Cleverly exploiting the advantages of Otemachi (The Underground City) to avoid pissing rain and the general malaise on the streets, Lin-ji and I migrated through the long, marbled halls of the Otemachi building, finding no open seats in restaurants, but only lines of hopeful patrons longer even than this sentence. We ended up confused and […]
Month: January 2009
Kua’aina, Marunouchi (Shin Maru 5)
In the heady days when we worked and lunched in Roppongi, I used to provide lengthy discourses to anyone who would listen on the Roppongi burger scene. With a solid half-dozen notable places (not including fast food like McDonald’s or First Kitchen or Freshness or Mos, and definitely not including Japanese-style ham-ba-gu), it was certainly […]
- Italian
- ...
Mio Posto, Ogawamachi
Eeeeeeeeeeeyep, still a reformed man since I ate Italian for lunch and dinner last night. Seemes like there’s a whole company culture of mid-priced restaurants that are suitable destinations, because the staff at this place sure knew who we were. Mio Pasto is, to be terribly brief, a casual and mid-priced ‘old Italian’ place just […]
S. Stefano, Otemachi (Marunouchi)
It’s official, I’m reformed. A new man. I used to eat nothing but French food. Now I eat nothing but washoku and Italian. Haven’t eaten French since last Wednesday. The first step was admitting that there’s a higher power than myself, and one of these days I’ll get around to seeing what the other 11 […]
- Italian
- ...
Osteria Vincero, Shinjuku (三丁目)
Continuing with our neighborhood exploration theme (after the recent Kagurazaka excursions) the EOITwJ staff returned yet again to the greater Shinjuku area following the weekend’s exploration of Arakicho. At less than 20 minutes from the office, it’s not so onerous to head over here after work. On short notice, the Scheduling Team reviewed available options […]
- Otemachi
- ...
Bamboo, Otemachi
Ladies and gentlemen… I present to you after weeks of searching a pretty good restaurant in an Otemachi basement. And it’s Ethnic! Bamboo is in the long, long, forbiddingly long and crowded corridors of the Otemachi Building (creative names abound here). It’s in a strange place where the walls of the canyon press in a […]
Sushi Sei, Otemachi
You know how the Japanese alphabet (errr, syllabary) works, right? [Actually it’s already time for a digression. Do you know the story of the Cherokee syllabary? The Cherokee had no written language until the 1820’s, when one of them decided it would be cool to have, and made up a syllabary. Only recorded instance of […]
- bistro
- ...
Aux Bacchanales, Kioicho (Asakusa)
I can hear more curmudgeonly members of the audience already: “You went where?!” Then again, I post some crappy lunch place every day recently, so perhaps this is just indicative of my declining standards? Aux Bacchanales is a small chain (7 shops across Japan) that strives for bistro-style perfection without trying too hard. On the […]
Ryuan, Yotsuya (柳庵、荒木町)
Gotta admit it – I’m truly impressed by the vigor that Seat applies to dining out in Tokyo. And the way he or she gets to all the restaurants I want to visit, before I visit them. A while back the Pig Out Diary visited Arakichou, near Yotsuya 3-Chome, and a place called Suzunari. Lightly […]
Rinya, Otemachi
Day 14: We continue to explore. Day by day, we hack away a few more meters of jungle with our machetes, but the work is slow and we frequently have to stop so the coolies can sharpen our blades. They seem to be growing restless due to the steady diet of teishoku and Indian, and […]