Picnic Food for Hanami

Dogen Z · 22 Mar 2009

The other day I saw a group of people with a hibachi under a cherry blossom tree, even though there were no flowers!☝

But it made me wonder about what kind of picnic food is best for hanami parties. Would it be onigiri (rice ball) with some agemono (fried chicken) and nishime (stewed vegetables)?

I was thinking some cold roast chicken, hard cheese, and a baguette would be nice, but then I'd need a chabis or chenin blanc, and hanami is just not hanami without a delicate, chilled nihonshuu.

epigene · 22 Mar 2009

When I had to prepare hanami food for my family, I used to make lots of onigiri (with various fillings) or norimaki, karaage chicken and others in a standard picnic lunch, but there's no special rule to it. My family went to appreciate the flowers; the food was just supplementary, so it was modest.

But, if you want to go all the way, go all the way with bentos like this:
Ohanami bento

If you want a gourmet picnic but don't have a time, there's always the "depa-chika" (basement floor of department stores), where you can find "ohanami bento" of all kinds.

Dogen Z · 23 Mar 2009

epigene said:
But, if you want to go all the way, go all the way with bentos like this:
Ohanami bento
If you want a gourmet picnic but don't have a time, there's always the "depa-chika" (basement floor of department stores), where you can find "ohanami bento" of all kinds.

I'm hoping someone makes me ohanami bento, homemade is a lot better than store bought. But I'll probably have to go the depachika route. Well, the Tokyu Food Show in Shibuya has dishes made by popular restaurants like En, so I might get mine from there.

Thanks for your reply, epigene.

undrentide · 23 Mar 2009

Dogen Z said:
I'm hoping someone makes me ohanami bento, homemade is a lot better than store bought. But I'll probably have to go the depachika route. Well, the Tokyu Food Show in Shibuya has dishes made by popular restaurants like En, so I might get mine from there.

Thanks for your reply, epigene.

Coincidentally I went to Tokyu Food Show on Saturday, and EN is one of my favourite delis (even though they're on a bit pricy side).
I think I saw they were offering some ohanami-bento, with salted sakura in it.

Talking about ohanami and food, I remember a story from rakugo - the poor tenants of nagaya (Japanese traditional apartments) went to hanami.
They brought their own bento, with tamagoyaki (omlette) and kamaboko (fishcake). Those were luxury items they could not afford, so actually what looked like tamagoyaki was takuwan (pickled daikon radish) and kamaboko was daikon (radish).... ;-)

Dogen Z · 29 Mar 2009

undrentide said:
...
Talking about ohanami and food, I remember a story from rakugo - the poor tenants of nagaya (Japanese traditional apartments) went to hanami.
They brought their own bento, with tamagoyaki (omlette) and kamaboko (fishcake). Those were luxury items they could not afford, so actually what looked like tamagoyaki was takuwan (pickled daikon radish) and kamaboko was daikon (radish).... ;-)

Takuwan and daikon are about the same thing....Kawaisouni. But the blossoms probably made their meager meal taste better.

Tamagoyaki (sweet egg omelette) would be great for hanami, especially if home-made. Tsukune would also be excellent (BTW, the tsukune from A.M./P.M. is pretty good). And some grilled fish, plus something with shiitake and bamboo shoots.

OTOH, I saw a truck selling Mexican tacos next to the Cherry Blossom trees along the Meguro River yesterday. It was doing good business.

I hope more flowers have bloomed today. It's so cold that only about 20% of the flowers were in bloom yesterday.

sumima · 8 May 2009

all needs to be washed down with some high quality asahi one cup sake...available at all leading konbini's across tokyo..

Picnic Food for Hanami

Dogen Z

aka YOSUQUE

epigene

相変わらず不束者です

Dogen Z

aka YOSUQUE

undrentide

Japa'n vagyok

Dogen Z

aka YOSUQUE

sumima

後輩

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