00:00:00 John Daub: Unagi kitchen. They've been making unagi here for over 50 years. And today we're watching them grill it here. This is one that has just been cut up. The entire unagi is here. And then they're grilling it here. Wow!

00:00:30 John Daub: Is it always this size? It's various. Ah, it's various. You can smell it grilling there. And then over here on the other side is one that has just been cut open. And now it's grilling as well. And we're going to have this for lunch. A lot of smoke coming from this.

00:01:16 John Daub: Over here you can see that a lot of them have been grilled. And the restaurant does really good business. A lot of people travel here to have it from the area. But this is Kochi Prefecture, the Shimanto River. See all these boxes here? That's charcoal, meant for grilling. You can see they've been grilling here at this restaurant for about 56 years. And I'll take you to the outside and get a look.

00:01:46 John Daub: We're going to be going to the second floor to order some unagi for lunch. And I'm going to show you a delicious bowl of the unagi. But it's just really interesting to watch them grilling it. The smell is really good. They have some charcoal down there on the floor as well. Red hot coal. So it is kind of a chilly afternoon here. You can see that the wind, there's flags outside the window here. So it is quite windy.

00:02:17 John Daub: But he's going to flip this one. I don't want to get in their way too much. But I guess we get a chance to see them cooking it and grilling it like this. And again, when you come into the restaurant, you can see it from the window. It really does make you want to eat it. Whoa, that's a big one. I guess it shrinks in size a little bit. Typically they grill this in the morning. And these are the last ones that they're going to be grilling for today.

00:04:10 John Daub: If you like unagi, click the thumbs up button. Let me see. Right now we have 120 likes. Let's see how many people actually like unagi. Tony P is in the house. Thank you, Tony. It's getting really smoky in here and it smells delicious. The sauce, I think, is upstairs. So they'll take these upstairs and then apply the sauce. Two sauces. Sauce, unagi, sauce.

00:05:25 John Daub: So they're going to put the sauce on upstairs on the second floor. Alright, so I wanted to show you the grilling part of it now. Right now today I'm in Kochi Prefecture at the Shimanto River. I hope that the screen is good. We had the signal dying out a little bit here. Let me take you outside just for a second so you can take a look at the restaurant here.

00:05:58 John Daub: This restaurant's been in business for 56 years. This is called Shimanto-ya. And we're going to be eating unagi up there on the second floor. Right over here is the Shimanto River. And in May they actually have wild unagi. It's not farmed unagi. But this one might be farmed actually, the one I'm about to eat. But in May you can catch fresh unagi, which is very rare. So let's go back inside and have some unagi.

00:06:33 John Daub: Here's the menu here. I got my eyes set on this. Just an unagi don. That looks really good. Alright, let's go to the second floor. He's still grilling. You can see him grilling back here. If you missed it the first time, we were inside there with the griller. And he's got the last part of it going. Let's go have some lunch. I'm so excited. Thanks everybody for joining me for lunch in Kochi Prefecture. What an incredible location.

00:08:21 John Daub: Look at this view. So we have an amazing view from here, looking down onto the Shimanto River. And I had to take my shoes off when I came in here. So you have a beautiful tatami room here. So let's order. I have my eye on this one here. This is a full size unagi. I'm going for the full. They also have other stuff here. They call it the unadon. This is a set meal. I'll have this.

00:09:24 John Daub: I have an unagi don, which is just unagi on rice in a bowl. And this one is 2,400 yen. And this one is 3,260 yen. You can see the Japanese kanji there. I'm going for the big one here because we deserve it. Thanks guys for the super chats here. Hope you're hungry. Cause I am. I'll be eating for all of you. Unaju. Aosa nori tempura. I'll try it. Non-alcohol beer. I also ordered non-alcohol beer. Sorry. I might be driving. So you definitely don't wanna have booze.

