The Secret Life – A Brewer with Brewers

Hey Heather, you are going to be having a $200 per plate dinner at the Ritz Carlton with 4 of the biggest sake brewery owners in Tochigi… are words that Heather never thought she would hear in her life. And yet, that’s what she did.

Last Thursday she had a brewery tour in the afternoon, then a dinner in the evening. The four brewery presidents are technically competitors, but they are very friendly. They all drove up to Nikko together with Heather. Unfortunately there’s no picture of that.

So they arrived at the Ritz Carlton on the bank of Lake Chuzenji in the Nikko mountains and were escorted to their private dining room overlooking the lake. Not the best pic, but at least Heather was able to snap something. I’m sure it would have been a little weird being the only one taking pics all night. You gotta act like you’ve been there before!

The waiters continued to bring out course after course of very interesting food. Here is the list, which they prepared in English for Heather because they knew an American was coming. But the funny thing was that one of the brewery owners jokingly demanded an English menu for himself as well. Which they did end up providing to him.

The most interesting dish to me was the cherry blossom soup. I don’t think people usually eat cherry blossoms. It seems like it should be a Japanese sin. But I think its pretty cool to eat a cherry blossom in Japan without looking like a weirdo under a tree.

Then there were an assortment of other things that rich people eat. And some of the dishes were particular about how they were placed in front of the customer. The food itself was presented beautifully, but the orientation of the handmade pottery plates, which the food was on, had to be specific. It was basically art that Heather was eating.

But the thing I was most jealous of was the Japanese steak. I can only take Heather’s word for it. It was apparently no contest, the best steak she has ever had. It looks like it was only about 3oz, but I guess its quality over quantity.

After dinner, instead of ordering drinks from the restaurant, all the brewery owners pulled out their secret stashes of their top shelf sake and shared it all around with each other. So in addition to a $200 dinner, Heather probably consumed hundreds of dollars worth of the best sake in Japan. That’s just how she rolls these days.