Sake Luncheon at Japanese Ambassador’s Residence

It was a great honour for me to be invited by the Ambassador of Japan to India HE Mr Ono Keiichi at his residence for an official luncheon with Japanese Cuisine and Sake.

The Goodwill Ambassadors

The ceremonial proceedings unfolded with the official nomination and felicitation of Mr Brehadeesh Shimizu Kumar and Ms Nooresha Kably as the first Goodwill Ambassadors for the promotion of Japanese Cuisine in India.

The Ambassador read out the respective citations and went on to hand over to them their certificates. This was followed by both the recipients telling the audience about their life journey, passion for Japanese culture and the enormous efforts put in over many years to gain the expertise in Japanese food and cuisine, leading up to this recognition.

Meeting up with Friends, Old and New

The event provided an opportunity to interact with other guests and making new acquaintances as also to connect with old friends.

Sake Lunch and Breaking of Some Myths

The official ceremony was followed by a lunch with Japanese Cuisine and Sake, for which all the guests moved to the adjacent hall.

Now there are two type of Indians – those who love Japanese Food and those who don’t. To be very frank, I have been in the second category. Although many of my close friends swear about the yumminess of Japanese dishes like Sushi, Sashimi etc, but personally I could never develop a taste for these, mainly because (like majority of Indians) my palate is not accustomed to raw sea food like fish and salmon.

But today I found a large number of vegetarian and chicken based Japanese fare laid out on the long table and I decided to give these a try. And to my huge surprise, I loved these, and even found it pairing well with the Sake.

So for me personally, two myths got broken today- firstly that Japanese food is mostly made with raw ingredients like raw fish etc and second that Japanese food does not pair well with Sake.

The Flight of Sake

The luncheon had an array of wonderful Sake laid out, the diversity of which varied from Dry Sake to the Sake Liqueur and even a Sake with golden flakes. And the guests loved these.

I shall write about each of the Sake separately too in a future blog post.

To conclude, I would say that today’s event was a perfect occasion which provided everyone a wonderful opportunity to experience the quintessential Japanese culinary experience.

(Infact this was the second Sake event held at the Japanese Embassy in the week gone by. The first one was the birthday celebrations of His Majesty The Emperor of Japan where too many Sake were showcased for the guests. To read about that, check out my earlier post here).

Kampai !!