YOKOSO RESTAURANT

Japanese food and German wine. Our parents, aunts and uncles are turning over in their graves. Well, actually, our families came from Germany (long before The Great War), so they’d probably forgive the wine. And we hosted an exchange student from Japan and have travelled there, so we, well, no – one of us, actually likes the food.

The Friends Who Requested That We Check The Al Fresco Dining On Bluemound met us at Yokoso Restaurant last night. Yokoso is tucked in the back of a shopping center, closer to the freeway than Bluemound Rd. Thus its al fresco dining, located in a small, treed area on the south side of the building, is not negatively affected by the roar of Bluemound, and it is almost distant enough from the freeway that it, like a child of the 50's, can be seen and not heard – much. But al fresco in Wisconsin is such an iffy proposition: either the umbrellas are weighted down with snow and ice and it’s 3 degrees, or it’s raining, or it’s hot, or it’s disgustingly humid, or, like last night when none of these other factors were an issue, the mosquitoes could carry a good-sized German-American across the freeway into New Berlin. We ate inside.

Looking around as we entered, it felt like we were not in Kansas anymore, nor even the Town of Brookfield. So urbane and sophisticated is Yokoso. And the customers must come from San Francisco and New York City. They are young and pretty and thin, with beautiful skin, and dressed in that casual, but intentional look of people who like themselves and have interesting ideas to talk about. Whew! It feels good just to be one of them. Our table in the SW corner of the seating area was pretty noisy, but getting any table on Bluemound Road is lucky on a Friday night.

I must digress to the kitchen demolition here. I spent the whole day tucked back in my office while the US was waging WWIII against Mexico in the other part of the house. Bombs were screeching across the sky, smashing into concrete bunkers, Hispanic soldiers in tanks were driving across metal bridges, jackhammers were upending convoys, all to the rhythm of mariachi music. Was it noisy! And then it became cold. And colder. The workers had a door open through which to cart out the bodies of appliances and cabinets. Meanwhile the air conditioner chugged constantly to chill outside Brookfield. The war was in a sealed-in area which contained the thermostat. I could not get to it. Nor could I get out. I had planned to finally file everything neatly in my office. Instead I cruised the internet, munching a bag of granola, sipping water from the bathroom, with occasional forays into bed to warm up.

Which is to explain why I spent quite a lot of time on Yokoso’s website (www.yokosorestaurant.com) to study their menu and wine list. After all, I am a restaurant critic. I must do my research. They had a Duck Pond pinot gris that I researched. Duck Pond is good stuff in red wine, but I figured we’d have white wine with the very seafoody Japanese menu. Just in case we wanted a glass of red, I researched the Budini Malbec on Yokoso’s wine list. Malbec is a favorite wine of Our Daughter Who Travels A Lot.

Back at the restaurant that evening, I told the waitress I’d like to try the Duck Pond pinot gris. “Sorry,” she said. “We no longer carry that.” Our Friends Who Are From San Francisco And Know Wine Better Than Anyone We Know hoped to order the gewurtztraminer that was on the website, but it was not available in the restaurant. The Budini malbec was also not available. As a third choice, they said the Bex reisling ($30) would go well with the fish. And they were right. It was light, a bit sweet, but with enough acid to be an interesting accompaniment. We enjoyed the snack of steamed, salted edamame ($4) while studying the lengthy menu.

(I hope you haven’t fallen asleep yet, before you get to the food course.)

Our Friends Who Had Been Here Often ordered a variety of sushi and sashimi ($2.25-$2.50 each) and a Brian roll ($13), which they had discovered other patrons enjoying in the past. I am hesitant to order raw fish so far from the ocean, so I ordered smoked salmon rolls ($5.50) and a sliced crab-stuffed roll called the Spider Man ($10). Our Yokoso-Experienced Friends were right again. The sushi and sashimi were the best. Delicious, fresh, fresh, fresh yellowfin tuna and maguro tuna and flounder and salmon. The Man Who Accompanied Me To Japan And Made It Home Without Starving To Death Of Funky Food Disease ordered Udon noodles stir fried with vegetables and beef ($13) as his entre and was perfectly happy with his meal.

Desserts are not worth the calories they're made of. We split two mochi balls ($1.95 each), which are nothing but a scoop of sherbet wrapped in rice paper. The ladies room is beautifully decorated with granite and one of those bowl-type sinks, though it did show the signs of a busy evening (full wastebasket, t.p. on the floor).

After our meal, we quizzed our waitress on the food items she likes best. She said she thought Yokoso’s appetizers are the best. We had only tried the vegetable tempura appetizer ($5), and it was tasty, generous chucks of broccoli, squash, banana peppers and sweet pototoes fried in a batter you could only describe as “dainty”. The only complaint I’d have is that these large pieces of vegetables are difficult to handle with chopsticks, at least for the chopstick-impaired (me). One of the amazing memories of traveling in Japan was watching The Man Who, it turns out, Handles Chopsticks Like A Chinaman. While I was trying to retrieve chunks of squid I’d dropped into the tempura sauce in a tea garden in Kyoto, he was whipping rice in the wasabi and to his mouth without disaster.

I’m going to try to show you a photo of the-room-that-used-to-be-my-kitchen. I’m amazed at how small it looks and how old. Cabinet Werks is going to have a challenge turning this into “the most beautiful kitchen in Brookfield” as Mike Whalen promised in his comments on this blog.

Now I’m REALLY
Kitchenless in Brookfield