I've Met My Match

As readers of this blog may have surmised by now, there’s not much I won’t try food-wise. And usually, my stomach doesn’t bother me afterwards so whether it’s eels, sea urchins, fugu or a jalapeno cheeseburger, no problems afterwards. Not this weekend. I finally met my match.

Dinner on Saturday night was, in order, Beer, Ox Tongue, Shark Fin & Noodle Soup and Blue Liquor. You may be thinking, “Well, Ox Tongue and Shark Fin Soup aren’t that unusual.” In fact, some people reading this blog may even have tried these culinary treats. But I guarantee that you’ve probably never had them served the way I experienced them on Saturday. You see, those were all ice cream flavors. Yes, that’s right, ice cream courtesy of Ice Cream City in Namjatown.
A few weeks ago when I joined my co-workers for dinner at Namahage, I knew that the restaurant served raw horse (basashi). I decide to learn more about this Japanese delicacy and my subsequent Google query brought up an entry for basashi ice cream that was served at Ice Cream City so of course I needed to visit this unique attraction.
Last Saturday I boarded the Yamanote train and after thirty minutes arrived at Ikebukuro station. Ice Cream City is a section of an indoor theme park called Namjatown which itself is located inside a mall called Sunshine City 60 in an area of Tokyo called Ikebukuro.
Ice Cream City within Namjatown has about five or six ice cream stations where you can try Turkish pulled ice cream, Europrean-style gelato, or visit the Cup Ice Museum. It’s the Cup Ice Museum that I made my way to as they have hundreds of ice cream flavors all served in little cups that are about 4-5 ounces in size. A typical cup sells for about $4.00 but the most expensive flavor was caviar at $16 for a four ounce container. I walked around the Cup Ice Museum coolers for quite some time before finding the “alcoholic” ice cream flavors. Where else do you think I would start? The Beer-flavor caught my attention immediately and since my Japanese dinners have always started with a beer, why break from tradition? I sat down, popped the lid off and on the top was some salted nuts. Beautiful. This was my favorite flavor of the night. Japanese beers are not overly hoppy so the ice cream flavor met my expectations. If you’re thinking beer-flavored ice cream is disgusting, have you ever had an Ice Cream “Malt”? Think about it and you’ll realize that those flavors can work well together. If only I had stopped there I would have been a happy man. But greed and curiosity got the better of me. I next grabbed the ox tongue-flavor. Mistake #1. How bad could it be? When I popped the lid off, I knew right away something was NQR (Not Quite Right). There were small chunks of beef tongue riddled throughout the ice cream and the ice cream itself had a strange off-white color to it. My tongue (the human kind) was probably still a little frozen from the beer-ice cream so the first few spoonfuls didn’t quite get the flavor across. Mistake #2, I then made the error of letting a large spoonful of the ice cream melt on my tongue. Imagine enjoying a nice cool creamy treat (the ice cream base itself was okay despite the off-white color) and then suddenly your taste buds experience a shocking splash of juicy beefy tongue. Mmmm. The brain struggles to comprehend what is occurring. Mistake #3, for some dumb reason I finished the whole cup. Immediately my stomach started churning a little bit revolting at what I had just eaten. Did I quit then? Hell no, that’s for amateurs and intelligent people. Mistake #4, I actually bought a bottle of water not to clean the taste out of my mouth but to cleanse the palette so I could better taste the next ice cream. Mistake #5, for some stupid reason I went with Shark Fin & Noodle Soup-flavor next. When I removed the lid, on the top was what I assumed was some kind of candy concoction. It wasn’t candy. I don’t know what it was but it wasn’t candy. After eating the topping and about half the cup, I had enough. I don’t know whether it was the fishy cartilage taste or the cold slimy noodles but this wasn’t a winner. Just writing this blog now and thinking about those flavors is causing me to fight back the bile in my throat. Mistake #6, to finish the meal I decided to have an after-dinner drink flavor (Blue Liquor). It seemed logical at the time. I assumed “Blue Liquor” was going to be Curaçao, the bitter orange liqueur of the Caribbean or Blue Triple Sec which is also an orange-flavored liqueur. Truthfully, it may have been this but I certainly didn’t taste orange in the ice cream. Frankly I didn’t taste much of anything at this point other than a slight alcohol taste. It could be that after four months abusing my taste buds in Tokyo, they committed suicide en masse.
Nonetheless, those four unique flavors made for an interesting train ride back to my apartment. I was breaking out in cold sweats the whole way home and for me this is usually a prelude to a good projectile vomiting session. I used every mental distraction technique I could think of to get my mind off of the feeling in my stomach and not launch on the train. Many Japanese already think most gaijins are disease-carrying creatures as it is. I’ve watched them try to furtively apply a face mask if I get too close to them on the subway so you can imagine their reaction if I started spewing cold, milky, tongue-chunky fluid around the train. Actually, that sounds like a great “Jackass” bit but since I’m just days away from freedom and not wanting to be quarantined, I did everything I could to hold it in. My stomach settled down as I walked back to my apartment and even though it was only about 6:30 PM, I actually crashed on my bed for an hour just to further let the feeling pass. Luckily I was able to sleep through the worst of it but the rest of the night and for most of the following morning, my stomach did not feel right. Cool and horrible experience all at the same time.

Ice Cream City

Mistake #7, I’m probably going back this weekend. I never said I learn from my mistakes. There are way too many freaky flavors that I want to try. Here’s a list of some of the other unique ice cream flavors that were being offered at the time of my visit. The ones in blue are the ones I’m most interested in trying:
Adzuki Beans
Avocado
Blue Liquor
Buckwheat
Caviar
Cheese Risotto
Chicken Wing (not Buffalo)
Crab
Deep Seawater (?)
Eel
Eggplant
Fish Sauce
Flat Wheat Noodle
Garlic
Garlic & Mint
Grated Yam
Health Food (lots of veggies)
Indian Curry
Miso Noodle
Natto (Fermented Soybean)
Octopus
Old Taste (WTF?)
Ox Tongue
Potato & Butter
Powdered Pearl (most popular)
Rose
Saké
Sea Urchin
Seaweed
Shark’s Fin & Noodle
Shochu (Barley Liquor)
Shrimp
Soy Sauce
Soybean Flour
Squid
Squid Ink
Sunflower
Tofu
Tomato
Tulip
Viper (Mmm, snake)
Wasabi