It was raining this morning, which is an appropriately depressing way to come back to work after a great weekend in Kyoto, and it popped into my head that rainy days are good to pop down to Ginza for lunch. This isn’t strictly true, and it wasn’t even raining by the time I got there, and then I just pottered around for a while before deciding on sushi. This place was pretty good, leaving out the mildly disturbing huge Japanese flag by the door and the shaved heads and fierce faces of the staff. It was like a black-van sushi place, if you see what I mean.
The atmosphere was a little tired too, but they do some neat things to keep it up. I like the block of ice on the counter; that shows up on their web page, so it must be one of their trademarks.
Massive lunch bowls are also a trademark; this is the namesake Karaku bowl. This was very good quality; I enjoyed watching the junior chef stand over a pile of tuna scraps and scrape the paste out from between the tendons, while the salmon roe and eel were both very good. The dark-red gel-looking stuff is soy-soaked tuna, FYI.
Don’t tell them I wrote this, OK? I don’t want the vans coming to my house.
03-3571-2250