Moriawase who?

The roof of my office is leaking again, for the third time. I am baffled and frustrated. It's a really sunny day today so no reason why it should be raining in my office.

Maybe this is the karmic payback for my having poked fun at Survivor Treehouse. There is a karmic "L" on my forehead now.

I found out just yesterday from a reliable source that the Japanese word for "off the menu chef's special items" in a Japanese restaurant is "MORIAWASE". So Sushi Moriawase doesn't just mean "salmon, tuna, hamachi sushi", it actually means the chef's selection of whatever is fresh on that day. It's good to know these things.

I had "moriawase" twice last week and it was wonderful. There's this little Japanese restaurant at Uberburger at Millenia Walk that comes up with some really wonderful items. Just the other day, A Friend and I had a sashimi selection (including fat juicy toro slices), foie gras with yam, eggplant grilled with 2 kinds of creamy miso sauce and served with a spoon, some other dishes and sake, all for the grand total of S$100 per person. Without the sake, it would've been S$80, or slightly less. This is all in, with service charge, GST and everything. It's like a wonderful dream.

Went to Inagiku with a client today. Asked a waitress if she could serve us the chef's selection. Pardon? she said. Moriawase? I said. I'll get the head waitress, she said.

Head waitress came by and I repeated myself patiently. She looks at me like I asked her to do a slow striptease. Why don't you try this set lunch? she suggests, pointing at the S$60 per person set lunch. Ok. I am resigned to my non-moriawase fate.

It was, at best, a very average and rather boring selection of food. Chawanmushi, tamago, salmon, hamachi, tuna, miso soup, prawn tempura, some stewed chicken, some grilled fish, white rice on the side. The client was happy but I was disappointed.

Half the world is starving, and the other half is complaining about boring food? My dad would've said.

Yeah, I know. But hell if you are going to take the trouble to go to what is supposed to be the best Japanese restaurant in Singapore, you'd expect not just good quality food but items that would surprise and astonished any palate, right? I'm not expecting to eat the sushi off a naked woman's breast but hey, would it kill you to serve me something slightly unusual? Yes, I did bite into a stewed orange which was placed beside the grilled fish, but that's not the kind of "unusual" I was thinking about.

Just about 1 year ago, I had lunch with a colleague in Sydney, at Yoshii Restaurant. I have to warn you, said my colleague. This place has ruined Japanese food for me. I can't enjoy Japanese food anywhere else. Oh no, I said blithely. I love Japanese food. That won't happen to me.

In other news:

1. Gwen: I met Chin at the wet market last Sunday! He looks the same. I saw him in advance so had time to put on a little bit of makeup before we 'accidentally' ran into each other in the market.

2. Have updated the Flickr pics. But can't for the life of me get the pics uploaded into a blog entry.