Japan Adventure #10

Breakfast is included in my hotel fee, and so every day I go one of two places – the hotel has a French restaurant Le Platine on the top floor (22) of the hotel, which has fantastic views of the city of Hiroshima. They opened for breakfast specially for IETF, and have a mainly western spread. It has been interesting to try the Japanese take on things like French Toast, bacon, sausage, etc. All have been quite good, but just slightly different. The French Toast was less sweet and more eggy than you would expect, and there is usually an option for things like salads, cheeses and other savories, even at breakfast .Where I have ended up most days is the restaurant in the lobby, Frutier, which also has a buffet, but it is a mixture of Western and Japanese-style breakfasts. While I didn’t eat much of the miso soup or other very traditional Japanese breakfast items, (rice gruel doesn’t sound particularly appetizing). I did have several interesting things. They had multiple types of fish, such as small sardine-looking fish that looked to be heavily salted, and usually some cabbage, rice, etc. Their version of smoked salmon is much less salted and smoky, and more like salmon sushi – almost raw, and very delicate in texture.

One thing that I found I liked a lot was Chawanmushi, or egg hotchpotch. It is a steamed egg-custard, usually with some vegetables in it. Another was a “Japanese Omelet” aka Tamagoyaki. The hotel doesn’t appear to make it in the traditional way, cooking a thin layer of eggs, rolling them, then repeating, but rather cooking a well-beaten (frothy) set of scrambled eggs into a brick, and then slicing into near bite-size pieces. I also had boiled fish paste, which is another item cooked into a brick and sliced. It has little “fishy” taste, but it is a bit strange in that it has roughly the same consistency of very firm gelatin. One thing that was nice is that they always have fresh Kiwi fruit, usually cut in half and with the end cut off, so that you can basically scoop the fruit out of the skin with a spoon.