昨日12月21日は、イギリスでは日が一番短い日、でした。日本は22日が冬至になっていますが、時差の関係でしょうか。これから少しずつ日が長くなっていくとは言うものの気づくくらい長くなるのは随分先。この時期はお天気も悪いので春が待ち遠しくなります。が、一時期の寒さはすっかり緩んだので家の中の温度も随分違って、寒〜い!と言うことはなくなりました。
Yesterday, which was 21st December, was the shortest day here. It’s on the 22nd in Japan, maybe it’s to do with the time zone difference. Anyway, days will be getting longer from today little by little, but I think it’ll be quite a long way before we notice it. The weather has been very wet, but the cold spell has gone and it’s been quite warm, we notice it very much even inside the house and I stopped saying “it’s soooo cooold!”.
チェルトナムでの夕食は、滞在したホテルのレストラン「Yoku」(よく)に行きました。ホテルに滞在していたから、ではなく、検索して面白そう(懲りないわたし)と思ったらたまたま宿泊ホテルのレストランのうちの1つでした。ホテルはオープンしてもっと経っていますが、このレストランは今年オープンしたようです。「よく」とは、「desire to do things exceptionally well, with kindness and care(物事を親切心と配慮(care)とともに特に良くしようと望むこと」なのだそう。そうなの?よくわからない。。。
We went to “Yoku”, which is Japanese & Asian inspired restaurant, which belongs to the hotel we stayed at in Cheltenham. I chose it not because we were staying at the hotel but because it had very good reviews when I Googled restaurants in Cheltenham and looked interesting (why don’t I learn from my experience?). The hotel opened quite a few years ago but this restaurant opened earlier this year. Their website says “Yoku in Japanese means desire to do things exceptionally well. with kindness and care.” Really?? I didn’t know that.
ロビーもなのですが、建物の構造上お部屋からレストランには一度外に出ないと辿り着けなくて、お部屋を出ると目の前にはもう1つのレストランが道路に沿って細長く作られていて、その中を通って隣の建物に入る感じです。
The same as getting to and from the lobby, you cannot reach the restaurant from our room without going out of the building because of the way these buildings are built, so you go out of the building where our room was, and walk through the long semi-outdoor restaurant “The Terrace” to get into the adjacent building where Yoku is.
こちらがレストランと同じ建物にあるお隣の「東京」というバー。バーもレストランもインテリアはとてもクールです。
This is the bar, “Tokyo”, which is in the same building as Yoku, next to each other.
日本のジンで、ジントニックをいただきました。
We had G&Ts with Japanese gin.
こちらがレストラン「よく」。
This is the restaurant Yoku.
最初に柚子のカクテルがサービスで出てきました。柚子じゃなくてカボスの味だったと思いましたが。一緒に枝豆も出てきました。ここでは、いろいろなものに糸唐辛子がたっぷり乗っていました。
First they served us a complimentary Yuzu cocktail and Edamame. I thought it tasted like Kabosu rather than Yuzu. Like on the Edamame, they seem to use a lot of Korean dried chillis (not spicy) on many items.
バーもレストランも照明がとても暗くて、写真はかなりダメダメですが、特にこれはダメダメでした。夫がオーダーした、まぐろのたたき。美味しかったそうです。
The bar and the restaurant were both very dark so my photos are very bad, specially this one. My husband had Tuna Tataki, which he enjoyed.
焼き鳥。う〜ん、かなり微妙。鶏には違いなかったですが。
Yakitori…. hmmm, it is tori (chicken) but not sure if it’s yakitori. Yakitori is supposed to be cooked on a grill and have some charred marks. Also these were cut very thick and large.
野菜餃子。これは、酷くて、食べられなかったです。写真で見ると一応焼いた色はついていますが(暗くて見えなかったので焼いていないのかと思いました)ぶよぶよで、中身もねちょねちょでした、なんだったのだろうか。
Vegetable gyoza. We couldn’t eat it because it had a strange texture and a strange taste. Looking at the photo, they look as if they were browned a little but we couldn’t any browning in the dark and they were not crispy at all – very soggy and flabby. The filling had a strange sticky texture and tasted only of raw garlic.
グリーンドラゴンというお寿司。ビーガンのサーモンがのっているとあったので、ビーガンのサーモンは何かと聞いたらこんにゃくとのこと。確かにこんにゃくの味でした。これは、まぁまぁでした。
Green Dragon (vegan). The menu said it had vegan salmon so I asked what that would be made of and was told konnyaku. This tasted fine, the best dish we had here.
この後、写真を撮り忘れたのですが、キムチチャーハンと牛丼と迷ってキムチチャーハンにしたのですが、夫が「牛丼」と言ったのでわたしが「キムチチャーハンでしょ?」と言った流れでオーダーを取った方が勘違いされたらしく、両方出てきました。それは良いのですが、その前にしばらく間があって、スタッフが「何か欲しいものはありますか?」と言われたので「もう1品待ってるところですよ。」と言うとオーケーと言ってカウンターに行き、何かチェックしている風で、しばらくしてそこに置いてあったものを持ってきたのが和牛丼でした。忘れてたんだな、と思いましたが、何も言わず食べ始めたのですが、ほとんど冷たくなっていたので温めてくださいとお願いしました。牛丼の味付け自体は悪くなかったですし、ビーフも美味しかったのですが、メンマが入っていて、メンマって結構インパクトが強い味と匂いなので「なんでメンマなんだろうね。」と言いつつ食べました。ご飯の量はたくさんありましたが、ビーフはちょこっとでした。
I forgot to take photos of the next 2 dishes – Kimchi Yakimeshi (stir-fried rice with kimchi) and Wagyu donburi (beef rice bowl). When we ordered we were trying to decide which rice dish to have and decided on Kimchi Yakimeshi but my husband said Wagyu donburi to the staff who was taking the order, to which I said, “No, not donburi, we want Kimchi Yakimeshi”. I guess she misunderstood us and ordered both of them and both came. What happened is that there was a gap between Green Dragon and the next dish and a staff said to us “Do you have anything you’d like or are you OK for the moment?” so we said “we are waiting for one more dish”. I saw she was checking with an order form at the counter for a few minutes, then brought a dish that had been sitting on the counter for some time and it was Wagyu donburi and we realised she thought we ordered both. We were OK with that because we were still hungry so we started to eat the Wagyu donburi, but it was cold. I guess it was sitting at the counter for a long time. So we asked them to warm it up. The beef was very good, the sauce tasted good, but for some reason they had added Menma (Chinese bamboo pickles that you usually find in ramen). Menma has very strong flavour and smell that we found very odd in this dish. We didn’t say anything to them, though. There was quite a lot of rice but not so much beef – but it was Japanese beef so I guess expensive.
