Tanuki

http://wweek.com/editorial/3527/12543/

Tanuki held a party to mark the one year anniversary of their beer and wine license, and really it was just license for everyone to show that they graduated from CrazyGoNuts University.

Lots of food, of course, with Tanuki serving up classic summertime grill classics, but with their own fun twist. In addition to pork belly tacos and marinated ribeye skewers, my favorite was actually the kimchi hotdogs:

A little bit later, another excellent dish came out. Dungeness crab and rice salad were flecked with bits of caviar and served with pieces of nori, so that you can make your own crab handroll.

After the festivities, the troupe meandered over to Voicebox to continue the sake inhalation, the overall good cheer, and of course a little bit of Journey.

Congrats, Tanuki, on your one year anniversary.

the goodist has posted quite a volley of Tanuki reviews and food porn pics.

Original review

Photos 1

Photos 2

I went over to Tanuki for rib night, where $3 gets you a bunch of ribs covered in a sweet spicy sticky fried garlic sauce. It's truly one of the best deals going on in the city at the moment. The small squeeze of lime helps to cut the richness, but there's still lots of garlic flavor, too. The rice soaks up a lot of the sauce, too, and similarly, a bit of togarashi goes a long way toward balancing it out at the end.

I'm also a huuuge fan of the oi naengguk, a salad of Dungeness crab and julienned cucumber, sitting in a chilled watermelon broth. It was incredibly refreshing, the temperature was perfect, but there was a good level of heat (and a small dab of true wasabi if you want to amp it up further) to go along with the nice watermelon flavor.

The crab meat and cucumber and slices of radish worked really well together.

There's actually quite a few "chilled" dishes on the menu at Tanuki, so I'll be heading back soon to explore some more of the menu.

we were in Tuesday. Most of it was great as usual except we didn't much care for the rojak much (good enough to eat still). I kept expecting meat. Wy suggests some white fish, I'm thinking more chicken or maybe squid.

love the flowering garlic and the sauce for that, used it on the hearts

sorry, unclear.. excpecting more meat in your omakase or meat in the rojac?

There's a couple versions (its common in many places including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia) that have cuttlefish, dried squid or salt crab in them. First time I did it I put cuttlefish in. Mainly did it w/out that night b/c I like to keep a couple dishes minus shellfish.

If I send something like it to you again I'll remember you want meat additions!
Was great to see you both, sorry so little time for chatting though.

hmmm.. seems the Portland Tribune does not share your view on the crab dish, Ron

...insert rolleye smiley here

how can you not like crab and cucumber together???

Specifically the rojac. That particular one seemed to be lacking for something. You gave us plenty of meat overall! and I've had great non-meat dishes like the garlic one, but I might have dumped a couple meat skewers into that dish if I had the entire meal laid out together

Well..she said the broth tasted fishy... I'd be a wee concerned if I got dashi that wasn't fishy..but..you know...

ahahahaha....

Mercury

I loved that piece on you!

Definitely a great piece in the Merc. Dammit I wish I thought of that idea. (I always thought geographically, not chronologically.) Props to PAC and his crew.

Ducked into Tanuki with Flynn that day, just before game night. We had quite a few items, but there are a few standouts for me. One was the Effingham oysters topped with that spicy granita. I'm not certain if it's the same as we've seen on the steamed ankimo, but that granita is a nice Tanuki "signature". In the same way that an oyster is best kept on ice, here at Tanuki it's served under ice. The brinyness and meatiness of the oyster come through quite well.

Also exceptional was the "Tanabata" kimchi combining fresh summer vegetables, lots of herbs, and topped with toasted cashews and almonds.

I think this is best served as a side salad to any grilled item, particularly something on the light side like fish or chicken. The big flavors from the kimchi would help bolster the protein, but it's still, for lack of a better word, demure enough to let the taste of the accompanying fish/chicken shine through. But seriously, this stuff would go great with anything that's got a bit of char to it. Burgers. Ribs. Anything grilled. It's got such a well-rounded summer flavor, with tons of nice acidity coming through not only from the kimchi, but really from the inherent tartness of tomato as well. All in all, an excellent addition to the Tanuki menu.

Coolest pic ever!!! (post #23) And so nice to see Janis. I am DYING to get to the Nuki to get my pallet Nuked! It's been WAY too long! But the other half is finally working again, so LOOK OUT! We's gonna wreck that shiz!!!

Read the Merc article. FANTASTIC! At first I was concerned that there wasn't enough talk about the food itself. Very little, actually. But I really like the approach that was taken. The statement and vision come through clearly. And my fave line:
"And like Martin, Tanuki can be obnoxious, profane, wry, and inspired" was amusing. I love all that and more about Janis and her little shop. What a fantastic, excellent addition to PDX. NO one else can touch the hem of Tanuki's garment. Asian, or otherwise. They're all bitches in comparison. Tanuki's bitches! Lick Janis's glitter boots all ya'll!

PS: Maybe the best Merc food review I've ever read. They usually read like a sophmoric vegan complaint blog. This was nice. Well written and edited.

