Mikawa Japanese Restaurant

Mikawa  Japanese Restaurant

The very first job I had that wasn’t babysitting was as a shoe check girl in a Japanese restaurant. The owners had spent a lot of money to put in real tatami mat (straw) floors and wanted to protect them from muddy boots and pointy stilettos, so when customers entered they surrendered their shoes and were given a ticket and some paper slippers. We also checked coats when the weather required it.  It was a silly job, but it was part of the atmosphere the owners were trying to create; they’d built a coatroom, so someone had to be there to take the coats. Or the shoes. I got paid a couple of dollars an hour, plus tips.

            Even though I was just a teenager, I could tell that the owners had gone a bit overboard in their pursuit of ambiance. The bar was made out of an actual boat; there were private rooms with siding shogi screen doors, hibachi tables, and a huge banquet room. The owners were a Chinese-American engineer and an Italian-American contractor/carpenter. I don’t know why they decided to open a Japanese restaurant in a shopping center in Oyster Bay, NY, but I am glad that they did. It was the first time most of my friends and I had encountered Japanese cuisine.

            The chefs and waitresses had been brought over from Japan and the tempura chef had been specially recruited as a high master of that art. The waitresses all wore kimonos and obis and those little toe socks and sandals, and I too had to wear a kimono and obi and little toe socks. I never could master those platform sandals they wore, though, so they let me wear Chinese slippers.  In that costume I would pass the hours sitting in the coatroom, reading, writing, and sipping miso soup, which was kept in a big vat just inside the kitchen door, from a teacup.

            What I learned from this job was not to lump all Asian people together, that the Chinese and Japanese had a history that often made them enemies, and that I loved Japanese food. The best part of the evening was after the last customer left and the chefs whipped up dinner for the staff. The men and women ate separately, and I had to learn to use chopsticks in a hurry. Most of the women ate daintily, just a few little bits of this and that, but I was a hungry American teenager and I devoured everything I could get, and it was all good.  The Japanese staff was amazed at my ability to consume- they knew enough English to tell me, and I was too hungry to be embarrassed about it.   I went crazy for daikon pickles and tempura. That chef really was a master, or maybe it’s just because it was my first, but I’ve never tasted better tempura.  The most amazing tidbit they fried up was a kind of fritter made of all the shrimp bits too small to sell, mixed with shredded carrots and onions.  It was like eating a crispy, delicately flavored cloud.

As I write this, I realize it is the second posting that focuses on a little piece of fried shellfish. I don’t think it’s going to be a theme or anything, but if anyone knows where I can get a really good tempura fritter, I’m interested.

            Mikawa stayed open for many years, but I think they ditched the coatroom early on.