Dining Diaries XXII

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Strolling around the backstreets of Ebisu, we are almost certain to detect an interesting dining spot each time. One such recent find is Sacra, a washoku restaurant with a very diverse Japanese and English-language menu. We dropped in last week with a visitor from Australia, and the dinner turned out to be a success. We started with pewter-mugs of ice-cold nama biiru (¥420). But the menu offers a wide range of traditional drinks, sours, wine & champagne cocktails (¥420-¥750), shochu (¥390-), nihonshu (¥400-), and hard liquors like whiskey (¥700-). Several pages of bottled red (¥2,500-) and white (¥3,000-) wines from all over the world are also listed. We started our journey with a basket of creamy zaru dofu, followed by assorted sashimi, and a very tasty salmon & avocado salad, garnished with drops of yuzu/kabosu/sudachi jelly. Most items on the food menu are in the ¥500-¥1,000 range, except for the various nabe pots, which start from ¥2,000. However this is not the season for nabe, so we had some grilled beef and slices of just slightly seared wagyu, then a few sticks of grilled chicken, negi, shiitake, and kuruma ebi (scampi). The mix tempura had some interesting items – who has ever heard of soramame tempura? A simple grilled anago with wasabi was wonderful, but the meal ended with delicious warm anago sushi with nori wrappers, and our friend from down-under declared that he could eat no more. The service is friendly, but visits on two different occasions revealed that it is far more efficient on the first floor than upstairs.

1-6-5 Ebisu Nishi, Shibuya-ku, 03-5428-3977. Open daily 17:00-05:00.

Explanations:

• washoku: Japanese cuisine
  
• nama biiru: draft beer
  
• shochu: a distilled alcoholic beverage
  
• nihonshu: Japanese saké
  
• zaru dofu: fresh, chilled tofu in a basket
  
• yuzu, kabosu, sudachi: different Japanese citrus fruits
  
• nabe: Japanese steamboat dishes
  
• wagyu: Japanese beef
  
• negi: Welsh onion
  
• shiitake: shiitake
  
• kuruma ebi: scampi
  
• soramame: broad beans
  
• anago: conger eel
  
• wasabi: wasabi
  
• nori: dried seaweed sheets