Rokko Mountain

We celebrated my birthday recently, and as usual we went out to eat together. A birthday is a good excuse to try something new, so we tend to pick some place we wouldn't normally go to. Beyond our normal budget, a kind of restaurant or food we wouldn't usually have, or perhaps at an interesting location.

Mikage station on the Hanshin line. From here you take the bus to the Rokko ropeway base station where you go up the mountain. At the top you can take another bus or you walk to the hotel. Walking is more pleasant, but bring a change of clothes in the summer.

The dinner was late this year; I was still at OCNC in Okinawa on my birthday, and we delayed it another couple of weeks to let me catch up with things once I came back. But a few weeks ago we finally went to Rokko mountain in Kobe, and to the barbecue at Rokko Mountain Hotel.

There's no real town along the top ridge, just houses spread out along the road, but it does have this store with daily foods and a large selection of wines, beers and spirits, including a local Rokko beer. There's many summer homes and corporate retreats on the mountain, so I can see the demand.

We last went there for O-bon two years ago. We had the buffet, which was tasty, but of course still buffet-type food. At the time we decided to return some day and have the course menu instead. Expensive, but with higher-quality food. My birthday was a perfect opportunity.

The lobster, with scallops and squid gently frying in the background. Overdoing the depth of field thing here, I think.

The course menu was very good indeed. The appetizer was a sampling plate with sashimi, marinated seafood and vegetables. The small lobster cooked in its own shell was succulent, and the main course meats were tender and flavourful, and included various cuts of lamb, chicken, pork and beef as well as sausages and lots of vegetables. My favourite (if not Ritsukos) was the lambchops, but the beefsteak and the thick bacon slices were excellent too. It finished with dessert and coffe. Well worth trying as an experience. The weather was rather hazy, unfortunately, so the view wasn't very photogenic.

Hydrangea grow wild all over the mountain. They're not native to Japan so they're probably escapees from some garden long ago. At this time the whole mountain top is lit up in light blue flowers.

(Belated) Happy Birthday!

We celebrated Ritsukos birthday last week. And as usual for our birthdays, we went for dinner somewhere we would not normally go.

This year we went to Kobe. A quick lunch at a German hot-dog place (Kobe is good for non-Japanese food), a walk around town for a few hours, then a beer at Ebisu Bar right by Sannomiya station. It's a European-style pub where you can sit for an hour or two over a beer and talk. It's exactly the kind of place I often used to visit when in Sweden, and that I sort of miss here. They have some good dark beers on tap too, which is not something we're spoiled with here.

Dinner was at Ito Grill, by Nankinmachi in Kobe. As the name implies it's a steak and grill restaurant, vaguely French or western European in style. We had a terrine; soup; an excellent fried flatfish with mashed potatoes, vegetables and balsamico sauce; their signature beef stew; and dessert. It was all very good, if somewhat light on seasoning in my view (I'm a little too fond of salt for my own good). We had a good view of the charcoal roast oven, and while the stew was really, really good the steaks in that oven made our mouths water just looking at them. Perhaps we'll go again some day, just to try the steak.

Ritsuko got a new camera as her old one died late last year, a Panasonic GF2. I'm pretty impressed by it; a major step up from a small-sensor camera in quality, while remaining small and compact. Anyway, it meant we only had that camera with us, so I don't have any shots of my own from the dinner.

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Me, in hat
By Ritsuko.

Another birthday come and gone. As we do every year, we use our birthdays to try a restaurant we wouldn't normally visit. For Ritsuko's birthday we went to a very nice Portugese place in Umeda, and my birthday last year found us having pig's feet in a German restaurant in Kobe.

We continued the south-European theme this weekend with a visit to El Poniente Carbón near Yodoyabashi. It's part of a group of Spanish restaurants here in Osaka. Calling it a chain doesn't feel right, as each restaurant is different in style from the others, and indeed, two of them - a tapas bar and restaurant called Faro, and the grill Carbón - lie right across the street from each other.

Anyway, we'd eaten at Faro a few times and liked it, so we decided to try the somewhat more upscale Carbón for my birthday. It did not disappoint. For starters we had chorizo and grilled onion with anchovy. The chorizo was good, though a bit simple - just a plate of thinly sliced sausage - whereas the grilled onion was a hit. Onion halves burnt black on the ouside, with a large dollop of anchovy paste on top. Grilled asparagus was another hit, tender and juicy, with a bit of butter and lemon.

Our shared main courses were spicy grilled chicken and lamb chops. Ritsuko really prefers fowl overall but to me the lamb chops were the highlight of the whole meal. Juicy and fatty and nearly perfectly done, they were served atop a bed of potato gratin that was soaking up the flavours from the meat above. A glass of Rioja wine for the preliminaries and a glass of beer for the meat fit very well with the food. A coffee and brandy rounded it all of nicely.


In other news, daytime peak temperature has hit 30° here now, marking the official start of the Season of Misery for me. And if that's bad, spare a thought for poor Ashorochō up in Hokkaido that had 37° this weekend. Look for me under the nearest airconditioner up until October.