Ice — SPITTING YARN

Aug 5

Aug 5 Ice

Is it acceptable to post about a pudding?

We went to Sosharu, close to Farringdon Station for dinner this evening, en famille. It's Jason Atherton's supposed Izakaya-style restaurant. Ben and I enjoyed izakaya in Japan, and Sosharu is not typical of the form. In Japan, they are very informal after-work places, where people eat quickly prepared dishes with a beer. Sosharu is fine dining.

It doesn't matter, though. We arrived fraught, with at least one hungry, shouty child, and we couldn't have had a warmer welcome. Our waiter was lovely, shaking hands with the boys, settling us in quickly, and handling our constant requests to replace dropped forks and to bring more food (!) with good humour and grace.

The boys were revived within about 2 mouthfuls, because everything was mega-DELICIOUS. Maybe the waiter knew their food had magical powers, and that's why he was so relaxed? Look, I've stolen photos from Ben.

That there ↑ is wagyu beef sukiyaki and chicken karaage. SO good. The karaage was the best fried chicken I have had in London. It was served with a spicy sauce and lemon salt, which Oscar (hell, all of us) couldn't get enough of. I could also have quaffed a bucket of the beautiful sparkling sake, but I restrained myself to the one glass in front of me.

But, we're here to talk about the pudding, aren't we?

That, my friends, is strawberry and cookie kakigori. I was instructed to bash it up, and pour over the strawberry lumminess in the adjacent sake bottle, which I did. Tucked away under that beautifully-shaved ice were pockets of strawberry sorbet, strawberry salad, chantilly cream and cookie goo. It was AMAZING. I can't say I even love strawberries that much. It's irrelevant.

It reminded me of the crazy weirdness of ice kachang which I tucked into in Malaysia, except it was nice*.