$26 Here, the Teishoku meal set is a random assortment of pickles and other menu elements that come surrounding your main plate choice. These seem to change seasonally, so to see an example of it the owner had to whip out his phone and show me. The only vegan Teishoku main dish for the day I visited was the Agedashi Tofu, described as ‘Lightly fried tofu & braised eggplant served in an umami broth’. This came in a little cat-covered bowl in the centre of the plate, served with micro sprouts and chilli threads. There were just three big cubes of silken tofu fried in a crispy white batter. The umami broth was not liquid, but weirdly gelatinous having been thickened with some sort of starch with the braised eggplant pieces suspended in it. I feel like the “broth” or rather gravy was a bit muted and could have been more flavourful, especially since the bland tofu needs it. The surrounding elements were as follows: - Black brown rice: this was kind of on the dry/old side, like it had been sitting out for a bit. The serving was a bit small too. -Bean and potato croquette: this was an incredibly satisfyingly crunchy shell of batter, with turmeric mashed potato and four types of whole beans inside, lightly drizzled in a coriander sauce. Delicious. There’s a crucial spelling mistake on the menu (well, there are several but let’s focus on this one), listing the croquette as ‘Beans and potato croquette’. I started looking for these separate beans before realising it was part of the croquette. As a linguist, I was going to give a TedTalk on how English nouns acting as adjectives in a noun phrase must be in the singular form, but the owner had absolutely no time for that so I saved it for another day. - Pickled cucumber sprinkled with sesame seeds - Pickled burdock and carrot - One incredibly tiny cube of warm roasted eggplant in its own ramekin(?) - Pickled Cabbage, beetroot and celery- the celery in this was the definitely the main flavour. - Burdock tempura with a mixed salad and carrot dressing. The dressing was so damn flavourful and tasted like some sort of citrus fruit as well I could eat a whole cabbage smothered in just that. The salad leaves were fresh, and the tempura burdock wasn’t really tempura but more like overdone fish fingers. Each battered and fried item on this plate was done in a different way, but none of them could really be called tempura, which is ok because they were tasty anyway. Overall, this meal was incredibly light and kind of small for the price one you put all the meticulously arranged, spaced out elements together, so I ended up hungry again after about two hours. I would say just get the ramen which is cheaper and will leave you feeling fatter but satiated at least.
