This place looks sorta nice, and has the great advantage of outdoor seating, though it lost out and wasn’t selected for lunch. But I only ate a grainy matcha-vanilla softcream on the way back to the station, so the real reason for this post is as an excuse for the picture. I’m not sure if […]
Month: June 2009
- izakaya
- ...
Tobu Sakana, Shimo Kitazawa
Wow, the main course. This is close to the station, and one of the first places we saw when we started walking around. Stayed on my mind all day, and I wanted to go back. This being Japan, the good-looking places get packed, as was this one when we got back (at 6:30). Fortunately the […]
- bar
- ...
808 Lounge, Shimo Kitazawa
Ahhh, were we on a roll with this Shimo Kita trip or what? As a means of passing another hour, there was this Hawaiian bar. I like to think this was in honor of McNoonan, who just finished celebrating his layoff with 6 weeks in Hawaii, but in reality I’m a sucker for tiki bars! […]
Second House Cake Shop, Shimo Kitazawa
I know, I know, the last thing you need after a bowl of ramen and a plate of gyoza is a piece of cake. But after walking around for an hours, you get tired of standing up and looking at old clothes (which is one of the main activities in SKZ). This being Japan, there’s […]
- Other treats
- ...
Kashira, Shimokitazawa (頭,下北沢)
When I got to Tokyo, McNoonan was living in Shimokita. This seemed like a slightly odd place to live, but he swore by it despite the small apartment and long commute (Roppongi isn’t convenient. Opening the Oedo line helped, but it’s still not that convenient except for foreigners who live right around there.). Of course, […]
- Ginza
- ...
Pin, Ginza
A work event. Restaurants selected for work events make me skeptical. Even if they’re good restaurants, they’ll struggle to make and serve to a large group in a way that does justice to the food. Yet another thing that makes me skeptical is ‘Dining Bars’, which I’ve come to think of as Tokyo’s Applebee’s – […]
Bibinba, Marunouchi
We all have to make sacrifices. At the grave risk of minimizing those of others, one of my recent sacrifices has been to eat lunch at a bunch of mediocre-looking places under the rail tracks in Marunouchi just so I could say I’ve been to all of them. Bibinba is one of those places, or […]
S&S, Monzennakacho
Deeeeeep. I’ve only gotten aware of the Japanization of this word in the last year or so, and in the context of something being sorta “way downtown”, i.e. really old-fashioned and authentic, and maybe a little grubby. So I’ve seen this izakaya reviewed as being pretty deep, although the same could be said about half […]
Ten, Marunouchi (天)
I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not. This is actually a teppanyaki restaurant, not tenpura. It’s pretty good, but that’s a little secondary to the fact that The Wolf, El Lobo, Ryu-jito, Double-R, R^2, etc. is leaving us tomorrow. This was his goodbye lunch, and as such we got a good part of the […]
Papaya Leaf, Marunouchi
Hands up, who remembers the Coneheads? Yeah, my hand’s not really up either – that stuff was mainly before my time (or after it, if you consider that I’ve never been the type to stay up late enough to watch SNL). But I definitely remember that the early coneheads had a few catchphrases like “France…we […]