Here’s my personal prescription for when you are feeling cold and stuffed up for cheering yourself up.
Step 1. Go to Mirakutei at 536 E Burnside Street. It’s a small little cute place that only seats maybe 40, so best if you are in a party of 4 or less. If you are truly not feeling well, it would be best to go alone and not get anyone else sick and also don’t have to try to make conversation while eating, you can just focus on slurping as messily as you want. Or you can make the funny faces necessary. Funny Faces? Slurping? You’ll see soon.
Step 2. Order some sushi and sashimi.
If you are stuffed up, be a little generous with the wasabi that you dip the end of your chopstick into and mix into your soy sauce to clear your sinuses. Pour very little soy sauce because you want to make sure you taste the fish, not the soy sauce. In fact, it’s best if the reason you are having soy sauce and wasabi is to after you eat a sushi, then a little taste of wasabi + soy sauce, and then a piece of ginger. And then a sip of water. Then the next piece.
I went for Buri Belly, Fresh Salmon, Salmon Belly Aburi, Tuna, Unagi, Uni, and Yellowtail. ALL my favorites.
Step 3. Make sure that you instruct the servers to not bring you your ramen until you signal completion of your sushi and/or sashimi course. Perhaps if you came with friends, you might want to also get some yakitori, or gyoza too. But now it’s time for Genki Ramen or Tonkatsu Ramen.
Pictured below is the Genki one that sacrifices having the chashu pork for a mass of shredded chair siu pork and scrambled egg that you can break up and get little floating pieces of deliciousness as a reward for spoonfuls of the ramen broth, rather than one big piece of meat. They are both valid, good choices- it’s sort of the equivalent in my head of asking for pasta with marinara and big meatballs or pasta with a meaty ragu that is full of little chunks of meat all over.
Don’t be shy about if you can’t finish all the broth, asking to take it home to drink later 🙂
What s your favorite comfort foods when it is super cold or you are feeling unwell?