00:11:12 John Daub: But a lot of the restaurants in Kochi Prefecture in this area, they will have a non-alcohol beer because there's not really public transportation. The best way to get around is by car. And if you're gonna be driving, you're gonna wanna have non-alcoholic beer. This is my turn it around for eating here. Hope everybody's doing well. I'm gonna be here in Kochi Prefecture for the next three days, two nights to film an Only in Japan episode that I started filming last month.

00:11:44 John Daub: This area is very famous for a citrus fruit called yuzu. And that's gonna be the episode that I'm working on. Something to do with yuzu. And I'm pretty excited about it. On the day after tomorrow, I'm gonna be filming at the factory. And we're gonna get an inside look and see something, a food that I really love made from yuzu. So that episode I'm hoping will be, I'll be able to upload that in January. But when I do upload it, you'll know when I came here to film it. And we had unagi.

00:12:18 John Daub: I also wanna come back in May because that's when they do the unagi fishing. That's the season for unagi and I guess these are farmed unagi, the ones that I'm eating today. But in May, there's a chance to eat wild ones. And you don't really see that too often. Unagi is usually farmed because it's harder out there. I'm not really sure. That's why I'm kind of here to scout this episode for the springtime.

00:12:48 John Daub: Now they do have ayu fish (sweetfish) which is very big here. Ayu fish is quite good and I think I'm probably gonna be having some of that. As well, tonight, I'll be staying at a ryokan (Japanese inn) not too far away from here. And I believe I'll be able to livestream this either tonight or tomorrow and kind of share with you that experience. This really beautiful location that I'm staying in. It's gonna take a few minutes. They're gonna dip it in the sauce now, the unagi. But it's a different kitchen. So I don't have access to that.

00:13:38 John Daub: Somebody's helping me out here. Marutani-san is here. Craig Kawaguchi, thank you. Jeff Ang. Oh, it's nice to see everybody here. And Tony, I saw you before. Nice to see you. G-man AG is a new traveler. Welcome to the community. That's wonderful. This is a special meal. Whenever you have unagi, it's always special because it is a little pricey. This is about $30 for the meal that's gonna be coming in front of me. And it is very, very tasty.

00:14:11 John Daub: If you've never had unagi before, it looks really not happy. Unagi look like sea snakes. They're eel, right? But when they slice it up and take out the guts, I didn't want to show you that part. But you kind of saw it raw. And then they put it, they grill it like down there on charcoal, which gives it such an amazing taste. Then they dip it in tare (grilling sauce), and then they put it on a bed of rice. It is so amazing. And then they add a little bit of sansho pepper (Japanese pepper) to it that gives you a little bit.

00:14:46 John Daub: Let me get a, let me put my mask on here. We got access to go into the kitchen up on the second floor. Awesome. All right, let's go do that. They're doing stuff. I think he's doing it now. So, oh, there's the unagi right there on the shelf. That's our unagi. And if you ever watch Friends, everybody knows unagi because Ross had got a little unagi crazy. I don't think he knew what unagi actually meant. Oh, by the way, I also ordered this here. This is the aosa nori tempura (seaweed tempura). This is going to be really good to try on the side. I don't think I needed to order it, but I thought it was pretty cool. I love it. It's like seaweed tempura. It's really, really good.

00:16:25 John Daub: Oh, there's my, there it is right there. And with a non-alcohol beer. I like the music here. It's really, really relaxing. All right, so we're inside here. Oh, yeah, there's the tare right there. Wow. He puts a little bit of the tare on the rice before. Oh, the tare's boiling. And then he's got some charcoal up here. So they grilled it once downstairs. Oh, the unagi is like simmering inside the tare. Oh, now the smell is amazing. So they soak it in the tare, which is boiling for a little bit. He'll grill it and then put it back in the tare again.

00:18:57 John Daub: It's done. They finished. I better get out of here. Thank you. Back away, back away. Thank you. We'll have bone for lunch and lunch for dinner. Wow, bone for unagi. Wow, thank you. Looks delicious. Whoa. Did you know what she said? Irvin got it right. So they actually have the unagi bone. The bone from the unagi has been, I guess like fried. And you can eat that as like a little snack on the side.

