Strangely, the thing Ikuna was looking forward to the most was something not really Japanese at all, but the broccoli stir-fry. She had to admit that the rice was delicious though, and the sushi sold here would probably do well in Japan. This came as a relief to Ikuna, who had almost believed that this was considered a normal amount of rice in Paris. This was undoubtedly some real sushi, except…Īfter a quick glance at the online reviews for Otaku, it seems many people agreed with Ikuna that the balance of fish and rice was off. The only actual sushi with raw fish available on the lunch menu were the salmon nigiri, salmon gunkan rolls and the tuna rolls, so that’s what she ordered. ▼ Otaku’s soup spoons had the Japanese word for ‘delicious’ with a picture of an eggplant on them, for some reasonīut Ikuna didn’t come all the way from Japan just to eat some miso soup, so she ordered what any fan of Japanese food would in her situation - some sushi. The soup stock tasted pretty good though. Another strange addition was that the gunkan rolls were part of the lunch menu, while the nigiri sushi was only available on the evening menu.Įven without the fancy sushi and yakitori, there was still plenty to order, though, so Ikuna decided to start with a miso soup.īut this miso soup was like no miso soup Ikuna had ever tried before, as floating on the top were mushrooms and roasted sesame seeds. The high-ticket menu items like the salmon roe sushi, shrimp sushi and yakitori were only available for dinner. ▼ The maki rolls and California rolls were making Ikuna’s mouth start to water!īut just as she got ready to order all the yakitori her stomach could handle, she noticed something that threw a spanner in her delicious lunch plans. ▼ The side dishes looked delicious, too, with various kinds of yakitori and tempura on offer. ▼ The sushi available seemed like what you’d see on a regular Japanese menu though, with options like salmon roe, tuna and shrimp. ▼ Food was ordered via an order sheet, which is helpful if you’re not fluent in French. The course was an all-you-can-eat meal that included sushi, sashimi and yakitori to name a few, and cost 12.9 euros (US$13.61) for lunch and 17.9 euros ($18.89) for dinner, which by Parisian standards was a pretty reasonable price. Instead of imagining she was in a room full of French people who were secretly otaku, though, she decided to focus her energy on the menu. If Ikuna imagined really, really hard, she could almost believe that she’d stumbled into some sort of gathering for ‘otaku who don’t look like otaku’. The patrons in the restaurant looked relatively ‘non-otaku’-like too. ▼ It would be easy to miss the fact that it was a Japanese restaurant if you didn’t look closely. There were a few Japanese decorations like paintings dotted about the restaurant, but it felt more like a regular French restaurant than a Japanese one in Ikuna’s opinion. …only to find a completely normal-looking restaurant. While there are certainly a number of restaurants that just use a Japanese word without knowing its actual meaning, the word ‘otaku’ has gained so much worldwide notoriety that even legendary rocker Gene Simmons knows what the word means… kinda.įrom the outside, Otaku looks like a normal enough Japanese restaurant, so Ikuna was struggling to see where the ‘otaku’ part came into it was it a place for Parisian otaku to gather and talk about their favourite manga? Was it filled to the brim with anime goods? Taking a deep breath, Ikuna grabbed her camera and went inside… ▼ The building the restaurant was in was gorgeously Parisian, but on the ground floor… This isn’t Ikuna’s first rodeo with Parisian cuisine, so as she walked down one of Paris’ many so-called ‘otaku streets’, she figured she’d seen it all.Īnd then she saw it - at the end of the rue Voltaire, a restaurant with a strikingly unusual name. Previously, she’s sampled sushi from Egypt and ramen from Spain, and now she’s turned her sights on the streets of France, specifically its capital, Paris. Our Japanese reporter Ikuna Kanezawa has once again found herself travelling the world, doing what she does best - discovering the best Japanese restaurants outside of Japan. We expected the Parisian restaurant to be overflowing with anime goods, but the reality was something quite different.
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