There are a couple places I went years ago with my friend Naoko. They were all bistros – he was really good at picking bistros in outer suburbs – and after the visits I remained confused about where they were, ignorant as I was about geography in the year after I moved to Japan. In […]
Month: January 2010
- bar
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Fireking Cafe, Yoyogi
Arrrrr, the King of Fire. No idea what this has to do with fire and kings, but a comprehensive walk around Yoyogi Uehara has led me to believe that this is the coolest place going. I want to say this is like being in hip parts of Brooklyn, only I’ve never been there. Somehow I […]
Ciappucino, Yoyogi
A funny little place that looks like a bistro but in fact specializes in…tea and pancakes. Like 20 varieties of tea, which you can get all afternoon as a set with a cupcake, and a large number of pancake varieties, for example the daily special of Caprese – pancakes with mozarella, basil and tomato. Ooooo-kei. […]
- bar
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Medusa, Ebisu
‘Sparkly’ was the order of the day, and that means ‘dining bar’ to me. This place practically jumped off the map, being almost new and also right behind Ebisu’s west exit. The atmosphere was all that, and oddly enough, the food was quite good. As with most big dining bars, there are quite a few […]
- bistro
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Le Cafe du Coin, Kanda
Full of odd contrivances, but I liked this place quite a bit. I think if you’re in the area it’s a good lunch; at night it could be good and would certainly be cheap. Foodologically, they concentrate on simple bistro dishes, and winistically, the focus is on les biodynamiques (shizenba?) at normal prices. The coffee […]
- Kanda
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Kisaku, Kanda (吉作)
Still plenty of things hiding in plain sight in Kanda…this place is across the street from the chirashidon place of 2 weeks ago; somehow I never looked at it before. They have half a dozen lunch sets, all of which are normal and yet diverse. For example, I had the sashimi set, which came with […]
- bistro
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Bonheur Place, Nishi Eifuku
Eiiiiiii- fuku? Once in a great while, we venture out to odd places. And in this case not even the bustling metropolopolis of Eifuku, but the western suburb thereof. I needed to meet The Recruiter, had no particular objection to travel, and suggested we might as well meet 2 minutes from his house. He suggested […]
- Otemachi
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Luck, Otemachi
Once, many moons ago, I went to a nifty exhibit of Japanese postcards culled from the collection of a rich Bostonian who had a yen for taking home thousands of Japanese art objects (I bought the exhibition catalog too; it’s on the bookshelf in the bedroom, bottom right). I never really understood where the museum […]
- Other treats
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Gasshomura Santa, Ningyocho (合掌村 三太)
With a name like this, and a web site featuring lots of pictures of gassho-zukuri houses (think Shirakawa-go, the huge thatched-roof farmhouses) you’d expect some kind of Hida theme. You’d be wrong. But if you went expecting some kind of sake theme, you’d be right – 100 varieties. Only a few weeks into the year and […]
- beer
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Beer Restaurant Old Station
Before I ate, I was all set to write a snarky post about this place, but I kinda enjoyed the ‘fried curry udon’, which is their speciality item and comes on a sizzling skillet which rapidly cool, letting the curry congeal, which is a little gross but significantly better than sizzling, spitting, and thoroughly threatening […]