Sorry, no time to get up a real post about dinner (Saturday and Sunday nights were both quite good!), but here’s a little randomness from Saturday afternoon in Ginza, pre-dinner. ‘White Rose’ has always amused me. It’s a hostess club, but it sort of inverts the whole ‘privacy and discretion’ thing that I associate with […]
Author: Jon
Sankoen, Jimbocho
Oopsie, on the heels of Yosuko Saikan, I accidentally ended up with my colleague Mitch in another place offering cold noodles. It was less good, but they did have lice dishes on the menu, including flied lice, so the cooked food might be better. I’ll keep this short, so here’s the deal. They give you […]
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Jazz Bar Gugan, Kanda
I wasn’t overjoyed about how I came to know Gugan – a colleague I was drinking with insisted that we had to hit another spot after I thought we were finished dinner and drinking, and his favorite was right around the corner. It’s straightforward and a nice enough place (which I don’t mean in a […]
Yosuko Saikan, Jimbocho (揚子江菜館)
As I keep saying, the heat makes me want to eat cold noodles, and I finally put into effect my standard methodology of using the googles to find some likely new venues. Searching out “Hiyashi Chuka Ranking” produced a few weird sites (there’s no hiyashichukadb yet, sadly), and one of them listed at the top […]
Shoujou, Monzen Nakachou (猩猩)
Sometimes I have an existential crisis, a dark night of the soul where I wonder if there’s a point to all this looking for great restaurants – because lately it just seems so easy to find them, you know? There’s an expression in Japan if you like the taste of something, it ‘meets your tongue’. […]
Farsi Largo!, Nihonbashi
Farsi Largo is Italian for ‘big joke’ (large farce, get it?) but there’s no joke about the cooking here. Good ingredients and good preparation, very professional. The worst thing about the place is this sign on the street, and the crummy old stairwell that leads down to it. Inside is clean and modern; it could […]
Osakaya, Monzennakacho (大阪屋)
Ahhhhh, Osakaya. When people say ‘Monzennakacho’, they’re always thinking of bargain fish specialist Uosan or else they’re thinking of Osakaya. This is probably because it features in various guide books (including the Gauntner sake book, which is in English). It’s not what it used to be, which doesn’t mean it’s not nice. Just…different. The […]
Ryouma Ramen, Jimbocho (竜馬)
A monotonous statement, this one, but I passed this place on a scouting mission several weeks ago. I think it was actually the night that I finally went to Fukumen, which was a happy night that will stay in my memory for a long time. I was struck by the dissheveled small-ramen-shop aspect it presented, […]
Kanda Haus, Kanda
You don’t expect to visit a Japanese ‘hambagu’ place and come away thinking ‘That was good!’ I don’t, at least. But this place, picked out by Zoner on a random walk around Jinbocho, was a winner in my book. The inside is minimal to the point of feeling like they didn’t want to pay for […]
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Chabuton, Minami Funabashi
Went to Ikea this weekend, which is way out in God’s country, following the curve of Tokyo Bay towards Chiba City. Turns out I went the wrong way when I went before, and with a little extra walking on the home end of the trip, the train only takes 30 minutes (not 60). When you […]