- We are SORTED, a group
of foodies from London, who today,
(record scratches to a halt) are way out of our comfort zone. - I feel like I need some moral support. - We've been sent to Tokyo in Japan and tasked with cooking up a food and sake pairing
menu for some locals. I'm so nervous. So first job is to immerse ourselves in the culture, food, and sake to work out how we achieve probably our biggest challenge yet. - This might be the hardest
thing we've ever done. - Hello and welcome to fridge cam, this is Jamie, and I'm Ben, and today we're on the second part of our journey throughout Japan. If you missed the first
part, it launched last week, what are you waiting
for, go and watch that then come back to this and watch this. - In our last episode we had experienced the unique umami flavor you get from pairing the right sake
with an incredible seafood dish. - So today all we had to do
was choose the right sake and invent an incredible
seafood dish, easy! - Yeah I think we might need to eat, drink, and learn a lot more. (upbeat music) - [Mike] So in order to do this, Jamie and I traveled to the country side, fire a 45 degree onsen. (screaming) For a traditional Japanese set lunch. - [Jamie] Is that the best you can do? - That's all I can do. With the president of the Masumi
Brewery and his colleagues. Of course there was sake, and J even tried his hand
at speaking like a local. (speaking Japanese - ish)
(laughing) - Oh no! (gives it a second go) - Oh, perfect.
- Yes! Ebbers is going to be gutted. - [Mike] The food was
amazing, the sake was amazing, the whole experience was just incredible. - Not only did we want
to eat like a local, but we thought it was important to travel like one too, or try. (rock music) - Shinjuku station, used by over 3.5 million commuters a day, making it by far the world's
busiest transport hub. With 53 platforms, over 200
exits, and a complex map system, it'd be tough for two
teams of dweeby tourists, split either end of
the station to navigate to this statue using no
devices, wouldn't it? Ebbers, you're learning to read Japanese, what does that say? (speaking foreign language) - Why don't we just ask someone? - [Jamie] Oh wait, mate, there's a tourist information center. Should we get a map?
- Let's get a map. - Been told to find the golden lion. - [Staff] Cross the road to this area. - Brilliant.
- Were you impressed with that?
- Oh no, did she say something?
(speaking foreign language) - I guessed.
(laughing) - I can't believe that actually worked. - I'm gonna have to get
in the map like Joey. - [Mike] Where did the E square go? - Well the sign post
seems to say that way, but then that's a mirror. Anyone know where the golden lion is? We don't have time to make a video! - It's there, it's there! That's that triangle, that's the triangle. - I do not want to lose to Ebbers. - We're here. Here, Mike, Jamie! - It's the first time
Barry's won anything, he's very excited. - [Mike] It's supposed to be here, right? Look, that, look! - So we got to walk around and see if, there's a lion! We found the lion! We found it! Yes!
- But that was only one part of the challenge. Congratulations, team Hurry Currie. Quick Spaff was not quite quick enough. Next instruction, both teams have been
given some information. Together these make up the
address of your next restaurant. So we have 33 minutes to find-- What's your information?
- That's what we've been given. - We were given 1-1-1. - Turns out, 1-1-1 was an address. We just have to work out how to find it. (Speaking Japanese) - I am very hungry. - I am literally no help. Terrible with directions. (ichi-ichi-ichi) - He needs some cream. He speaks English. I think we're close. - [Group] So many ones! - I'm trying to recognize characters and I'm not getting very far. My hunch is that "cha" will
be written with two symbols. - His hunch has taken us
about five times in a circle. - It's the second to last
symbol I'm looking at. If it looks like a "ha" then we're good. - We've found the group. We've lost Ben, but it's okay
'cause he knows Japanese. - Cha Cha Hana was a restaurant specializing in Kyoto style cuisine which we were told was
very high end and refined. So the only thing I've never
particularly enjoyed in Japan was natto, so fermented soybean,
and that's what this is, but mixed up with tuna, and some roe, and some plum, and spring
onions, and okra, lots of stuff. You wrap it in a nori sheet, enjoy. - Barry's up first I heard. - I heard Barry was up first actually. Did you hear the same thing I did?
- I heard the same thing. - [Ben] I nominate Barry
first, how about that? And yet the sake managed to do its magic. - It was delicious. - Is it?
