Post by Ella
Time to join the city crowds. See some sights. Yesterday we headed towards the highly touted Dotonbori area. Might have a resemblance to Times Square.
Dotonbori Shopping. Long rows of covered arcades filled with vendors. What are you looking for? All flavors of Kit Kats? capsule toys? shoes?UniQlo clothing? Ferris wheels, animatronic signs (crabs are popular), a museum of famous wood block prints?
Or are you hungry? Do you want seafood or Kobe beef? Walk a few blocks to the Kuromon Market to get blowfish, giant sea food crackers, sushi, sashimi, yakatori, scallops, squid. Whatever.
We’d had a big breakfast so I wasn’t that hungry but I couldn’t resist the giant sea food cracker. Comes in squid, shrimp, octopus and tuna. I picked tuna. First, rectangles of dried tuna are scattered on a large grill (maybe 14” x 14”). Batter is poured over the tuna and fills the grill. The top of the grill lowers and clamped down. Sizzle, sizzle. Give it a few minutes. Turn the cracker over. Pour batter to fill any gaps. Clamp down again. Sizzle. Done. Cracker is handed to the stamp and sauce guy. He gives me a hot mitt and I get the stamp. Then sauce is brushed on (sweet or spicy – I picked spicy). Voila.
I shared the cracker with Grubb but it still took a long time to eat.
I’ve heard that they have weird flavors of KitKats like wasabi, chili etc. Was that blowfish the poisonous if not cut properly kind? That’s a big cracker!
That’s quite the process. Hope you enjoyed that cracker!
Whelp, I enjoyed the idea of it more than the cracker itself. It was like a tasteless, saltless slightly chewy cracker except when you got to a tuna bit or where the sauce was a little thicker.
I’m guessing it was the poisonous kind ( not sure there are any non poisonous) of blowfish. Yep, huge cracker!