00:20:08 John Daub: This is incredible. Look at all this stuff that I have on the table here. This is the seaweed. This is a nori that has been tempura. It's so good. Just a little bit of salt on the side of it. Check it out here. I'm so excited. I'm glad that we can share this meal together. Just a little bit of salt and they put seaweed into the salt. You kind of protect that flavor. This is so juicy. You're going to see after I take a bite of this. Again, this is the hone (bone) or the bone of the unagi that they serve here as kind of an appetizer. Some daikon pickles. Yeah. So usually they don't like to waste anything with the unagi. The miso soup sometimes will have the heart in it. But I don't think it has it in this one. This looks like just normal miso soup.

00:21:00 John Daub: Oh, this is so good. Now it's time to open this dish up. It's like Christmas for me. Oh, that's so beautiful. That is so beautiful. They put that in the tare. I didn't know that they put it in the tare that many times. A non-alcohol beer. Kanpai, everybody. The greatest lunch. Itadakimasu. Let's start off with this. This is the aosa nori. Again, I showed this to you before. It's just seaweed that's tempura. So I'm guessing this is vegan friendly. If you're vegetarian, you could probably eat this here. So dip it in a little bit of the salt. You don't need a lot. Just a little bit of the salt here. And then eat it. It's so chewy. It's just naturally chewy. It's one of my favorite tempura. Aosa.

00:22:51 John Daub: Oh, man. Let's get to the unagi. Let's not play games here. Let's get straight to it because you know, that's what we're here for. Yun Wong, thank you, Yun. Thanks for joining me here. Backstage access is always good. When they grill it, the skin of it, do you see on the outside? It just starts to fall off like that. It's so tender. You can take your chopsticks and just pull it apart like this. You don't need to add any extra sauce. They dipped it several times and they really soaked it in there. And he added some of that sauce to the rice there. So every bite is so good. Look at that. That is a massive delicious bite. It's got that charcoal taste to it that we saw downstairs. He was using the smoke. Gets into the meat a little bit. Adds a charcoal taste to it.

00:24:34 John Daub: But the meat, unagi meat is so tender. It's so soft and there is quite a bit of oil or fat to it. So I think San Trio is the one who said that, watch my cholesterol levels a little bit. It is high in fat. But it's the taste of it. I'm whispering just so I'm not too loud because there are people here. It's so tender as a meat. And you can eat the bones. I guess, there's not really a lot of bones to it. But you can eat the bones. This is the bone that they were talking about before. So let's try this. It's really good. Yeah, this is 3,200 yen for the unagi. The tempura here was about $5 I'd say. And the beer was $3 because it's non-alcohol beer. It's like a soft drink. I skipped breakfast for this. Oh man.

00:26:13 John Daub: Traveling for food is a reason to come to Japan. Just travel to eat. It did come with some miso soup. Let's try that here. Alright, so this miso soup's got a lot of the seaweed in there. The name of this restaurant is Shimanto-ya. And I put a link in the description with a Google map so you can see exactly where I am on the map. It's kind of neat to be able to zoom down and see. Asahi Zero. So it's okay to drive. You don't need to drink. It's just kind of good to have a beer or a beer taste with unagi. I think the oils in the unagi they break down really good with the bubbles in the beer. So I think when you're eating the beer helps. Carbonated water would help too. But beer.

00:28:03 John Daub: Because Mr. Das asked me to buy a beer once. And I don't want to disappoint Mr. Das. This is an incredible meal. Some of the other foods that are really popular here in the Shimanto River. Chicken is also quite good. They have incredible vegetables. The eggs. If the chicken is good, the eggs are good too. I know that they do have wagyu but it's not quite as famous. The river itself is the only non-dammed river. And I don't mean like cursed river. It's just free flowing. And there's not, I think this is the only one or one of very few in Japan. All of them have been dammed up. So it's natural. And it flows the way it did hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Since the beginning of time. It's kind of neat. You can look outside here.

