rice tempers the experience so you'll want to do it again.
And you will.
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 18,
1999
|
