Romance is not dead. Merely slumbering. It awakens every few years. Like cicadas. With a fortuitous alignment of stars and moon this month, Big Bird and I are both in Tokyo and had a few weeks to awaken the ‘romantic Thursday Lunch‘ tradition we established in 2011. Requinquer is pretty well-known and highly-regarded, so it’s […]
French
- French
- ...
Anis, Hatsudai (アニス)
We have to pick our lunch spots carefully these days – where can we run out to for a glamorous lunch and be back before Peanut wakes up from his nap? I kid, I kid, but we do have to pick, because he can’t stay home for that long. I thought Anis was near Yoyogi, which […]
l’Auberge de L’Ill, Nishi Azabu (オーベルジュ・ド・リル トーキョー)
You can’t go wrong with this as an introduction. You’re walking down a perfectly normal, maybe even a little grubby, street in Nishi Azabu after getting off the train at the quiet end of Nogizaka and walking through the tunnel by the museum, and suddenly you see something that looks a British aristocrat’s house. This […]
Ireel, Ningyocho (イレール, 人形町)
Y’all are not going to get any modesty from me regarding my ability to pick places to eat. Someone and I had business to conduct with the gods, or at least the one god who lives at Suitengu, and thus we planned a whole event around it. As regards the lunch portion, I delivered handily. […]
Bistro Agathe, Monzen Nakacho (ビストロ アギャット)
Great idea! Take a place with an awesome exterior but a terrible manager and business model, re-purpose it into a casual bistro – something Monnaka always needs but doesn’t always have. I see where the place a block south of Exit 2 that went through several iterations of declining-quality French places is now a low-quality […]
Merveille, Nihonbashi
What would YOU do if you were returning to America after 7 years in Japan, leaving behind a visa-less fiancee and going off to get a real job? I hope you’d get an excellent bottle of champagne at Takashimaya, go to Merveille, and then take a taxi to Haneda (unless your flight was leaving from […]
Mignonette, Iriya
You’ve noticed that photo-taking is an increasing hobby for me, right? It’s temporary and very low-stress, but I still spent 8 hours today cruising around – from Monnaka to Otemachi, Kasumigaseki to Kappabashi, Asakusa. Getting around, you know? Tokyo by bike is the best possible way to see it. At left, the fauna of Asakusa. […]
- bistro
- ...
Bistro 18-ku, Arakicho
Aaaaaaarakicho. We finally made it here, months and months after starting to think it was worth a return visit. This was really the first time I’ve explored it seriously, and it turns out to be a ‘difficult’ neighborhood. The places that look good also look scary in the no-menu-no-prices way. Believe it or not, we […]
- bistro
- ...
Chez Andre du Sacre Coeur, Ningyocho (シェ・アンドレ・ドゥ・サクレクーレ)
Chez Andre, or Chez to his friends, has been making homey bistro fare ever since immigrating from his native Bangladesh following the poultry riots of ’89. He’s managed to put together a long-standing restaurant that captures a little bit of the magic of the Sacre Coeur, which is a Bangladeshi ritual involving chicken hearts and […]
- French
- ...
Les Enfants Gates, Daikanyama (レザンファン ギャテ)
The style and food at the now-departed Les Enfants Terrible in Juban were both good; didn’t you always wonder what the main shop was like? Wonder no longer. It’s s stylish place, pitched a bit to appeal to stylish women, but with food good enough to keep anyone happy. And terrines. The point here is […]