Kavka Shishido -- Yakiniku Princess（焼肉プリンセス）

 

For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, I got to meet a whole bunch of old friends for dinner last night. And I know that it's been even longer since I dined at a yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant, but happily enough, we all got to do that at a suburban place just north of Toronto. It wasn't cheap by any means (each of us paid $127 CDN) but it was the good stuff including Wagyu beef. Obviously, I can't do something like this every month but once a year, it's not a bad thing at all.

The place was also all-you-can-eat for two hours so we were engorging ourselves (and I apologize to all of those vegetarians and vegans out there, but I am an omnivore). I was frankly surprised that I could still stuff it in after all these years, but I think that the key was not ordering any rice; instead of that, I was satisfied enough to wrap the meat in leaves of lettuce instead. My stomach was heavier and my wallet was lighter.

On that note, I thought it would be nice to have something thematic here and therefore I managed to find "Yakiniku Princess" (BBQ Princess). This was a song from percussionist-singer-actress Kavka Shishido's（シシド・カフカ）4th single "Wagamama/Miss. Miss Me"（我が儘／Miss.ミスミー...Selfishness） from January 2014. Nothing ironic or allegorical here; it's simply Kavka happily professing her love for yakiniku...all those plates of different cuts of meat in full marinade; just keep it coming, waiter! I can understand her feelings completely. 

Not surprisingly, the music by Satoru Hiraide（平出悟）(and he also took care of the lyrics as well) is full blazing rock and R&B, just like the fire under the grill sizzling them slices up. Incidentally, Hiraide was also responsible for creating "Love Corrida"（ラヴコリーダ）, which is the one other Kavka song that I covered on KKP. The single peaked at No. 52.

I did my fair share of yakiniku back in my Japan days. The only thing that I was missing from last night's carnivore repast was kalbi kuppa（カルビクッパ）, that hearty stew I always loved at the end of a yakiniku session.