(Re)finding new favourites
A love letter to Tatsushi
One of the downsides of being fiercely loyal is that it can limit your options. In some cases, that’s a good thing (eg marriage). But as I discovered last night, being fiercely loyal to The Beijing, particularly in its final months of existing as I knew and loved it, meant I missed out on going to other places that I really love to eat at.
This is not a restaurant review blog – you all know that by now. But right now, I feel compelled to pen a little note about how good Tatsushi, Wellington’s hidden away Japanese restaurant, is. As I said to Phil last night, now that The Beijing has new owners, we will be going to Tatsushi as much as we possibly, humanly, and financially can in the time we have left here.
Tatsushi was one of my first favourite restaurants in Wellington, back when it was on Victoria Street in digs that felt more like one of the Japanese izakaya I’d been to in Tokyo and Kyoto not long before moving here. When Tatsushi moved to its Edward Street home it took me a long time to like the space. Now I adore it and see that it too is very much like one of those izakaya in Tokyo and Kyoto that I talk about.
I like that at Tatsushi you can drink high balls and Kirin, two things I like to drink if I’m not drinking wine, which we all know is my drink of choice. Last night I had a yuzu chu-hi high ball, and a sip of Phil’s Kirin. We only had one drink each because our food came quickly. We could’ve ordered more drinks, of course, but I am determined to do Damp July. Reduced alcohol consumption, as distinct from none. And you can rest assured I’d had two glasses of wine at home before I went out, and one in a coffee cup during a board meeting in the office that afternoon. So, I am okay. I digress.
I like that at Tatsushi the already extensive dinner menu (which comes in a little A5 sized book) also includes a daily specials menu which is handwritten and includes illustrations. It’s very cute.
There’s so much on the menu and so much you want to eat that I find you need to use the Notes app on your phone to jot down everything you want so that you don’t forget anything when your waiter takes your order. I like that the dishes are small enough that you can order a lot.
The food here is delicious. All of it. There’s not a single bad dish. Last night, from the regular menu, we ordered fish namban, cucumber hosomaki (thin sushi rolls), salmon aburi nigiri sushi, the small tempura plate of prawns and white fish and two types of seasonal vegetable (pumpkin and kale), and a bowl each of the snapper chazuke soup. From the hand drawn specials menu we had fish katsu, pork katsu and sesame agedashi tofu. These three were my favourite dishes of the night. From the seasonal specials menu we had the chawan mushi (which is always a seasonal special) and the persimmon and daikon radish sweet and sour tsukemono. I go to Tatsushi every year just to have that permission dish. It’s extraordinary. We also had a bowl of plain rice. It arrived a bit late in the meal, but I didn’t mind; I like mouthfuls of perfectly cooked plain rice at the end of a meal.
The dish we finished our meal with was the snapper chazuke soup, which according to the menu is commonly served at the end of an elaborate Japanese meal, is favoured as a midnight snack and is a good hangover cure. What a dynamic dish! It is a little bowl of dashi broth with cooked rice and a few thin slices of fresh snapper. There’s a little smear of wasabi on the side of the bowl for you to add as you please. It was the first time I’d had the chazuke soup and it was excellent. You don’t really need plain rice on the side of your other dishes if you order the chazuke. I could, quite honestly, eat a bowl of that, a plate of those skinny little cucumber sushi rolls and a plate of hot fried karaage for dinner every night for the rest of my life and be happy. So long as there was a high ball too.
