This restaurant's true specialty wasn't just fish - it was a fish, that being trout. Baby trout, little trout, medium trout, and me/my trout and I. Corollary to this specialty: all the trout were raised on property, as the restaurant farmed all their fish right outside the doors. I will return to the trout, and at length, but fish, I mean first, I want to talk a little bit about getting to the restaurant and the place itself.
The drive to the restaurant took us over some of the most winding, mountainous hills I have ever been driven over. I well know that there are mountains close to Kanazawa, and we didn't exactly go above treeline, but I considered the possibility of trying to bike up and down that terrain and basically resolved only to attempt it if I decided I wanted to experience the local intensive care unit. We were swiftly out of the urban areas and things got pretty primeval pretty quickly. The last maybe mile or so was on a single lane winding road that went by farms and then increasing stretches of nothing much in particular. When we reached the restaurant, it was alone, on a hill, in the center of its own small valley, with a stream running right by the front door and turning a waterwheel. Very picturesque indeed for a lovely early-fall evening.
There is a waterfall behind us, which falls into a pool full of big trout. The person who is not us is Mrs. Yamada.
As with many Japanese restaurants serving traditional food in the traditional style, each party gets their own room. Ours had a sliding door that opened to reveal a view of the valley with the sun setting over it. A concession had been made to modern comforts as the table had an indentation under it for your legs and seat backs were provided so that you could sit up in the Western style while still being close to the floor, more like the old Japanese fashion. It is a setup that we've seen before in traditional Japanese restaurants and is most welcomed over the less-comfortable alternative.
Then came the onslaught. Candied trout minnows. Tempura slightly-larger trout minnows. Trout salad. A different trout salad. Trout soup. Tempura bigger trout bits and veggies. Trout sushi and sashimi. Whole grill roasted trout with salt. Whole grill roasted trout with miso sauce. Trout with noodles. No, there was not trout ice cream or anything, which was good, because we were just about trouted out.
Pretty much everything but the beer and napkin is trout.
We liked some of the dishes better than others. I would pass on the candied minnows if I saw them again, for instance, and the tempura'd minnows were quite bitter for some reason. The roast trout with salt and some of the other dishes were really good examples of dishes that showcase the main ingredient well. We experienced trout showcased in a wide variety of ways. That allowed us to determine quite thoroughly that the trout did have some of that freshwater tang. In many cases, I would advocate blunting that particular flavor with milk, cream, or butter, but this night we did it the Japanese way and it was pretty good.
After the tsunami of food subsided a little, the Yamadas proved prepared for a lull in the conversation as they were equipped with calligraphy brushes and paper which they gifted to us and then spent some time attempting to teach us to use correctly. I felt like using them correctly was damaging the brush, but maybe that is par for the course. In all, a pleasant evening, with many visually appealing parts, and the food was mostly pretty good through I will not feel the need to eat trout again for some time, I think. I wish we had pictures but we did not feel it was appropriate to document our night out with the boss, so you'll forever have to wonder what exactly candied trout minnows look like.
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