00:29:03 John Daub: Now I can speak more normally because there's nobody here. But there's a lady just finishing up her meal. Beautiful view that I have outside of the window from my table here. It's a windy, cool day today. About 8 degrees Celsius. So it's chilly. Need my jacket. You can see the trees blowing. And the river flowing. JH, lovely. With a crow in my hat. We still got a little bit more unagi to eat up. Every bite is like pure pleasure. That one's for you guys.

00:30:46 John Daub: This is my last trip of 2020. It's been a pretty good year. They even eat the innards of the unagi. And quite often the heart will go into the soup but not this time. I remember the first time I ate the unagi heart soup. You pull up the little teeny heart on there and you're like, oh, what is this? And then the chef will go, heart. And then you just eat it anyways and it's chewy and you're like, okay. It's heart. Food is food, I guess. Food is food. Have a heart.

00:31:34 John Daub: The other day I had shark heart in, where was it? I was up in Kesennuma. Kesennuma is famous for shark fishing. And they use every part of the shark. So it's not wasteful. But shark heart was on the menu and we tried it and it tasted like basashi (raw horse meat) which is raw horse. It had this kind of a smoky taste to it. It was pretty good. I did have bear meat, but I'm not a big fan of it. I had it because it was in front of me. So I ate it. It's not something that you eat a lot. Here's the bone again. Very good. Don't forget this pepper here. This is sansho. Sansho is a kind of like a pepper that you would use to make your mouth go a little bit numb. Let's put some of this on here. On the last one. It gives it a different complexity when you have it on there. Not a lot, just a little bit. Yeah, kind of like a Szechuan pepper. We call it sansho. And it's usually eaten with unagi.

00:33:25 John Daub: Cutting it up with chopsticks it's a little bit of a skill. And then you gotta get some rice in there with every bite. I love the fact that they soak, they put some of the sauce, the tare on the rice. So even after you eat the unagi you can enjoy that taste on the rice. And there's a little bit of that charred skin on the rice as well. It's just so soft, tender, and fatty. I would say unagi might be one of my top five Japanese dishes.

00:34:46 John Daub: See the, this is the innards, the inside, and this is the outside. And that's the skin of the unagi. And you can see it's been charred. If you want to see it on the fire go back and watch the beginning of this livestream and you'll see where the chef downstairs was, I don't know if it was a chef or a barbecuer who was barbecuing the unagi after he had cut them open. And you can see that's where a lot of the taste comes from. The charred skin on the outside of it. Mmm. It is so wonderful. Definitely. This is the top five. And it's never really cheap. Never underpay for unagi. I'm telling you right now, you get what you pay for.

00:35:26 John Daub: One of these is going to cost you between thirty dollars here in Kochi or in Shizuoka or in the countryside and double that if you're in Tokyo. Just double it, or maybe more. Because you're paying for the transport of it, I guess. And the presentation and the restaurants are usually a little bit nicer. The rent is higher in Tokyo. But, yeah, you'd pay about fifty to sixty dollars for the same thing in Tokyo. But here we're getting it for thirty dollars, about US. Which is a bargain. And again, it's a reason to travel also because we're getting it from the source, so it's going to be cheap.

00:36:10 John Daub: Yeah, this is Penguin Desu writes in here that's pretty cheap. It actually is pretty cheap. There are some places that are cheaper but again, if you skimp on the price, you're going to get what you pay for. Usually, the unagi from China it's not that it's bad, but I can taste the chemicals, maybe like the pharmaceutical stuff that they put in the antibiotics. It's probably not the best. And I had an allergic reaction from the unagi in China where I had a rash on here from the, they were putting too many antibiotics in the water to make sure that the unagi didn't get sick. So I stopped eating unagi from China for a very long time and I haven't had it since actually.

