Japanese Cuisine is one of my favorite foods. It`s kinda like my comfort food. A good, nice, well balanced and sophisticated one will make my heart skip a beat. I have been looking for something that takes my breath away and I haven`t found it. Until one day, my cousin introduced me to this lovely homey restaurant located in Melawai. It`s called Kira Kira Ginza. This one now becomes my favorite Japanese restaurant.
Kira Kira Ginza is established by Japanese Chef. You will find less Indonesian eat there. All over the restaurants are packed with Japanese people. Two floor small restaurant with tatami, sushi bar and also the bar for drink some beer or sake.
You might get lost a bit while you are here. The entire menu mostly in Kanji (Japanese Font), but, don`t worry, they did notice that they are some Indonesian do cherish their food, so they did have one menu with pictures and English named.
I started with Tori Karaage (Rp. 35.000) for the appetizer. It`s one of their famous and best seller finger foods. Quite a huge size of karaage as I would say. It`s very crispy and the meat was very juicy. To make it interesting, drizzle some lemon juice and dip it in the salt mixture. The lemon juice brings interesting flavor, while the salt mixture give a saltiness tickle in your senses.
Move on to the next appetizer, I ordered Oden. Oden is a well known Japanese soup. Normally, they enjoyed it in winter season. You could choose the ingredients in your oden. Usually, it`s Tamago (boiled egg), Konnyaku (jelly) and Kamaboko (fish cakes) or Satsumaage (fried fish cakes). They also served it with Karashi (Japanese mustard).
I went for the normal oden with tamago (Rp. 10.000), konnyaku (Rp. 9.000) and satsumaage (Rp. 15.000). I love the soup flavor. It`s so refreshing. I added the Karashi to give it a nice kick in my palate. Watch out! If you don`t like mustard flavor, don`t add too much. I would suggest add just a little bit to make it even nicer and has lots of flavor. The tamago was boiled perfectly and very smooth. The konnyaku, it`s in the right texture. The satsumaage was nice but I would be very happy if they served it bigger please.
This time, I ordered the Zaru Soba (Rp. 47.000). It is a cold soba served with shredded nori (seaweed). Soba is a thin noodle made from buckwheat flour. What I love about it, you could have it either cold or hot. To enjoy it, simply dip the soba to the soba tsuyu sauce. The tsuyu sauce is made from mixture of dashi (radish) with sweetened soy sauce and mirin (Japanese Rice Vinegar). For this one, they add a raw quail egg, sesame seed and sliced spring onions. The soba was tender. As you dipped it in the sauce, it is very tasty.
Surely, I did leave my heart there and will be back for another surprisingly pleasant journey!
