[Eat It:] Sea Grapes
By Christopher St Cavish, Jul 22nd, 2009 | In Dining
Eat It is a regular feature that cuts to the core of a given restaurant's menu, highlighting a specialty, favorite, or otherwise good thing to eat.
Katsu is a bit odd. To start, Katsu isn't its name. Aiya is. Unless you go by the business card. Or the large "Katsu" emblazoned on the staff's t-shirts. Or a rough and probably incorrect extrapolation from the owner's name -- one Mr. Katsuyama. His personality drives the place, a unique little izakaya among a Yan'an Xi Lu strip of them, with a menu stacked with quirky discoveries like deep-fried cheese and whale sashimi. He doesn't have Sprite, but the fridge is stocked with A&W Cream Soda and Diet Root Beer. Who carries chilled Diet Root Beer? There's a Chinese name -- À¶·¿, "Blue Room" -- and, when you call to check about the availability of their sea grapes, suitcased-in from Japan, the staff answers to any and all of those names. I'm going with Katsu.
Expensive import licenses mean a lot of specialty things come into Shanghai via The Suitcase. Scotch. Iberian ham. Expensive cuts of tuna. Sea grapes must be the most unique. They're a kind of seaweed, grown in tropical waters, relished in Japan, with a jewel-like appearance and, to the best of my knowledge, just a single home in Shanghai -- Katsu. If caviar grew on delicate stalks and came in glassy shades of green, it'd look something like a sea grape. They're slender branches, no longer than your finger, plucked out of a bar-top aquarium with oversized wooden chopsticks and draped over an ice cube. The individual jewels, the actual "grapes", are smaller than a drop of water. You eat the whole piece in one go. There's a natural pepperiness to sea grapes that's obscured by an accompanying ginger-spiked sauce, but that's not really the point. Like bubble wrap or caviar, sea grapes are about the pop. They're inexpensive ocean caviar, for vegetarians, for the broke, and for the curious -- "mermaid food" for ever-more-drunk patrons. And due to the delicate nature of their importation process, they're not always available. Call ahead to check. They're hai putao in Chinese, umibudo in Japanese, and they spend their days in Shanghai swirling around the aquarium below, killing time.
The heart of Katsu, though, isn't in the sea grapes. It's next to and behind them, in a library of sake and shochu, and on a bar spread with Okinawan dishes, tapas-style. There are gurukun, a regional fish, deep-fried, marinated in vinegar and cloaked in sweet onions, and softball-sized balls of deep-fried tofu and vegetables, like giant meatless meatballs. Katsu always seems to keep a bowl of roasted taro, a plate of edamame, and a burdock root salad around, and, on more than a few occasions, I've spotted (and eaten) cutlet-shaped Okinawan fish cakes. This week, they were joined by matsutake -- songgu in Chinese --, an expensive and coveted mushroom which only grows wild, and around the base of specific pine trees, at that. Katsu does them up simple-like, grilled and then torn into meaty chunks, with a wedge of lemon and a dish of soy sauce.
Three things Okinawans like: staying alive for a long, long time, bitter melon, and pork. The first has long been a cause for study (Okinawa produces the most centenarians in the world), and the second is a love-it-or-hate-it warty gourd of the mouth-puckering variety. But just off the Okinawan coast are a billion-plus people who can all get behind the third -- pork. Sweet, lovely pork. I spied it in cahoots with the bitter melon -- Okinawa's signature dish -- on a nearby table while I was digging into a bit of my own, a simple and deeply satisfying braised belly and hard-boiled egg combo, plucked from the bar. Katsu uses a premium pork whose name escapes me but whose flavor is most obvious in another of their standout dishes, skewers of grilled pork belly. Get yourself a couple. Use it as a beacon to navigate through Katsu's menu of snacking food and various eccentricities -- fresh cod roe, deep-fried cheese, whale parts. (Good, good, terrible.) If you're having trouble picking, pick pork.
Katsu, like most izakayas, is a homey place. It's intimate and with a vague farmhouse look to it -- plaster-and-hay walls, exposed wood ceiling beams -- and it can fill up quickly at prime times, even during the weekdays. Reservations would be a good idea but aren't absolutely necessary. It's geared towards casual drinking with friends and colleagues, and the food reflects that, but I've been on several occasions, without touching a drop of anything harder than root beer, and Katsu has always held up. With a couple of beers, a few people, and a common-sense amount of food, it's between 100 and 150rmb per person. If you're coming from anywhere east of Hongqiao, the driver will likely take the highway and exit on Hongxu Lu. It's easiest to jump out at the first intersection and walk across Yan'an Xi Lu; Katsu is on the south side of the street, among a Japanese restaurant stretch, number 2982. They're there til midnight.
