TacoCat's TrEats #18: Tasting food from Chiba! 🗾

Hey Steemit!

It may not be very apparent, but my favourite country to travel to is Japan! It's so clean, and they have so much yummy food and plenty of 24 hour stuff! I'm always looking for new places to explore in Japan, and the other day I was invited to a special Chiba food tasting event at Novotel in Clarke Quay! Yay for free food! But the event itself was pretty interesting too. 😊

We got there a little late, so we had to sit in front but it's okay. During the opening talk, the emcee introduced the event and the mascot of Chiba, Chiba-kun!

Apparently, he's modelled after the shape of the Chiba prefecture on the map! How cool!

If you're not sure where or what Chiba is (like I was), Chiba is located in the Kantō region, and the Greater Tokyo Area. The sixth most populous prefecture, and 27th largest by land area, Chiba is on the east coast of Honshu and largely consists of the Bōsō Peninsula, which encloses the eastern side of Tokyo Bay. Its capital is the city of Chiba. Here's the map of Japan and the red area is where Chiba is located:

So after that short introduction, the first talk was by a Chef named Petrina, who had the chance to go to Chiba and tour different areas, trying out their various delicacies. She spoke about the different experiences she had, like harvesting sweet potatoes on a farm, and going to a soy fermentation factory, among many others. She also had the chance to attend some cooking classes and made dishes like a giant decorative sushi roll, and mochi! It was pretty cool, but something you definitely need to go on a tour to do.

The food that we would be tasting were actually her creations! She owns a restaurant called Morsels over on Dempsy Road, and this event let people like us try out her dishes before she launches them at her restaurant! Even though she used ingredients from Chiba, her dishes were still somewhat adapted towards Singaporeans, since she is Singaporean, and would be serving in Singapore.

After her talk, we had an introduction from the governor of Chiba, Kensaku Morita!

He was a really funny and entertaining guy! He was totally not what I was expecting from a governor, that's for sure. I later found out that he was previously an actor and singer! No wonder he was so charismatic on stage. 😄 He talked about Chiba's food and animals, and some sightseeing spots. When he mentioned a place called Mother Farm, he asked me what my favourite animal was! I was kinda shocked and I thought he was asking the kids behind me. 😲 I replied 犬, or inu, which is dog in Japanese, and he said he liked dogs too! 🐶

We also got to hear from 3 gentlemen who represented the fisheries and agriculture industry in Chiba as well. I guess maybe they oversaw the transition of ingredients from Chiba to Singapore so Chef Petrina could prepare her dishes. They got first tastes on one of her dishes, which was fish (from Chiba) wrapped in beancurd skin, modeled after our local yong tau foo.

After that, we finally got to eat! Buffet-style 😋

We were quite lucky to be sitting in front as it was quite near the buffet table. The first dish was salad and fermented bean paste (which was reeeeaally salty!).

Next was this jelly-like dish, which was fish steamed with sake and Rose.? Not really sure what that is, but it tasted kinda fishy. The texture was a little funny though.

After that was the yong tau foo dish (left), braised pork belly with persimum (middle), and sweet potatoes (right). Apparently one of their main fruits in Chiba is oranges, which I'm not really a fan of, but they also have grapes so that's good!

They also had fruits and a packaged dessert, but my plate was full already! The fruits they had were orange, kiwi, rock melon and watermelon. I only took the melons though, since I don't eat orange or kiwi.

The food was...interesting! I think I'm not really used to tasting such "high-class" food, where the portions are quite small since I loooove hawker food. But it's always cool to try new things. 🙂 There was also some food provided by the hotel that was pretty good too.

They also brought in some sake from Chiba and I tried 2 types (out of 4) since I dont really drink. The yuzu sake was pretty good though! 😋

There was a live sushi making demonstration but everyone was crowding around the area and I couldn't really see much (since I'm quite short). 😕

They were making the giant sushi rolls with a decorative pattern at the side! The chefs were really experienced; they managed to make the huge roll under 10 minutes!

The result was a butterfly roll on the left, and a sakura tree roll on the right! You can only see the pattern when you roll it up and cut it in half (the cross-section) so I wonder how they managed to figure out how to make the pattern in the first place.? 🤔

There were so many different patterns, even a merlion one! The merlion is the national symbol/mascot for Singapore, btw.

I didn't manage to eat the sushi, but there wasn't any meat in it and I think most of the people said that it didn't taste very good and that it just looked nice so oh well. 😐

After that there was a lucky draw, but I didn't win anything. It's okay though, the prizes weren't that great anyway. And at least I got a free lunch! 😄

Thanks for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat's TrEats #17: Claypot Rice at Malaysia Chiak!