Today, rather than continue the addled and uninformative style we adopted yesterday, the Editorial Team feels it’s only proper to address a more serious subject – gnocchi. And more generally, the paucity of good Italian food in the places we’ve been frequenting for lunch. Admittedly, one shouldn’t expect too much from ‘red tablecloth’ Italian (not […]
lunch
Polestar, Marunouchi
Truly, the Otemachi metro area is a mysterious place. Things are not always what they seem, so watch out! Strange beasts infest the darkened crevasses, gnashing their nicotine-stained teeth as they drink weak coffee. Weird sounds emanate from the ghostly security men who guard the entry gates at the fortresses of corporate Japan. And restaurants […]
- Otemachi
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Michikusa, Otemachi (道草)
まず, readers should remember that the initial impetus for EOITwJ was actually to create a Roppongi Lunches site, as suggested by Shaklee long ago. Given the coverage of expensive restaurants in many quarters, sniffing out unusual lunches around the office seemed like a more worthwhile and socially-useful function (if blogging ever is). With the move […]
- Otemachi
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Aji-Ichii, Otemachi (櫟)
Cleverly exploiting the advantages of Otemachi (The Underground City) to avoid pissing rain and the general malaise on the streets, Lin-ji and I migrated through the long, marbled halls of the Otemachi building, finding no open seats in restaurants, but only lines of hopeful patrons longer even than this sentence. We ended up confused and […]
Kua’aina, Marunouchi (Shin Maru 5)
In the heady days when we worked and lunched in Roppongi, I used to provide lengthy discourses to anyone who would listen on the Roppongi burger scene. With a solid half-dozen notable places (not including fast food like McDonald’s or First Kitchen or Freshness or Mos, and definitely not including Japanese-style ham-ba-gu), it was certainly […]
S. Stefano, Otemachi (Marunouchi)
It’s official, I’m reformed. A new man. I used to eat nothing but French food. Now I eat nothing but washoku and Italian. Haven’t eaten French since last Wednesday. The first step was admitting that there’s a higher power than myself, and one of these days I’ll get around to seeing what the other 11 […]
- Otemachi
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Bamboo, Otemachi
Ladies and gentlemen… I present to you after weeks of searching a pretty good restaurant in an Otemachi basement. And it’s Ethnic! Bamboo is in the long, long, forbiddingly long and crowded corridors of the Otemachi Building (creative names abound here). It’s in a strange place where the walls of the canyon press in a […]
Sushi Sei, Otemachi
You know how the Japanese alphabet (errr, syllabary) works, right? [Actually it’s already time for a digression. Do you know the story of the Cherokee syllabary? The Cherokee had no written language until the 1820’s, when one of them decided it would be cool to have, and made up a syllabary. Only recorded instance of […]
- bistro
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Aux Bacchanales, Kioicho (Asakusa)
I can hear more curmudgeonly members of the audience already: “You went where?!” Then again, I post some crappy lunch place every day recently, so perhaps this is just indicative of my declining standards? Aux Bacchanales is a small chain (7 shops across Japan) that strives for bistro-style perfection without trying too hard. On the […]
Rinya, Otemachi
Day 14: We continue to explore. Day by day, we hack away a few more meters of jungle with our machetes, but the work is slow and we frequently have to stop so the coolies can sharpen our blades. They seem to be growing restless due to the steady diet of teishoku and Indian, and […]