Katsu is a bit odd. To start, Katsu isn't its name. Aiya is. Unless you go by the business card. Or the large "Katsu" emblazoned on the staff's t-shirts. Or a rough and probably incorrect extrapolation from the owner's name -- one Mr. Katsuyama. His personality drives the place, a unique little izakaya among a Yan'an Xi Lu strip of them, with a menu stacked with quirky discoveries like deep-fried cheese and whale sashimi. He doesn't have Sprite, but the fridge is stocked with A&W Cream Soda and Diet Root Beer. Who carries chilled Diet Root Beer? There's a Chinese name -- À¶·¿, "Blue Room" -- and, when you call to check about the availability of their sea grapes, suitcased-in from Japan, the staff answers to any and all of those names. I'm going with Katsu. Expensive import licenses mean a lot of specialty things come into Shanghai via The Suitcase. Scotch. Iberian ham. Expensive cuts of tuna. Sea grapes must be the most unique. They're a kind of seaweed, grown in tropical waters, relished in Japan, with a jewel-like appearance and, to the best of my knowledge, just a single home in Shanghai -- Katsu. If caviar grew on delicate stalks and came in glassy shades of green, it'd look something like a sea grape. They're slender branches, no longer than your finger, plucked out of a bar-top aquarium with oversized wooden chopsticks and draped over an ice cube. The individual jewels, the actual "grapes", are smaller than a drop of water. You eat the whole piece in one go. There's a natural pepperiness to sea grapes that's obscured by an accompanying ginger-spiked sauce, but that's not really the point. Like bubble wrap or caviar, sea grapes are about the pop. They're inexpensive ocean caviar, for vegetarians, for the broke, and for the curious -- "mermaid food" for ever-more-drunk patrons. And due to the delicate nature of their importation process, they're not always available. Call ahead to check. They're hai putao in Chinese, umibudo in Japanese, and they spend their days in Shanghai swirling around the aquarium below, killing time.
The heart of Katsu, though, isn't in the sea grapes. It's next to and behind them, in a library of sake and shochu, and on a bar spread with Okinawan dishes, tapas-style. There are gurukun, a regional fish, deep-fried, marinated in vinegar and cloaked in sweet onions, and softball-sized balls of deep-fried tofu and vegetables, like giant meatless meatballs. Katsu always seems to keep a bowl of roasted taro, a plate of edamame, and a burdock root salad around, and, on more than a few occasions, I've spotted (and eaten) cutlet-shaped Okinawan fish cakes. This week, they were joined by matsutake -- songgu in Chinese --, an expensive and coveted mushroom which only grows wild, and around the base of specific pine trees, at that. Katsu does them up simple-like, grilled and then torn into meaty chunks, with a wedge of lemon and a dish of soy sauce.
Three things Okinawans like: staying alive for a long, long time, bitter melon, and pork. The first has long been a cause for study (Okinawa produces the most centenarians in the world), and the second is a love-it-or-hate-it warty gourd of the mouth-puckering variety. But just off the Okinawan coast are a billion-plus people who can all get behind the third -- pork. Sweet, lovely pork. I spied it in cahoots with the bitter melon -- Okinawa's signature dish -- on a nearby table while I was digging into a bit of my own, a simple and deeply satisfying braised belly and hard-boiled egg combo, plucked from the bar. Katsu uses a premium pork whose name escapes me but whose flavor is most obvious in another of their standout dishes, skewers of grilled pork belly. Get yourself a couple. Use it as a beacon to navigate through Katsu's menu of snacking food and various eccentricities -- fresh cod roe, deep-fried cheese, whale parts. (Good, good, terrible.) If you're having trouble picking, pick pork.
Katsu, like most izakayas, is a homey place. It's intimate and with a vague farmhouse look to it -- plaster-and-hay walls, exposed wood ceiling beams -- and it can fill up quickly at prime times, even during the weekdays. Reservations would be a good idea but aren't absolutely necessary. It's geared towards casual drinking with friends and colleagues, and the food reflects that, but I've been on several occasions, without touching a drop of anything harder than root beer, and Katsu has always held up. With a couple of beers, a few people, and a common-sense amount of food, it's between 100 and 150rmb per person. If you're coming from anywhere east of Hongqiao, the driver will likely take the highway and exit on Hongxu Lu. It's easiest to jump out at the first intersection and walk across Yan'an Xi Lu; Katsu is on the south side of the street, among a Japanese restaurant stretch, number 2982. They're there til midnight.
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idiot_savant, Jul 24th, 2009
I picked sea grapes fresh from the ocean floor when I was diving in the Philippines! And, yes, they are delicious! Vegetarian caviar is a great analogy.Please sign in or register to comment