Satou's Beef Croquette Balls (2007-06-27)
If you go to Kichijoji (
) and walk toward the shopping
streets
and alleys, you cannot miss the long line in front of Satou, a shop
that sells the very famous Matsuzaka beef, in raw form and prepared
food. The line is always there, EVERY HOUR OF EVERYDAY it opens
for business. What people queue so patiently for is the famed
beef croquette balls, made with chopped onions and Matsuzaka beef of
course.We'd love to try the croquette balls and see what the fuss is, but
the long line is a turnoff. No way will we waste so much time on
some croquette. In fact no food in this world is worth waiting a
long time in
line for (ten minutes is tolerable queue time). Any food that is
seriously tasty and is there for
immediate consumption and enjoyment, fine. If it takes long
queuing time to get our hands on it, there's OTHER seriously tasty food
to be had. No big deal.
However KL was in Kichijoji one weekend early in the morning
before all the shops open at 10am. Just before 10, a short line started to form in front
of Satou and KL never thought of joining it. He told me he walked
around and came back to the shop and saw the line moving very fast as
several Sataou's staff were selling the croquette at lightning
speed. On a whim, he joined the line and got eight balls in no
time. We could finally taste them!
When he came home, the bigger-than-usual croquette balls were still
warm. I sank my teeth into one... Sure, it was crunchy on the
outside and juicy in the inside. So are the ones sold in our
local supermarket at a lower price than these. The beef balls
were yummy not so much of the Matsuzaka beef, but because they're deep fried. Food cooked in a
vat of hot oil automatically becomes awesome. Heck, you can fry a
sock and it'll still be delicious!
Anyway, now that we have eaten these famous croquette, we have no desire to get them again. There's never a line in the self-serve cooked food section at our supermarket where all sorts of crunchy croquette things are sold.
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