トントンマン
The Nakayama Memorial of the Japan Racing Association is one of my favorite races, and this year, the 5th favorite, Hishiigas, won, with the 8th favorite, La Grulf, coming in 2nd, resulting in an upset finish. Mr. Shugo Izaki, who accurately predicted this with a exacta bet, did a fantastic job. However, some believe that Illusive Panther, who got stuck on the inside in the straight and missed the chance to break through, would have won if not for being blocked. Getting blocked on the inside and getting stuck is often associated with the retired Yuichi Fukunaga, but I believe that Fukunaga is not necessarily bad, but rather takes risks proactively. This time, Demuro of Illusive Panther took a risk by diving inside, only to be cut off by Schnellmeister, who had some speed, and further blocked by the cunning technique of Yutaka Take (3rd place D'Orbne) from the outside. Nevertheless, this is horse racing. While it's taboo to say "if only" in gambling, I believe that such discussions make gambling interesting, and the post-race celebration and reflection sessions are also lively. On this day, I casually engaged in my Eat Log activities while enjoying such horse racing, and this time, I challenged a Silk Road cuisine restaurant that I discovered last year. Among the various Silk Road cuisines, I became fascinated with the cuisine of the Xinjiang Uygur region. Although still relatively rare in Japan, our restaurant serves such Xinjiang Uygur cuisine, as the name suggests. My encounter with Uygur cuisine began in May 2022 when I visited "Silk Road Cuisine Budouen" in Mitsukyo, Yokohama by chance, where I had an eye-opening experience. In December of the same year, I visited "Silk Road Tarim Uygur Restaurant" in Hatsudai, Shinjuku, and since the beginning of this year, I also visited "Silk Road Murat" in Minami-Yono, Saitama. These three restaurants can be considered the three major Uygur cuisine restaurants in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and it was through visiting them that I learned about our restaurant. Our restaurant, run by someone from the Xinjiang Uygur region, opened in September 2019 on the 5th floor of a modern building near the Higashi-guchi Gosasho intersection (with a Seven-Eleven on the 1st floor and a Komeda Coffee on the 2nd floor). Later, around the summer of 2021, we relocated to our current location (formerly operated as Miran Beef Noodles), but it seems that on Eat Log, it is treated as the same store. In any case, our restaurant is located near Ikebukuro Station, which is much more advantageous than the aforementioned three major restaurants, but for some reason, we are not as well-known as them. Perhaps this is due to the lack of "Silk Road" or "Uygur" in our name and our relatively new history. When I arrived at the restaurant on this day, it was just after the opening time, around 11:05 a.m. Inside the restaurant, there are two box seats for about 8 people each on the right, and 20 table seats lined up on the left. There were no menus on the table, and the system was to scan the QR code placed on the table with a smartphone and order from the menu there. However, the menu was all in Chinese characters, with no Japanese menu available. While I could ask the staff, it was a bit of a hassle, and I could roughly grasp the image with the sense of Chinese characters, so I decided to order that way. Perhaps this is another reason why our restaurant's popularity has not quite risen, including the Eat Log rating. Indeed, all the previous guests, two groups of three people each, and the subsequent guests, two groups of three people each, were not speaking Japanese at all, giving the illusion of having wandered into a foreign restaurant. In the kitchen, there were three male cooks who appeared Chinese, although it is unclear if they are from the Uygur region, and one Chinese female server, for a total of four people managing the restaurant. The menu also includes items that are not Uygur cuisine, such as knife-cut noodles and Lanzhou beef noodles, giving it a slightly different atmosphere from the three major Uygur cuisine specialty stores mentioned earlier. In terms of prices, most noodle dishes are priced at over 1,000 yen each, and side dishes are also quite expensive, making it a bold setting.