00:36:51 John Daub: But when you come out to the countryside it's, the domestic unagi here in Japan is fantastic. And they treat it, the unagi very well because you know, the chefs and the farmers take a lot of pride in the taste. So they want to make sure that they treat the animals with respect, which is why we say gochisousama deshita and itadakimasu to give respect before we eat. Oh man, unagi is not a dish you can eat every day. Maybe once a week or once a month, once a year. There's some daikon pickles, local area. Good tension to it. Salty, goes great with beer.

00:37:57 John Daub: Do you have any questions? Joy, it is so crunchy. I love the daikon snacks. In fact, you don't need potato chips. You don't need the deep fried foods, the unhealthy junk food. You can get some pickled daikon. And just, you snack on those and it's kind of healthy for you. There's a little bit of salt in there, but it's really healthy. Any questions? Any last questions before we end the livestream?

00:38:36 John Daub: I could eat that every day. Really? Taste the difference between unagi and anago (conger eel). Anago is saltwater eel and unagi is freshwater eel. So unagi would be caught in a river and yeah, so unagi is caught in a river and you would find the best place is actually Haneda Airport. Right off of the coast of Haneda Airport, you get the best anago in Japan, which is saltwater. The warm rivers from the Tamagawa spill out to Haneda Airport and you get an amazing anago just thrive in that area in the saltwater right there, which is a little bit warmer. And I went out with a fisherman once and caught some of the anago and they are quite large and very tasty. So the best anago is in Tokyo.

00:39:44 John Daub: But the texture is different. I like them both. But the anago is just a little bit softer, I always thought. It's a little bit cheaper because there's more anago than unagi. Unagi is always going to be more pricier. But again, don't underspend for unagi. If you're going to pay, don't pay less than $10 for anago. For a full one. It's going to be a farmed one, probably poor quality and they skimped and cut corners. Always pay more for anago because it's your body. You don't want to put in something that's been swimming in antibiotics and stuff. I wouldn't call it a fish. It's more of an eel. Right?

00:40:35 John Daub: The tare, the sauce that they dip it in is a little bit sweet. It's salty but it's got a slight sweetness to it. It's so delicious. Each place has a different taste to their tare. This one is quite good. The taste has a smokiness to it. Again, because it was char-grilled. Nothing like it. And the sansho pepper has slight numbing effect to it. Like a little bit of a bite back at you. But it's a very pleasing taste. It's not too numbing but the pepper is good. Sounds sensual. I'll see Kanae on FaceTime tonight. She's probably watching this episode right now. Is it chewy? It's chewy. Again, it's been dipped in the tare. The unagi is very, very tender. It's got an oily... There's a lot of oils in it but it's a very pleasant oil. Not a heavy oil. Very light. I don't know. Something like an olive oil, right?

00:41:54 John Daub: You will not find a better meat than... Well, that's not true. That's a bold statement. Unagi is an incredible meat dish. It's incredible. And if you've never had it before, if you come to Japan, you have to have it once. You can eat it in Tokyo. Expect to pay $50 to $60 but coming out here to a place like Kochi and the Shimanto River, where it comes from, is incredible. It's incredible. If you're in Tokyo, I highly recommend anago. If you're coming down to Kochi, unagi.

00:42:33 John Daub: Thanks so much everybody for watching. Definitely subscribe to the channel. Leave me a comment below. I get a ton more livestreams from this region before I head back to Tokyo. I'll bring you the traditional inn that I'm staying at. And then tomorrow, a sauna. A unique experience. And then probably in the city of Kochi, I will take you to a couple of really interesting sites on the 16th. And I've got to film a factory and a restaurant and a bakery. So I've got some pretty good episodes coming too for the main channel, which is youtube.com slash jawdawb. Hope you have a great day everybody. See you in the next livestream. Until then, dream of unagi. Bye bye. And don't forget to click that thumbs up button. Gochisousama deshita. Thanks Alexis. Sashimi.