Tanuki recently sent out a tweet asking to see if there were any Japanese or Korean dishes you wanted to see them do. I posted that she should do some homemade spam to make musubi, and this recent article on the Atlantic kind of goes even further:

http://food.theatlantic.com/abroad/in-japan-soul-food-from-a-can.php

When cultures collide, the results can be unpredictable. Surely, no one in Japan would have imagined that Americans would add avocado and cream cheese to sushi. Similarly, it came as a surprise to me to learn this week that some in Japan have taken to mixing Spam with their yakisoba noodles and corned beef with their omelets.

So in addition to spam, I also say corned beef. And then serve both out of a "can".

I've been known to over do it at Tanuki from time to time(read:everytime) but Saturday took it to a whole new level. I believe the final tally of courses was 23(leaving out such things as Edamame, the cookie and candy sampler at the end and the copious amounts of Sake). Yeah, I said 23. I failed miserably in getting a good picture of everything, but I did succeed in having a good time and reaching levels of gluttony I had no idea existed.

Highlights of the night for me was the house made Soondae(blood sausage, pork in this case), Albacore 'Bulgogi'(a seared piece of Tuna served with rice noodles tossed in Bulgogi marinade/seasonings) and the Skate wing with bok choy and cinnamon tea sauce. Also good was the Saury(also known as Pike Eel apparently) and the stir fried baby anchovies(be careful of the chiles in this dish! I can eat some extremely hot food and I mistakenly ate one and was wrecked for about 15 minutes!)

4+hours of eating and drinking, 23 courses, somehow only came out to $50 w/tip. It would have been a bargain at double that!

Wow, what a meal. I only wish my stomach could have kept up with waves of courses coming out of the kitchen. Fantastic albacore - absolutely love those hand rolls, the famous cinnamon tea sauce was served over Korean watercress and skate (amazing), excellent soondae, the albacore bulgogi over cold japchae noodles.

I'm with you Nick - have had several big meals at Tanuki, but this one broke all the records. I can't wait to get back next month to check out the new menu.

Our friends Eric and Dawn posted a recap of our long weekend of gluttony here: http://www.wrightangle.com/food/blog/2009/07/20/the-portland-food-rampage/

I'll post more this afternoon, but in the meantime, here is yesterday's new menu and a few pics.

Dobu choerim

Soondae

Banchan

I was going to post menus from the rest of the week, but they're all so varied and different, and plus it sounds like Tanuki isn't done with the changes anyway, so I decided why bother.

The new Korean focus is pretty exciting, though. The banchan, served in a laquered bento box, features Tanuki's signature kimchi, pickled radish, squid and meat on a stick. The banchan box also featured some new wrinkles to the Tanuki repertoire, like okra, dried anchovies, and one of my favorite Korean side dishes, parae gim.

Much attention will be surely be heaped onto this dish but for me the understated star of this dish is the rice. It had a subtle malty flavor, great texture and temperature, and proved to me that while Tanuki might be going in bold new directions, the kitchen has not lost its roots. (Truly, if you were to ask me for one and only one Tanuki dish, it'd be the uni onigiri.)

The soondae blood sausage is another example of a dish that has plenty of starpower on the plate but whose real genius will go largely unnoticed. First of all, I applaud the trend of housemade blood sausages throughout Portland, and the soondae at Tanuki is a worthy participant. Shaved ankimo monkfish liver bolster the dish's meat and richness quotient, which is why the puree of Asian pear and yuzu is so brilliant.

If I had to pick one dish that really typifies this new era of Tanuki, it'd be the tofu salad. Rather than engage in an arms race for BIGGER! BOLDER! SPICIER! SEXIER! I love to turn to Tanuki's most subtle dishes. Maybe because I'm a man of understatement myself, I want to celebrate the fact that Tanuki is so deftly able to pack so much flavor while exercising so much restraint.

I for one can't wait to see how Tanuki, ever the shapeshifter, continues to change.

Great post Ron. I've been picking up bits and pieces of Tanuki's new dishes via Twitter. Have been very intrigued by mention of this Korean honey powder. And the soondae accompaniments: anikmo, pear/yuzu, have to check that out for sure.

Kye and I will be down on Friday August 21st to experience the new menu first hand. Hope to see you all there.

Stop #1 on last night's foodcrawl (in which pdxplate members chris_pez and myself were showing two lovely ladies around the town food/drink style) was at Tanuki. Many of ol' favorites were ordered like the excellent beef onglet kushiyaki and the tsukemono pickles. In addition, lots of new items like both of the new tofu dishes (individually as a salad, and together with sliced pork belly in a great chile-laden stew) were also enjoyed by the table.

I had floated the idea of doing an omakase for the table, but as we were making multiple stops this evening, the small and shared plates route was used instead. However, we definitely couldn't resist getting the Friday night special: a big bowl of udon and goat curry. This was a perfect tonic to the slight-chilly evening, as the toothsome noodles and the big hunks of tender goat worked so well with the delicious Japanese curry sauce. I guess the shioyaki ebi skewered shrimp acted as our flag that, yes, we are in summertime dammit and I'm ordering it like it, while it was that udon that ultimately gave us the most comfort, satisfaction and warmth.

Hey and just in case that wasn't enough, a round at M-Bar was had as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naengguk

Hey, I recognize that photo!

As long as the sake is still there.