the garden place soshuen

Yesterday, I was able to meet up with my host-mom and my host-brother's wife for lunch at Garden Place Soshuen.

This large estate was the vacation home of a plutocrat and then after the war in 1946 was turned into a Chinese restaurant called Soshuen.

The estate survived the large Kobe earthquake of 1995 and in recent years, was turned into a wedding restaurant facility and the name changed to The Garden Place Soshuen.

The cuisine is Italian/French.

We started our lunch with a cocktail. This is made with sparkling wine and the juice of a himepon (literally, princess citrus, it is a type of dekopon)....very fruity.

The amuse bouche was mozzarella cheese with pieces of citrus and bits of anchovy, some capers...delicious.

Appetizers were a scallop and kanburi (type of yellowtail) marinated in an agrodolce (sweet/sour) sauce and served with some caponata.

It wasn't too sweet or sour, I enjoyed this dish because the scallops were grilled and had a nice flavor.

Lobster linguine...delicious lump of lobster, but the meat inside the claw was a bit difficult to remove.

A sirloin piece of "akaushi". Akaushi is the brand name of wagyu in the Kumamoto area of Japan.

Tender and delicious with the silky gorgonzola mashed potatoes.

Dessert was a strawberry shortcake.

This is different from the shortcake that is more widely known in the States.

Japan's strawberry shortcake is a yellow sponge, filled with fresh whipped cream and strawberries.

The waitstaff asked if we wanted the cake cut, and we did, so she cut it into thirds.

The property was beautiful, the food delicious and most importantly, it was nice to be able to spend time with my host-mom and my host-brother's wife. (Thank you!)

The Garden Place Soshuen
4-7-28 Sumiyoshi-yamate
Higashi-nada, Kobe
Phone: 078.851.3182
*Reservations required

macarons, macarons & mini PH

Ever since Autumn, I've been seeing more and more macarons about, so I'd like to share with you what I've been sampling...

Starbucks caramel and raspberry macarons. 

The caramel one is sickly sweet. 

Definitely eat it with black coffee. 

The raspberry one has raspberry gelatin inside, it is not too sweet.

Bon Nouvelle's macarons have been featured in many foodie magazines here. 

I love the huge display they have in the middle of their shop. 

Apparently, they change it every month!

All edible except for the gold leaf ones.


I bought a box of 14 so I could share with Satoshi.

These were really small, and just right for a mid-afternoon snack. 

The flavors we had were cafe noix (coffee and sesame), chocolat passion (chocolate with passion fruit), pistache (pistachio), vanille (vanilla), mangue (mango with cinnamon), fraise (strawberry), the vert (green tea).

Secession's macaron flavors are seasonal, they have different flavors throughout the year. 

Their macs are bigger than Bon Nouvelle's, as big as PH's (Pierre Herme), but not as good as PH.

There was tarragon, chocolate, orange, pineapple, sesame & cherry. Satoshi and I agreed that the orange one was super bitter! My favorite was the sesame.

My search for macarons weren't all successes though, there was one shop, to be left unnamed, that had advertised macarons. 

So, I travelled quite a ways to buy some, only to find out that for the rest of the year, they have decided not to make any! I knew I should have called to see if they had them on hand.

Yesterday I met a fellow blogger, Tamakikat and we went to check out the IXC.caffe which is run by Cassina, an Italian brand interior shop in Osaka. 

They were supposedly serving PH macarons...meh, we were bummed that we weren't allowed to choose from the flavors they had (they gave us pistachio and caramel sel) and they weren't really worth the price they were charging and if I remember correctly, the PH macarons I had in Tokyo were WAY bigger! 

Still we had a nice time chatting and walking around Osaka.

While I'm on the subject of PH, Carol e-mailed me to tell me about the mini PH collection. 

I found a site in Japan that was selling it and ordered my own.

Boy, they are REALLY mini. I've put my 6-inch scissors next to them so you can see how tiny they are! 

Usually when you buy figurines like these in the store, the boxes are not labelled, so to collect the complete set, you usually need to buy more than the actual amount in the set.

And when you have to do this, you usually end up with two or more of the same figurine. 

Luckily, the company that was selling these, sold me the complete set (whew!), but I'm afraid to take them out of the plastic--I may lose a piece....

Bon Nouvelle
3-2-15 Kida
Nada, Kobe
Phone: 078.857.7342
Open:10:00-21:00, call ahead to be sure they are open

Secession
1486 Mikage aza Shironomae
Mikage, Kobe
Phone: 078.854.2678
Closed: Wednesdays
Open: 10:00-19:30

UPDATE: the IXC.caffe is now closed in Osaka (2011)

kouglof

This post took a bit of research. The problem? Katakana words.

I received this bread from my host sister for Christmas. In katakana, it is called "kugurofu raru" (now just by hearing it, you know it is a foreign word, but how do you spell it in English?)

I typed in the katakana word into Yahoo Japan hoping that someone had an English spelling of it...(yeah!! some one had it) It is spelled two ways, Kouglof or Kougelhopf (coo-ghel-hof). The next step was to find out what "raru" was...this is where the research took MAJOR time. Since Kouglof was a French word, I figured that "raru" must be too. Japanese is tricky because sometimes they pair words from different languages together (some apartments have names like "maison de matsui", but in katakana it is written and pronounced "maizon do matsui").

Since the bread had bacon or ham in it, I tried to find the pronunciation of both words, but couldn't find one with a voice recording of the pronunciation. I then tried typing in the katakana word "raru" into Yahoo Japan and got lucky...it is actually short for lardoons (cubes of fatty bacon sometimes used in French salads)...(whew!)

So now that I knew what I was dealing with, I had to find out more about kouglof...Kouglof is usually a sweetened yeast bread w/currants and almonds. It is found in the Alsace region of France and the mold that it is baked in, is usually a terracotta type mold, shaped like a crown. It is very similar to the bundt pan. Kouglof is also found in Switzerland, South Germany and Austria. Most of the entries on the internet seemed to say that this version of bread is eaten at Christmastime.

Kouglof Lardoons is a bread baked using the mold with pieces of bacon and walnuts in it. It was made by Mikage Takasugi, a well-known shop in the Kobe/Osaka area. The main shop is in Mikage, you can also find his desserts in several department stores and at other shops around the Kobe area.

Since the bread had bits of ham in it, I decided to serve it with some vegetable soup and a salad.

Mikage Takasugi
1491-1 Azashironomae (not too sure of pronunciation) Mikagemachi
Phone: 078-811-1234
Open: 10am - 8pm
Closed on Tuesdays