The Okazaki - heaven for sea urchin lovers
The Okazaki is hidden down a little alley way that I pass by quite often, but you know with these alley ways you never think of exploring them.
I learnt this from the internet recently and decided to give it a try. This restaurant is quite small, and sits around 15 people the max I would say. That includes 4 or 5 at the bar table where I sat. The open kitchen is on the other side of the bar table and they have a lot of Japanese postcards and sake bottles on the walls.
Their most famous dish is a sea urchin rice bowl. This is the photo on the top right corner on the menu. If you love sea uchin, this would be heaven for you. Sea urchin isn't cheap, especially the good ones, and with seafood you have to make sure you always have the good quaility ones only. This one is seasonal price.
Both my wife and myself love sea urchin but I think to have a massive bowl of it on its own its a bit too much. My wife opted for the bowl on the bottom left of the photo menu. That's a mix of sea urchin, fresh scallops and salmon cavier. It looked really tempting.
There were three whole scalops slices sideways that gives you six pieces. They were slightly torched but not cooked thoroughly. My wife said the salmon cavier were bursting with flavour as she bit into them, and the sea urhcin were very rich and creamy.
I ordered something else which is not shown on this photo, but is in the main menu. This is the fins of some type of white fish. I'm not exactly which one, maybe sole. There isn't much fin on the fish and this is often an overlooked part because there isn't much meat to it. The meat here has quite a bit of fat in it, which makes it very creamy but not fatty. The fin is slightly torched to cook it. You can't overcook it because it will dry up the fat and you will be left with nothing to eat. This was just right. Perfect.
Both of the rice bowls were top notch as they usesd very fresh ingredients. My only complain is that's its a bit of the small side. I left feeling one small corner of my stomach was still empty.
Luckily, there is a night market nearby, and I went to get some street food. @Tasteem has just launched a new contest called Street Food. Perfect, I will write about that next.
Restaurant Information
The Okazaki
No. 1, Lane 31, Taiping Road, North District, Taichung City, Taiwan 404
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