A quick drinking Sake at “Soji-Bo” in Tameike-Sanno after work

Hope you are having a good evening.
Thank you for reading this blog.

Today I introduce “Soji-Bo” in Tameike-Sanno which I visited for a drink with my colleague after work as we finished it up a little early.

The words “finished it up a little early” for us still meant entering the restaurant 15 minutes before the last call.
We just had seats without caring about it because we were not going to stay for a long anyway.

I chose whisky with soda for the first glass (I usually try not to choose beer because of my gout), and my colleague started with a Shochu (Japanese distilled spirit) mixed with soba cooking water.

The first thing which caught our eyes in the menu was this.

Big letters of “Ryoma Tataki” (lightly roasted bonito in the photo) attracted us a little, but we decided to select the skewered bonito next to it and an omelet, because we felt that Tataki was rather expensive.

After a while, the omelet came first which is a regular item when you drink at soba restaurants.

It was not cut like this when arrived.
As you can imagine, I was too tired to take a beautiful photo of its original figure.

After a short time, the bonito came like this;

On a stick, there were a piece of bonito, and the next a piece of onion, bonito again, and onion again at last. It seemed bigger and more filling than the menu book.

We tried them right away.

The bonito skin was nice grilled flavor, and the sweet sauce matched the bonito.

The onion was soft and sweet, which made a nice break between bonitos.

We were browsing the menu thinking of ordering one more dish, and found this;

“Hoba Yaki” which is a Shinshu’s famous grilled dish on a Hoba leaf with miso. What a nice sound of the name is!

Why not try it?

A food like this goes well with Japanese sake, so we decided to order some sake as well.

Actually, I had been this restaurant in lunch time once, and I was curious about what kind of sake they have seeing sake bottles made in Shinshu area (Nagano Prefecture) in the show window.

The one I was interested in the most was “Kan-Nara”.

The name was unique to me and I had been hoping to try some if I had chance to come at night.

Yes. I found it on the menu. “Ginjo-Shu Kan-Nara”.

I chose a half size because I had work on the next day.

A staff brought it immediately.

The staff poured it in the glass in front of me. It was too quick to catch it in a photo, so here is the one after it was done.

On the label, the sake maker’s name was printed. This is made by Shinshu Meijo.

The taste was mild and airy of Ginjo-shu (high grade sake), and too smooth to know how much you drank.

By the way, this name “Kan-Nara” is a name of demons’ king who lived in Togakushi Mountain in Nagano City in an old myth. If you know about Japanese elegance well, you might have heard of it. The demon king had a beautiful flute called “Aoba no Fue”, and it was stolen by Ariwara No Narihira who is famous for an old story Ise Monogatari to present to the emperor. The demon king went to get it back, but he lost and killed after all.

There is also a Kagura play (Japanese traditional sacred play) about this story, and the title is “Aoba no Fue”.

If you look up “Kan-Nara” on the internet, you can find more detailed stories in Togakushi Shrine’s web site. (I don’t put the link because I’m not sure if it’s permitted. If it’s free, I’d like to put it here.)

Now let’s return to the subject.

While we were chatting with the drink (of course the topic was not the myth of demon king, but Mobile Suit Gundam), Hoba Yaki was brought in and made the table full of Shinshu. I show it to you here.

The fire was lit on the table, and this photo is after it was cooked. The smell of miso poked my appetite.

We tasted it.

This is a shimeji mushroom. Miso does a fantastic job making the taste sweet first, but also deep and various flavor afterwards.

The combination with sake is just brilliant.

This time we ordered the duck one, but we want to try the salmon next time which can’t be bad with the miso.

Finally, soba noodles to conclude this dinner.

The noodles were nicely firm and comfortable at my throat.

This restaurant serves stalk wasabi to make fresh wasabi paste for a seasoning by yourself, but we were too tired to do it so had the normal paste.

The good point of “Soji-Bo” is that they design their menu of both drinks and foods based on “Shinshu”, so you can enjoy “Shinshu” through soba, sake, and dishes which are all created in or related to Shinshu.

We finished this beautiful dinner with satisfaction of both stomach and heart.

信州そば処そじ坊 山王パークタワービル店
ジャンル：そば
アクセス：東京メトロ千代田線国会議事堂前駅5番口 徒歩1分
住所：〒100-0014 東京都千代田区永田町2-11-1 山王パークタワーB1F（地図）
周辺のお店：ぐるなび　永田町×そば
情報掲載日：2017年8月9日
レストランブランド情報：そじ坊