Celebrating the End of Year at Shinjuku Izakaya Japanese Restaurant

Hello everyone,
How are you? Hopefully in good condition at the start of this year. We have gone through so many moments in 2023, hopefully all of them will have a good impact on the future. Talking about starting 2024, I remember the very good moments I had with my wife. Actually, it looks very sudden because it wasn't planned well, but this is something I can be grateful for.

Ended 2023 yesterday, exactly a week ago. We were stuck in traffic because almost everyone was out and celebrating the New Year moment. By celebrating, enlivening the streets with parades and fireworks. Initially we didn't plan to leave the house, but it turned out that being at home was very boring.

Not expecting that there would be many people celebrating New Year, we finally arrived at a very famous Japanese restaurant, but unfortunately this place was not busy. The main reason is that the majority of Indonesians are Muslim and do not drink alcohol and pork. Indeed, this place does not have a valid halal logo.

Different perspective from other people, I like this restaurant. I think the food is still very edible because there is no pork and no lard. So the food here is halal, besides they don't use mirin in Japanese sauce. I know because there are bottles of soyu with a halal label under the Kikkoman brand, which is known to be one of the favorite halal soyu in Indonesia.

Indeed, they sell all alcoholic drinks here, including Japanese sake, so as long as you don't drink sake, it's still legal for me to visit. So this restaurant is the one I like the most, especially since I want to eat ramen and other Japanese food such as sushi and sashimi. But, this is our adventure today. First time eating sashimi in my life.

Usually, our favorite Japanese restaurants don't serve sashimi. I also just found out that this restaurant has sashimi, even though we ordered a bucket of tuna sashimi which was very delicious and made me addicted. This is delicious sashimi in my opinion, it tastes very fresh, cold because there is an ice cube at the bottom and a touch of wasabi.

The most memorable thing for me is the wasabi which has a different taste from the wasabi I have ever eaten. Very noticeable wasabi even just a little bit. It pierced my entire mouth and nose, I even shed tears when I was shocked by the sensation of the wasabi. Sure, I really like it because this wasabi has good quality, this is even more unexpected.

Apart from sashimi, I chose quite a lot of menu items. Consisting of several karage, I think I'm very comfortable with this kind of food. I'm not a sushi fan like my wife, so I just ate a few pieces of sashimi and enjoyed the rest of the karage. There are chicken skin karage, kensaki atama gesho, negima tare, salad and Japanese rice in one bowl. These three are enough to keep me full for a very long time.

This salad, which is my wife's favorite, is no less delicious. The shape is very tempting and full of fiber. There is a lump of dried seaweed with a sauce that tastes slightly sour. The vegetable filling consists of shaved carrots, cabbage, cucumber and cherry tomatoes.

Chicken skin karage and kensaki atama gesho are perfectly fried in flour and very crispy. When chewed it feels very loud especially with the chicken skin they have. Given a touch of fried vermicelli so it's like eating very soft crackers.

Negima tare which is chicken grilled with Japanese sauce then topped with very flavorful scallions. I like the flavor of the scallion part especially with the very authentic Japanese sauce.

It's rare to find a Japanese restaurant that is as authentic as this, and doesn't even cater to Indonesian tastes. Because basically we want to eat at Japanese restaurants because we want to experience a different sensation from other Indonesian restaurants.

One of my favorite Japanese restaurants in Medan city. It is precisely at the intersection of the Cambridge hotel, right in front of Athena Baby Shop Medan. So, if you want to try authentic Japanese cuisine, you must try this one restaurant!