Just because Osaka is in Japan doesn’t mean there’s only Japanese food to be had there. If course we had our fill of Japanese food but there was this restaurant that…
Well, let me just say that the first time I saw the tarps and lighted signs, I knew we weren’t going to leave Osaka without eating there.
The truth is, we never even discovered the name of the restaurant. There was no English name on the facade. Even the menu was mostly in Chinese. To find the restaurant, by the way, if you should visit Osaka — look for HG Cozy Hotel No. 35 on Google Maps and the restaurant is on the ground floor.
But, anyway… So, we went to the restaurant one evening after a day of walking and shopping. We were already tired and I really just wanted to take my jacket and boots off. Take out was the best option.
We entered the restaurant, the nice lady who helped us when we were having problems getting in touch with the staff of HG Cozy Hotel No. 35 greeted us with a big smile (when she smiled, her eyes did too). For take-out, we said, and we wanted one seafood dish, one vegetable dish and another with meat in it.
But I wasn’t so good at making myself understood. So, I took out my phone, went to Google Translate and typed “fish”. The translation came out as “yu”.
“Ahhh, yu,” said the nice lady. And she pointed every item on the menu with fish. We chose a fish soup.
There was a pork ang eggplant dish that looked truly delectable and we ordered that too. And when Google Translate was no longer enough, like she did on the previous occasion, she asked a customer — a charming young lady — to lend a hand. And it was the charming young lady who recommended the stir fried potatoes with a thumbs-up.
It would take some twenty minutes to get the food ready so we took the elevator to the apartment and Speedy went down a little later to pick up the food.
Everything was delicious. So delicious that I vowed we would make our version of each dish at home.
Our favorite was the fish soup. You can’t see it in the photo but underneath all that succulent fillets is a heap of pickled mustard. Truly lovely. We have made the fish soup at home but I’ll start with the simplest. Well, what appears to be the simplest.
The potato dish may look like a simple stir fry with julienned potatoes, chilies and scallions, but the cooking technique is a bit challenging. The potatoes must be stir fried until cooked through but still crisp. Not easy when cooking with a vegetable that contains a lot of starch.
But, thanks to two reliable blogs, we were able to make Sichuan stir fried potatoes at home. See our recipe for Sichuan stir fried potatoes.