† Food Hunting: Furusato In Johor Baru †

So I went to Johor Baru for a short two days trip and my lovely girl friend Melissa brought me to this wonderful traditional Japanese restaurant, Furusato (ふる里). Most of the food being served here are some kind of bar food, which means tasty little appetizer sized dishes much in the style of tapas (Spanish dishes).


The table arrangement of the restaurant is pretty much like what I've seen in most of the Japanese movie series: dividers between the tables and posters of recommended food.


The menu of this restaurant is quite extensive because 80% of it is in Japanese and a little bit of English. Good thing that I know some of the food name through the comic and anime, otherwise we wouldn’t have known what to order.


The first thing that we ordered was the Japanese tofu, coated with flour and dipped in sukiyaki sauce. Yummy I would say because the tofu was plain but the sauce was able to balance it out.


The next thing we got here was lotus root with pork (蓮根と豚肉の炒め物). If you see it properly, the pork was sandwiched between two pieces of lotus root and then it was fried coated with flour.


Here comes my favourite: yakitori (焼き鳥). These few simple bite-sized pieces of chicken meat were really one of the best among the dishes.


As you can see my Mel loves the yakitori so much.


Takoyaki (たこ焼き), where the 'tako' means squid. It was not exactly squid ball as a whole thing but actually made of potato mashed together with squid. Not bad, at least I've tried it because I always seen this takoyaki thing in the comic.



This is the Japanese style of pan-cake and its known as Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き). My mum used to cook us Okonomiyaki back at home but I didn't expect the real one can be so damn delicious.


The Japanese dumpling, gyoza (餃子) served in the restaurant was not bad. Although I prefer Chinese dumpling but still, I enjoyed eating 3 out of 5 of the gyoza being served.


Mel: "Its a good thing to see the customer orders desert."
Keat: "Why?"
Mel: "It means the customer is pleased with the food."
Keat: "Yea, good food should always end with desert."
Well there, Mel did mentioned a good point here. I think I really did enjoyed the dinner. So the desert I ordered was an imported green tea ice cream. Simple but pleasant.


These are some display of Japanese wines and of course I didn't order one otherwise I'll have another RM288 (a bottle of Japanese rice wine) added into my RM92 bill.

This restaurant is truly a recommendation for those who enjoy eating Japanese dishes. I think I'll pay another visit next time to try out other things in the menu.