Enoshima-don: Sea and Land, Strangers in a Bowl

Enoshima-don is usually made by simmering turban shell in a sweet broth, then binding it with egg and onion and serving it over rice. It is built like oyakodon, the chicken-and-egg bowl whose name means “parent and child”. When something other than chicken goes in, usually beef or pork, Japanese has a name for that too: tanin-don, the strangers’ bowl.

Beef and egg are strangers who might at least have met on a farm. A sea snail and an egg come from opposite sides of the shore.

The bowl arrived on a red-rimmed tray, lid on, with the miso soup covered beside it.

The turban shell had a good, firm bite. A few pieces were bitter, probably from the innards; parts of a turban shell’s insides are known for it. A few weeks earlier, I had eaten Kamakura-don in Kamakura, with two large tempura prawns stretched across the rice. Next to that bowl, this one made a quieter case for itself.

The miso soup had seaweed in it, aosa I think, and smelled strongly of the shore. Miso is made from soybeans, but here the sea was clearly winning.

The beer was Enoshima Beer, a pale ale brewed on the mainland by Kamakura Beer, with water that has been prayed over at Enoshima Shrine. It was a deep amber and tasted as rich as it looked. The brewery says a renewal in 2019 made it more refreshing. Refreshing is not the word I would have reached for. It was a beer with a punch.

The tables along the windows look straight out to sea; take one of those, and you can eat facing it. Enoshimatei’s website promises Mount Fuji as well. That afternoon, Fuji was somewhere in the clouds.

The egg had come from a bird, though not one that has ever had much to do with the sky.

The bowl had brought the sea and the land together. The sky kept Fuji to itself.