で、その後、キムチ焼き飯が出てきたのですが、全然炒めていない柔らかいべちゃっとしたご飯で、キムチは細かく切られていなくて上に白菜キムチが数枚乗っていて、そしてなぜかここにもまたメンマが入っていました。
Then the Kimchi Yakimeshi (stir-fried) arrived but it wasn’t stir-fried at all, it was wet and soggy. Also usually kimchi Yakimeshi has chopped up kimchi stir-fried with the rice, but we didn’t find them chopped up, just some slices of kimchi on top. And for some reason there was Menma here, too!
デザートは、パッションフルーツ・ボム。中にアイスクリームが入っています。外側はイタリアンメレンゲとありましたが、イタリアンメレンゲにしてはふわふわと柔らかかった。お味は良かったです。
For dessert, we had Passionfruit Bombe, which has ice cream inside, covered with Italian Meringue. Italian Meringue usually has a firmer texture but this one was very soft and fluffy, still it tasted fine.
サイトの写真を見ても本格的な和食でないことはわかっていましたが、夫と、「それにしても、これは酷いよね〜。でも、ここはロンドンじゃなから仕方ないのかもしれないけど、それにしてもね〜。高級レストランだからお会計が高いのもわかってるし、なんだかね〜。」なんて言っていたのですが、お隣のテーブルでお支払いされていた方は「どれも素晴らしく美味しかった。」とおっしゃっていました。ネットのレビューも良いものがほとんど。わたしがお魚やシーフードが食べられないので、食べたものが違うのだとは思うのですが(大体日本食レストランに行く人はお寿司やお魚やシーフードが好きな人だと思うので)、それにしてもこの差はなに?
Seeing the photos on their website before we went, I knew it wasn’t going to be authentic Japanese and we were OK with that, they say “Japanese inspired” so we didn’t expect it to be proper Japanese. However, it was just too odd to us. So my husband and I were saying, “Well, I guess this isn’t London so we shouldn’t have expected something very good, but this is very disappointing. It’s going to be expensive as well, so it’s even worse. Sad that people think this is Japanese food…” etc. The people who were paying their bill at the table next to us were telling the staff how fantastic the food was, and most reviews I had read were very good. As I cannot eat fish or seafood what we eat is probably mostly different from what people typically eat. Those who would go to any Japanese restaurants in general like sushi, fish, and seafood. Even so…
ま、しょうがないね、と言いつつお会計をお願いしたら、別の方が来られて、「今日はお客様のお気に召すお料理をお出しすることが出来なかったので、お会計は結構ですので。」とおっしゃるではありませんか?餃子は食べられなかったのでそのようにお伝えしたのと牛丼が冷たかったので温めてもらいましたが、他はスタッフには何も伝えていないのです。途中で「お食事、どうですか?」と聞かれたときに二人とも一瞬しんとして、「Unusual」とお答えしたので美味しいと思っていなことは伝わっていたと思いますが、特別クレームをしたわけではないので、とてもびっくりしました。夫が、「いやいや、じゃあ、餃子の分だけ引いてもらえれば良いですよ。」と言ったのですが、「キッチンが行き届かない面もあったのは承知していますし、お客様には満足していただきたいですし、また来ていただきたいので、今回はお会計は大丈夫です。」と。
Anyway, we asked for the bill after the dessert, then a member of staff came over and told us that we didn’t need to pay because they weren’t able to serve us food that satisfied us and there was some problem in the kitchen, too. We were shocked and tried to tell her that would be too much and we would be happy if they take gyoza, which we didn’t eat much of, off the bill, but they insisted that they would like their customers to be happy and come back so no bill this time. We had told them that we couldn’t eat the Gyoza, and had asked them to warm up Beef Donburi but didn’t actually tell them what we thought about the other dishes except that when one of the staff asked how our food was, we couldn’t reply quickly and then said “Uh, unusual.” so I guess they could guess we were not enjoying it. Even so, we hadn’t said much about the food to the staff so this was a shock.
ということで、多分、2万円以上だったと思う食事が無料になってしまいました。(最初にバーでいただいたジントニックだけお部屋についていました。)あらま〜。きちんとクレームをしても反論してくるレストランもいる中、素晴らしいとは思いますが、居心地が悪い気持ちにもなりました。お料理の中身を改善してもらえれば、また伺うのですが。
So, we had a free meal, which probably would have cost something around £150. Only the G&T we had in the bar was billed to the room. Oh dear…. Some restaurants’ staff get very defensive when they get negative comments from customers so this was very impressive, but it did make us feel uncomfortable and guilty. If they improve the cooking we would go back.