Hitsumabushi ($31.80++)!
Nagoya-style hitsumabushi unagi rice $31.80++ — three-way eating ritual with grilled freshwater eel, condiments and dashi pour-over.
Monday dinner with BB at a Japanese restaurant for hitsumabushi — the Nagoya-style unagi (freshwater eel) rice dish with the famous three-step eating ritual. One of those dishes that’s part meal, part ceremony.
We ordered:
- Hitsumabushi — $31.80++
The presentation came with the hot ohitsu (wooden rice bowl) of grilled unagi over short-grain rice, a small bowl, and a tray of condiments: chopped scallion, shredded nori, wasabi, and pickled ginger. Plus a small teapot of hot dashi broth on the side.
The unagi was the star. Properly grilled with the kabayaki sweet-soy glaze, with crisp lacquered edges and tender white flesh underneath. The smell hit before the bowl did — that distinct charcoal-and-soy aroma that signals proper unagi.
The hitsumabushi ritual splits the bowl into four portions and eats each one differently:
- First quarter: plain, just rice + unagi to taste the eel as-is
- Second quarter: with condiments (scallion, nori, wasabi)
- Third quarter: ochazuke-style, with the dashi broth poured over
- Fourth quarter: whichever way you liked best
The three-step approach is supposed to highlight different facets of the dish. First way you get pure eel. Second way the wasabi cuts the fat. Third way the broth transforms it into a soup-noodle-rice dish that’s almost different food.
$31.80++ for hitsumabushi is fair restaurant pricing — Japan import unagi runs expensive, so this is on the right side of the value line.
Overall: 4.8 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Excellent hitsumabushi — would absolutely come back when the unagi craving hits.
