[Tokyo] Wild eel’s hitsumabushi at Tokichi (藤吉) close to Tokyo Skytree

Tokyo

2024.04.17 2015.08.12

My friend asked me to join dinner with wild eel’s hitsumabushi at Tokichi (藤吉) in Oshiage. Of course, I joined 🙂

Their specialty is originally soft‐shelled turtle, but they serve conger eel, wild eel, fat Greenling and so on if we ask in advance.

As I said now, we had wild eel’s hitsumabushi course. Tokichi ordinary don’t have eel. They only have wild eel during its best season.

Our course started from soramame. It was boiled until it getting soft with soup. So, we could eat its skin, too !

Three in our group including me had Japanese sake named Hinodetsuru. Here is Oshiage. It’s the center of Edo. So, they serve it wit Edo Kiriko glass. Beautiful.

Masuda beef with vegetables. The bamboo shoot had good flavor.

Assorted sashimi. Octopus, horse mackerel and fatty part of tuna.

This horse mackerel was so fatty and this fat melted on my tongue smoothly. It was great.

Vegetable in jelly. It had edamame, paprika, cucumber, tomato and so on. It had refreshing tastes. It’s the tastes of summer.

As last, hitsumabushi was served. It’s wild eel’s hitsumabushi ! Domestically caught 100% wild eel ! I ate it for the first time ! My finger shaking with all due respect. It was served in two-layer lacquered boxes. Condiments were in the upper box,

and eels and rice was in the bottom box.

And pickles were served. Daikon radish, carrot, shallot, and cucumber. Larger slices of vegetables were good.

At first, we ate it as unajyu (eei box) without soup. And then we put some condiments on the eel. We enjoyed some tastes. We said nothing. We kept eating. The eel was not fatty and grilled thoroughly for hitsumabushi. But we ate almost 2/3 of it without soup 😛

Of course, it was tasty as unajyu, but this eel was grilled for hitsumabushi. So, putting soup, rice and eel together into the bowl made great impression.

After that, we ate mamedaifuku as dessert. My friend bought it at Gunrindo for us. Thankful ! Gunrindo is close to his office. That’s great. Gunrindo’s mamedaifuku is called three major mamedaifuku in Tokyo with Matsushimaya in Sengakuji and Mizuho in Harajuku. I had known those existence, but this was the first time to eat one of it.