The small hometown izakaya where I worked the summer before college was not as popular as the other Japanese restaurants in the region. The sushi was nice. The takoyaki was satisfying. The ambiance was quaint. But there was one item that set it apart from the competition: kamonabe, the family-sized duck hot pot.
Kamonabe was the hottest dinner item, both literally and figuratively. If a table ordered kamonabe, they already knew what they wanted before they walked in. Oftentimes, we didn’t even need to give them a menu—they would eagerly order it while being seated. The famed duck hot pot was as great of a value as it was an experience of pure delicacy: a cauldron of boiling hot broth with an excessive overflow of veggie and meat trays.
Setting it up was no simple feat. Upon an order, I would take a heavy cast-iron pot from the kitchen and into the back fridge where huge buckets of broth chilled. I remember scooping the dark brown broth with a large ladle and watching the hearty sheen of fat globules dance on its surface like a Japanese disco. Even cold, it smelled heavenly, like salt and earth hugging your senses.
I would carefully walk the full pot into the hot kitchen and put it over the big gas cooktop to give it a simmering head start. After that, I would grab a gas canister and a portable burner from the tall stack next to the freezer—whichever was the cleanest-looking and least sticky—and bring them out to the table.
Shortly after came the oohs and aahs as the servers delivered two big round baby-blue platters: one with beautifully thin slices of raw duck meat arranged in a spiral, and another teeming with vegetables and tofu. The platters were typically set on a separate stand since the tables were already crowded with appetizers.
Consuming kamonabe itself was a time commitment, and these customers were never in a rush. We would start first by adding some duck and vegetables into the boiling broth: the shreds of nappa; the shiitake and enoki mushrooms; followed by cubes of tofu for full flavor. The experienced customers didn’t need our help adding the ingredients and taming the hot pot; they were already masters of the tongs and the flame.
The longer it boiled and the more that we added, the more flavorful it became. The tenderness of the duck perfectly complemented the chewiness of the mushrooms, and the vegetables soaked in all that salty flavor. A side order of thick udon noodles was a frequent compliment to slurp the soup. Customers almost always asked for more broth, which I’d bring out in these adorably matching baby blue pitchers stashed in the back fridge. It would bubble and steam up the dining room all night long. Oh, how I envied those pieces of tofu swimming in that umami oasis.
And after all has been boiled and devoured, dinner service would come to its eventual end. I remember leaving the restaurant after my shift ended and smelling like kamonabe. If I was lucky, sometimes I could bring home more than the smell and snag a container of leftover broth. I remember adding in some udon and tofu to recreate my own umami oasis at home; a treat less theatrical but nonetheless well-earned.