I’ve ruminated at length before on chain shops in Japan; in summary, if it’s a chain, but it’s a small chain, and it’s consistently good, is there a problem? Only mental, I think, because we feel disappointed that there’s no discovery element, and certainly no chef ‘cooking just for me’. The Antwerp chain has 6 […]
Other treats
- Ginza
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Dedesuke, Ginza (でですけ)
Typhoon? Nuts to that. Lunch time. I was so keen to do something different that I took the train to Ginza. Where it was raining. Hard. Dedesuke is not necessarily a promising place – if you look over the door, you’ll see the first word is hormone…and you should know that that word means nothing […]
- izakaya
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Koju, Kanda (かんだ光寿 )
We all have our biases, and in this case the thing that kept me from going to Koju much sooner was the web site. It’s spectacularly uninformative, and even confusing – the main picture shows a man in a firesuit, leaning against the front of a racecar. It does not contain the shop’s address. Nor […]
- Kanda
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Kotatsu ramen, Kanda (虎龍)
You could be forgiven for thinking that the name here had something to do with the blanket-covered tables that people are so delighted to slip their legs under in the winter. If you thought of the noodles as a table, and covered it with a warm, meaty blanket of mixed pork cuts, then imagined the […]
- Kanda
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Hamayoshi, Kanda (浜よし)
I have to say this at the beginning, just because I think it’s so funny – Hama-yoooooooosh! I know it’s not funny to anyone else, but I’ve gotten really into saying “yosh” in all manner of Japanese situations (long ‘o’ sound). It’s a sort of casual exhortation like “Here we go!” or “Let’s do this […]
- Other treats
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Shoryu gyoza / ramen, Ueno (昇龍)
This place is stuck in my mind as being famous. Is it? Anyone else ever heard of it? I would guess I visited right after I came to live in Japan, or maybe even during one of the trips that preceded that. It was probably in a magazine that month, and that’s how we got […]
Ikaruga, Kudanshita (九段斑鳩)
Lunch with Peacock today. Since he’s the busy one in our relationship, I fired up the googlemaps and searched for what I’ve been thinking about all through Health Week – ramen. It’s so easy to blow your diet… Ikaruga popped up as one of the places closest to his office. Turns out it’s famous. How […]
Hide Margherita, Kagurazaka
When I was in college, we used to play this game called ‘Hide the Salami’. Well, sort of. Anyway, every time I see this place I think of this phrase. And then I think of this Australian guy I knew in business school. His name was Haydn, and if you say that in the quaint […]
El Pulpo, Kagurazaka
I have a complex relationship with Spanish restaurants in Japan – or more properly with ‘Spain Bars’ as they’re called. Usually I find them fiddly and overpriced. The concept should be similar to an izakaya, with small plates and drinks at reasonable prices. I’ve learned to like the izakaya style – the ordering pattern, the […]
- Kanda
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Menemon, Kanda (麺ヱ門 )
Street food in a restaurant? Sure, why not. Lots of places want to bring the street food of other countries to Japan. While plenty of restaurants have fried noodles on the menu, not so many specialize in it. These guys are carving a little niche for themselves, and in a pleasant way. Though I can’t […]