This place should have a nickname in my team, but it doesn’t. We have ‘The Oyaji Place’, ‘The Duck Place’, ‘The Weird Chinese Place’, ‘The Too Much Food Place’, etc. For a while Burdigala was ‘The Good Value Italian Place’, but that was mainly because of the bread (which changed, along with the increased price […]
Roppongi
Hu Tong San La Ju, Roppongi
Duck! To my knowledge, this is the only place to go if you really want a duck lunch in Roppongi (Café Eight is known for it, but only at dinner, and their lunches are insipid – I think of it as bad Chinese diner.) The too-much-food and too-tasty Y2000 duck lunch is well-met by lots […]
L’Osteria, Roppongi
UPDATE 11/14/08:Had the Pranzo A for the first time. Y2600 seems like good value for the following. I’m not quite as rhapsodic as the same deal at Provinage, however…– Appetizer: small leaf salad with fresh crab (delicious), small portion of roasted vegetables in olive oil with orange accent (a little weird but tasty)– Pasta: Small […]
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Teppanyaki Aoyama, Roppongi
Newish-contender in the give-me-your-lunch-dollar stakes, offering a very refined and expensive-looking environment in which to enjoy teppan lunch sets that are, I kid you not, good value for Y1400 or Y2000. In a nice building (strange narrow concrete front, tucked away down Imoraizaka, large running water feature and spiral starecase in the dark, cool lobby. […]
Lescure, Roppongi
Well, I went to Lescure for lunch in the Winter of 2007, so it’s perhaps unfair to review it now (especially since I didn’t like it!). On the other hand, in checking for the web site now, I’ve learned that it’s closing down tomorrow. Insert smug comment here. The name on the web site itself […]
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Amor de Gaudi, Roppongi
In a funny little category of ‘Roppongi places I’ve been for both lunch and dinner’ is this Spain bar near Roppongi Hills (just outside Hollywood). There are half a dozen tables and a small counter in tiled / dark wood and metal faux-Spanish environment, and the food is what you might call ‘Spanish Bistro’ or, […]
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Harrod’s Brompton, Roppongi
When work in Roppongi is getting you down, go out to lunch. Hmmm, I prefer to go out to lunch every day…what does that say? Harrod’s is a great place to go when you want to escape – the décor is interesting and comfortable, the food is tolerable, and you can sit on stuffed leather […]
Tsubakiya, Roppongi
Visit Tsubakiya for a guaranteed shot of nostalgia that will take you straight back to the Taisho years (if you were alive and living in Japan, of which I was neither). Pleasingly, this place manages to pull off the requisite ambiance without feeling as if it hasn’t been remodeled since Taisho – which is a […]
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Café Singapura , Roppongi
For the regular lunch crowd, this used to be Golden Burning, variously known as’the Thai place’, ‘the Vietnamese place’, ‘the Asian place’ or ‘the red place’across from TV Asahi, at the bottom of Imoraizaka. ‘Red’ was a good description,what with the whole exterior being painted red and all. Now the red is gone(white, with a […]
Chartreuse, Roppongi
This is the restaurant that crystallized my views on ‘old’ food. Interestingly, it was in a book of’great lunch places’ that I picked up, intending to use for weekend dinners. When I realized howclose it was to the office (i.e., “that place with the French flag that I keep seeing on the side street”)I went […]