H×M: the restaurant find of the summer has wi-fi
Comments: 4
MJ vamping it up, PowerBook wirelessly here, my hat a little sun-tanned, and, in the background, guests enjoying dinner
Who knew this sort of day awaited you in Hiratsuka?
I’m writing this from a brasserie in Hiratsuka called H×M where today we ate lunch, and to which we returned for dinner: it was that good, and dinner seemed like the obvious and right thing to do. In between meals we walked down to the beach and drank a couple of bottles of wine, and talked and listened to the sound of the waves. Jonathan and I debated swimming, but didn’t (although one intrepid soul, a big white foreigner, was in the water when we got there: he joined a group of locals barbecuing a little further up the beach when he got out).
Every single thing about this restaurant is good: the décor is simple and well done (the art on the walls changes each month), the staff are excellent, the menu is superb, the ingredients are local, fresh, and astoundingly delicious, they have a blog*, and the wine list gives you some terrific and reasonably-priced ways to bathe everything in a delightful, powdery glow.
I think we’re going to have another half bottle of wine.
Oh, and they have free wi-fi. In a move indicative of some inability to disengage with work, I’ve brought my PowerBook with me, and upon opening it up on the veranda where we’re eating, I was immediately asked by a helpful dialogue box if I would like to join their network. Why yes, and thank you.
For lunch two of us had the chicken set, one of us had a crêpe, and I had the quiche lunch set. We shared a salad with paté and smoked trout, and drank a French cab sav, the name of which, unsurprisingly, eludes me now. Then we had a couple of cheeses and dessert: chocolate mousse, cheesecake, and a sesame pudding — all perfect (we were passing plates around the table at a furious clip by the time dessert was served).
Dinner is going to start with a salmon and paprika terrine, which will be both fresh and smoky, then mushroom soup (the same soup we had at lunch will show itself to be even more of an evening soup; the rounded warmth of the mushrooms serving as counterpoint to a sea breeze turned cool). We are drinking a merlot, in honour of the local merlot queen dining with us, and it will be every bit the equal of the wine we had at lunch.
(In just a few minutes from now Jonathan will be talking about “existentialists dancing on the head of a pin.”)
Jonathan is going to have Japanese steak with madeira sauce, Sachiko has ordered the bouillabaisse, MJ is having the horohoro dori (“by ones and twos chicken”) with spring vegetables, and I have coming to me local Hiratsuka pork cooked in calvados with apples and beans (which will surprise me as perhaps one of the best pieces of meat I’ve ever eaten). Everything will be excellent, and somehow just a little bit appropriately more grown up than it was at lunch. This is a place that knows what its lunch menu should be and what its dinner menu should be, and just about faultlessly does it.
In fact the single fault we will find with the place was that they will be unable to offer crème brûlée. As MJ said presciently somewhere around the beginning of lunch in relation to something else entirely, “the proof of the pudding is in the pudding.” They will apologise in a way that is sincere but that gives no indication of whether there is any philosophical objection to crème brûlée itself. I think it should be on the menu — it’s a standard for a place like this — and if they do it with anything like the same élan they brought to everything else, they have nothing to fear from the dish.
Dessert tonight (after another half bottle of some Côte du Rhône), will be profiteroles. The coffee will be good.
If you’re anywhere near Hiratsuka, don’t miss H×M for lunch, or dinner … or both. Walk down the main road towards the beach from the station and turn left at (what I think are) the second lights you come to: it’s a two-storey white building with blue lettering and trim; you can’t miss it.
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Posted to General Rants • 2005.05.03 (Tue) • 19:03
Comments
Posted by tokyogoat 2005.05.03, 20:57
very tempting., thanks
Posted by MJ 2005.05.03, 21:38
Hardly vamping sweetie, didn’t even have much lipstick on at that stage…. :-P
Posted by fumizuki 2005.05.04, 23:29
Hello,I was also there HM at the same time.and had a quite nice lunch. I’m an artist ,had decorated on the walls in last summer. I really love the restaurant,so was glad your messege thank you
Posted by MJ 2005.05.05, 08:08
Oops I managed to get another mention on their blog by taking Lil there yesterday for lunch…..
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