We have to pick our lunch spots carefully these days – where can we run out to for a glamorous lunch and be back before Peanut wakes up from his nap? I kid, I kid, but we do have to pick, because he can’t stay home for that long. I thought Anis was near Yoyogi, which […]
Shinjuku
Tsunahachi, Shinjuku
Here we have a whole flock of peafowl scratching about in the yard, looking for seeds and worms. Actually we don’t. Only two of them are peafowl. But all of them are about to enter this tempura restaurant that I’ve read about a couple times, Tsunahachi. Let me just get it out there – I’m […]
New York Bar, Park Hyatt, Shinjuku
Darkness envelopes me as I exit from the medicinally quiet stillness of the Oedo line’s City Hall terminus. This is a dead part of town at night, with no walkers and only the occasional filming session for a TV police procedural to break the womblike, tomblike silencium. Walking south along Shinjuku Central Park, the menacing […]
Comme Ca Cafe, Shinjuku
I find myself in the curious position, dear readers, of wanting to recommend a place that really irritated me even while I had a good time. Cafe Comme Ca has a LOT of things going against it, but the cakes are incredibly beautiful and taste pretty good too. Strike 1 – it’s a clothing-branded […]
- izakaya
- ...
Penguin Seafood World, Shinjuku
If you were walking down the street in Shinjuku, casting your eyes up so as not to miss any good places that were hiding away on upper floors, and you saw a sign with a pair of penguins happily vacationing far from their native clime, what would you think? Perhaps not “Hey, this place has […]
- Other treats
- ...
Imaiya Honten, Shinjuku (今井屋本店、三丁目)
‘Honten’ means ‘main store’ or ‘original store’ – if a restaurant spawns a chain, they’ll refer to the first one as the honten. Maybe you could call it the ‘flagship’, but for some chains the original store is smaller and less glamorous, and they preserve it for historical reasons. The funny thing about Imaiya Honten is […]
- French
- ...
Galerie Coupe Chou, Shinjuku
Have you read any of my rants about ‘old French’ in Tokyo? This is a term I coined soon after arriving in Japan, when I ate at Chartreuse in Roppongi. It refers to the abundant class of ‘first wave’ Japanese-French restaurants. These were opened by quirky guys who thought Europe was awesome 25 years ago and went […]
- izakaya
- ...
Kanae, Shinjuku Sanchome
Y’know, I keep saying I’ve had enough of sake for a while, but I keep going back to the well. Also, in the same way that I always want to start off with raw fish at an izakaya, I kinda like Japanese food on weeknights, foreign food for a fancier Saturday night. Must be getting old since these […]
Chacha Yufudachi, Shinjuku (茶茶白雪)
Never ceases to amaze me how pretty good places are hiding all over in plain sight…CCYD is sequestered in the top of an average building, the entrance to which is not too obvious from the street. It’s meant to be Kyoto style ‘banzai’ food, and while being decent quality is very good value. This would […]
- bar
- ...
Upset the Apple Cart, Shinjuku
Shinjuku 3-chome is an odd little block full of bars, serving as something of a slope to allow the declination of standards as one goes from Isetan’s glamorous flagship store east into 2-chome (no offense). This, to me, is what Shinjuku is all about – more adult than Shibuya, where they listen to pop music. […]