Paying to cook your food yourselves + some history along with the food

In India, people usually go out to restaurants either for a change from the normal home food
or to eat some stuff that is difficult to make at home or to try out some exotic cuisines from
other countries / states or because they are just plain lazy to cook.

In short, I am sure that no one goes out to a restaurant, expecting to cook their food themselves. But then that is just us Indians. In Japan, there are quite some restaurants, where the patrons are expected to do the cooking. I was fortunate to try two such restaurants.

My very first experience of cook-your-own-food (a new concept to me) was the Shaabu-Shaabu, which I was introduced to, by my American colleagues in Aug2007. I had planned to do a post on this then, but somehow it did not happen, even though I took detailed snaps of the whole process.

During my trip last week, we visited a lamb barbeque at Tono. The restaurant was named Jingisukan - more on this later. The lamb in this part of Northern Japan is quite renowned, which is surprising given that it is not local to Japan - it is imported from Australia.

Anyway, this is the restaurant.


And a close-up of the name and logo.


The seating is a cross between the western table-chair setting and the typical Japanese low-seating, and looks like this.


Notice the big hole in the centre of the table ? It is actually a gas-fired stove with a perforated pan on it for you to cook your food. :-)

The waiter then brings you all the food items you need to cook your meal. Butter, sliced onions & other leafy vegetables that you need to saute, and ofcourse the lamb, which is very thinly sliced.


Each person also gets a tray having some rice, some sauce to go with the cooked meat, some soup, some pickle-kind-of-stuff and ofcourse chopsticks.


You drop the cubes of butter on to the pan and as they melt, you add the leafy stuff and then
drop in the lamb slices. My Japanese colleagues and an Indian colleague starting the cooking.
And yes, they give you these paper aprons to keep any stains off your clothes.

Each of you takes turns to turn the lamb and vegetables around, so that they get cooked evenly. And after a few minutes, your dinner is ready. Once you run out of lamb in the pan, you keep adding more.



The lamb almost ready to eat. Looks yummy ain't it ?


It did taste good. More so, when the temperature is like -10 deg C outside and food is always welcome in cold weather. After we were done, I was discussing with my Japanese colleagues, about the origin of this type of cuisine. Especially because the main ingredient was something
that is not local to the place.

He mentioned that this was something that came in from Mongolia. A practice adopted from
the Mongolian tribes and with some connection to Genghis Khan, the legendary Mongolian warrior and conqueror. And that is when the origin of the name of the restaurant struck me.
Jingisukan is just a Japanese-version of Genghis Khan. :-)

In school history classes, I have read about Genghis Khan, his army, their conquests etc.
One thing I still remember is that when they would run short of food, they would cut a vein
on their horse's body, sip some blood to quench their hunger and close the vein. Which would
be opened repeatedly for satiating their hunger, till they got to other sources of food.

Though I never knew they had pioneered a come-pay-cook-eat system also, which is still in vogue. :-)

Note : Actually, come to think of it, Shaabu-Shaabu is also very similar to this, with the main difference that it involves beef and sea-food, instead of lamb.