Spring                                              Hare Moon

I may have inadvertently added to the selection of Korean dishes available in Tucson.  At Takamatsu’s, a Korean-Japanese restaurant, I went in hoping for a raw beef Korean dish that is served with sesame oil over daikon with an egg yolk in the top.   The name wouldn’t come to me and I asked the waitress, a local Tucson white girl, who shook her head.  Nope, nothing like on that menu.

So, I asked her about sashimi, since I couldn’t find it on the menu either.  Yes, she said.  Right there.  It was on a long paper menu to be filled out at the table.  I checked the 10 piece sashimi dinner and waited for her return.

Instead, the owner came out.  A Korean, I think, (might have been Japanese), he said, “You’re talking about and he used a name that didn’t sound familiar to me.  Like steak tartar, in a mound with an egg yolk on top?”  That was it. “Well,” he said, “We don’t have much of a Korean community so we took off the menu 17 years ago.”  Oh, well.  I understood.  Thanks.

He went away.  Then, he came back.  “My chef says she can make it for you.  She’s the same chef we’ve had for 18 years.  She’ll take frozen rib-eye and slice it up.”  I smiled, “That sounds great.”

After my waitress brought me the usual Korean side dishes of kimchee, bean sprouts, spinace, pickled radish and thin sliced potatoes, she filled my tea pot.

She left and came back with a beautiful mound of raw beef, an egg yolk in the top, all sprinkled with sesame oil and seeds.  But on thinly sliced apple.

It was delicious.  Best I’ve ever had.

The owner came back after I’d finished. “The chef says maybe we’ll put it back on the specials menu.”  I tipped the chef.