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 […]
mid-price
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 […]
Dolce MariRisa, Denen Chofu
Denen Chofu is what’s properly termed a ‘Garden Suburb’. The whole area was bought up by a developer named Eichi Shibusawa around the turn of the (last) century with the intention of turning it into a cleaner, greener planned suburb (and anyone who’s been to Japan will attest that urban planning is not a deeply-held […]
Issui (一穂), Monzennakacho
Is there anything better than a good izkaya? Well of course there is! Lots of things.Don’t be silly. But this place is definitely a good izakaya, which I would summarizewith the 3 F’s – friendly, fun, and fussy about food. I guess that’s 4, but I justmade it up.Issui is close to my place, in […]
Italian Café Marinara, Monzennakacho
Hey, what kind of place is this? Oh, right. Marinara has been on my ‘occasional visit’ list since I moved to Monnaka, and recently was about the 4th time (which would mean yearly visits!). It’s a long time between visits for two reasons – there are an awful lot of Italian places in Monnaka, and […]
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 […]
La Cometa, Azabu Juban
La Cometa, 2nd-floor Italian gustatory haven of no little repute…wait,that’s a different place. This one is slightly hidden on the secondfloor of a building near Azabu-juban crossing, up a curving staircase.Next to the door there’s a huge and confronting poster of an Italianpig, which should be a very good sign. But…Having now been 2 times […]
Body and Soul, Minami Aoyama
Not strictly food. In fact, not very food at all. In fact, the food looks kinda crappy. But they have food, and plenty of drinks, and this is a nice thing in a tiny basement jazz club in out-of-the way Aoyama. Out-of-the-way means out-of-the-way. They have a big neon sign, but due to the vagaries […]
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Tontokoton, Roppongi
Oooh, you can’t beat a place that has sides of meat hanging in a cooler in the entryway. Too bad they’re pork and not beef, but you know the meat’s gotta be fresh and they’re serious enough about it to buy ‘in bulk’ as it were. For lunch you’ll find a small set of yakibuta […]
Ogawa, Monzennakacho
In some periods my favorite place to go in Monnaka. The menu is always a single, hand-written page. That’s a little tough for me (in some places, I end up ordering what I can read!), but the writing is basically OK. Some standard and signature dishes show up every time, and these are worth getting. […]