- Mmhm, honestly. The fresh tuna, the okra, the tofu just brings it all together. - Take a bite. (calm music) - That mixed with all
the, that's incredible. (hip hop beats) - We needed to sample some more sake to get an idea of what we
liked and thought would work, so where best to do that than
an all you can drink sake bar? We bought our own food to
experiment with and got tasting. I found the one that I
think was most local, it's called Shibuya Crossing. Think I might've found
my new favorite concept. Like 50, 60, a hundred sakes
and you can just keep trying. - Oh damn that's good. This is I think the favorite so far. - Super geek time. Here we were told about
the sake brewing process. The water used has little to no iron in it because that gives an
undesirable taste to the sake and iron also tends to amplify
the fishy taste in seafood so you can end up with a
fairly unpleasant aftertaste. Therefore, lack of iron in sake is what makes it pair so well. - You will never understand how much he enjoyed telling you that. (laughing)
- Science! - [Mike] Remember the sake
brewery president from earlier? Well, he very kindly showed
us around his Masumi Brewery to help us understand so much more about sake than we currently knew. - [Jamie] Miyasaka-san talked us through how even though this is
a family run brewery, it's still very small, it's
actually one of the best and most successful in all of Japan. In the 1940's they won the
best sake in Japan competition. - Sake competition there,
(speaking Japanese). - Secondly they discovered that they were using a unique
yeast to make the sake, it's called number seven yeast, and nobody else was using it at the time. Now 60% of all sake brewed in
Japan uses that same yeast. This is the exact location where the number seven
yeast was first "born". One of the biggest questions that we've had since we've been here is why is sake so important
to Japanese people and to Japanese culture overall, and Miyasaka-san was
able to talk us through. The big thing is rice
and how connected rice is to the gods that the
Japanese people believe in, which I think is really interesting 'cause you see why
there is this dedication to getting sake right, and Miyasaka-san talked us through kaizen, constant innovation,
always looking to improve on what they're doing. Mike and I were then treated to the best sake tasting we've ever done. (speaking Japanese) Wow, you're gonna love that one. You're gonna love that one. We've chosen two of the
sakes for our food challenge. The first sake is a Junmai Daiginjo that uses the number seven
yeast, that's important. That's lovely, very clean. And the second one is a sparkling sake and we think that's gonna go really well with some of the seafood
that we might have in mind. (speaking Japanese) We should've brought James and his arms. Earlier in the day through an
amazing lady named Rebecca, who you'll meet in a sec, we managed to secure, quite literally, a once in a lifetime
restaurant experience, but we kept it from the chefs until now. It's quite a new restaurant,
it opened only in June 2018, was opened by a guy called Thomas, he was the head of
research and development at a restaurant called Noma. We are being invited
in to the test kitchen to meet the team who
creates all of the recipes for the restaurant for a
completely unique dining experience and that was the guys finding
that out for the first time. - Happy birthday! - As if this trip to Japan
couldn't get any better! Wow. (laughing) - That's it, that's it, wow. - Genuinely lost for words.
- He's lost for words. - That meal was crazy. The first person we met was Rebecca, she's a sake expert, and
a passionate advocate. She sat down with us and
told us more about sake and the meal than we've
ever learned before. - So it's always been
part of societal tapestry and the cultural tapestry, but it's also part of the
environmental tapestry of Japan. It's very much an
agriculture based product. It looks like just a beverage,
it drinks like a wine, but it behaves like a craft beer. - Sat in the development kitchen, and we had course, after
course, after course each paired with a sake, but the first one was
I think new to us all, Monkfish liver with a berry shard, and some beech nuts paired with a sake that just took the whole dish
to some different dimension. - They're both so mellow so
they're not warring together they're pairing really well together. The sakes aren't taking
anything away from the dish which I feel like it could
if it was the wrong pairing because the dish is just,
it does just melt away. And the courses kept on coming, each one of them was
paired with an amazing sake and Rebecca took us into more depth of why each sake worked with each course. - With sake, it doesn't fight with food, because it doesn't have that
harsh, citric, acidity of wine it's really quite easy to pair with quite a wide variety of dishes, and a good pairing to
me is really also a sake that supports the food and elevates it into something much more gorgeous, but it doesn't overpower it, it just supports what's already there. - What struck me about all of
the dishes was the intrigue, the curiosity, the unknown. I think there was so
many ingredients there that we've never heard of before, but the chefs explained
them with such passion. They didn't just tell us what they were, but where they come from,
why they've gathered them, and what they've done to them to make them as exceptional
as they were on the plate. - [James] And you're just
kind of enjoying food rather than thinking too much about it. - That was quite possibly
the most exceptional piece of fish I've ever eaten. - Unbelievable. - I never thought I'd see the day when we'd be served
mille-feuille made from seaweed that's been cooked with pine, and honey, layered with cream and yuzu. The seaweed is just umami, and sweet, and citrus-ey, and zingy. - That is so good. It is. - We have an aged sake to finish. It is sweet and syrupy and sherry like. Could there be a more
perfect end to this meal? We were sat at the table
for a good couple of hours and yet it absolutely flew by 'cause we didn't stop talking about food, about the sake, about the
ingredients we didn't know. I can honestly say it was some of the best
I've ever experienced, not tasted, experienced,
'cause that's what it was. - I think that might have
been one of the best surprises we've ever had on SORTED
ever, we're so lucky. - Full stop and yet tomorrow I think we probably have
our biggest challenge ever. - You can't look at sake as
just an alcohol, it's far more complex and beautiful than that and for me it's a life enhancing community and culture to be proud of. - Judging from everything we've eaten, this might be the hardest
thing we've ever done. - Okay so we've learned a
lot in our 48 hours in Tokyo from everything from the amazing respect and attention to detail that Japanese people have for their food, to the amazing umami explosion that you get when you pair an amazing sake with an amazing seafood dish. - But now we have to put
that all into practice in the most stressful way possible. - How did he get in the kitchen? - Oh my god! - One batch of mushrooms burned. - One o'clock, it's go time. Here we go. Open the doors. - Ooh it makes me nervous
just watching this back, and I know how it finished. - If you're lovin' the journey so far, make sure you give the video a like, get down into the comment section, tell us what it is that
you're liking about it. Do you think we're having a
proper authentic experience? - Trips like this push
us out of our comfort zone, and we couldn't do it without JFOODO. So big thanks to them. Don't forget make sure you're subscribed, and you got notifications switched on so you can follow part three
coming to you on Sunday. - It'll all be fine,
it'll all be fine, sure. - As we mentioned, we don't just make top quality YouTube videos.
- Lol! - We've built the SORTED Club, where we use the best things we've learned to create stuff that's
hopefully interesting and useful to other food lovers. Check it out if you're interested, thank you for watching, and
we'll see you in a few days. Oh it's gone in the beard, it's gone in the beard!
- Oh no, it's on his T-shirt!
