City Life News 1988年4月1日
TOMOCA serendipity in Yotsuya Linda Laddin and Jaqueline Ruyak About five years ago Tomio tanno heard from a friend that Sri Lankan food was the best food in Asia, so he went to Sri Lanka to find out for himself. Many people find spiritual inspiration in kandy; Tanno find curry. " I'd always thought that Lapanese curry was curry, but in Kandy I net a Sinhalese who is reputed to be the best curry cook in sri Lanka." The encounter changed Tanno's life. He spend three months in Sri lanka, travelling, studing and cooking, then returned to Japan and straightaway opened Tomoca, a Sri Lankan restaurant in Yotsuya. Tanno does the cooking and run the restaurant with the help of his wife, Yoshino. The menu, written in Sinhalese,Japanese and English, is deceptively short and most of the dishes offerd are curries. We say " deceptively short" because, if you order an a la carte curry, it comes with two sambols (vegetable side dishes), dahl and rice, a bonus not indicated on the menu. In addition to an a la carte chicken curry, we ordered one complete dinner (\3,200) which include a curry of choice, three sambols, pappadam, and appa (bread), potatoes, dahl, eggplant, rice and tea.Our order resulted in a visual and olfactory delight; our table was covered with an array of small, colorful dishes which reminded us of one of those mouth-watering photographs of ethnic food in Natuonal Geographic or Travel and Leisure.The subtly spiced dishes ranged from the dangerously hot onion sambol through the milder curries to the soothing coconut and carrot sambol. The a la curte curries (bonito, chicken, mutton, beef, prawn, liver) are priced from \1,800 to \2,200. The breads may be ordered separately for \400 to \500. Drinks include ceylon tea, yoghurt and honey, mango juice , banana juice, beer, whiskey and arrack, a coconut spirit. Coconut milk and bonito flakes - surprise, surprise ! - are the two essetial flavorings in sri Lankan cuisine. The milk is used in place of oil in cooking, and Tanno recommends the dessicated kind, not the canned coconut cream which gives heavier taste to other Asian cuisines. He also indicates that the bonito flakes be freshly shaved, not the preflaked kind that comes in those little pakets, and he prefer to get his from Sri lanka. Not surprisingly, rice is the staple food of Sri Lanka. Tanno wishes that Japanese import restrictions on rice would be liberalized so that he could serve real Sri Lankan rice, which he says goes better with Sri Lankan food than the more glutinous Japanese kind. An alternative to rice is bread, either the crispy South Indian pappadam or the Sri Lankan appa, a bowl-shaped crepe. In addition to culinary similarties, Tanno feels that Sri Lanka and Japan share some cultural traits, and he feels as much at home in rural Sri Lanka as in his native Yamabata. Refore opening Tomoca, Tanno was a civil servant in tokyo's Bunkyo Ward Office for eight years. He has always been intersted in food and cooking and attended cooking school for a year and a half while working in bunkyo-ku. After quitting the civil service, he attended another cooking school in kamakura for over a year before going off to Sri Lanka. Though the restaurant is in a drab arcade building in unremarkable Yotsuya, step through the door of Tomoca and you are in the land of Serendip. The owners have cleverly condealed the built-in structural drawbacks found in many Tokyo buildings by using batik hangings, awnings, and plants. The profusion of Sri Lankan brass, pottery, carved elephants and other folkcrafts adds atmosphere and testifies to the Tanno's fascination with Sri Lanka. When deciding what to call his restaurant, Tanno hesitated to choose either a Sinhalese or Tamil name, so he made up a name that he liked. Tomoca has no meaning, but Tanno liked the sound of it. Tomoca is a two-minute walk from the JR Yotsuya Station. Go up the stairs from the track and take the exit at street level. Cross Sotobori-dori and enter the Shinmichi Arcade.Walk about halfway down the arcade until you find the Piaget Coffee Lounge on your right.Tomoca is on the third floor of that building. City Life News 【解題】 |
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