Everyone’s got their own thing. Recently my friend has been bugging me to stop going to so many French places and go to some equally-high-quality yakiniku. So I did. And here it is.
Shichirinya has 4 shops around the Ginza area, three all the way over on the Yurakucho / Shinbashi side and a fourth that I went to in Ginza 7 (west of Chuo-dori, near Matsuzakaya). This one was going for the old-fashioned / ‘country’ style décor, and it turned out to be somewhat Korean (Korean-looking waiters, Korean specialties on the menu). We got a tidy private room despite being only 2 people.
Summer’s a little hot for serious meat-eating, isn’t it? We kept ordering cold things (fresh tofu, good and accompanied by a little dish of goma, myoga, negi and salt; sashimi, truly excellent maguro akami that was both more tasty and more expensive than most of the chu toro I’ve eaten lately; house salad, spicy with lots of nira and drowned in goma oil). In fact, the staff kept wondering when we’d order meat, and finally asked if they could bring the charcoal to spur us into action. In the end we only got two plates of meat – one duck, one beef (tried to get chicken but they were out of chicken. Out of chicken?! How can this be? Very discombobulatory.) The duck cooked up surprisingly tender and tasty, even the thick fat was nice (usually you want to roast a duck so a bit of the fat runs off, no?). The beef (jou-rosu) was great, nice and beefy but not overly fatty (I don’t prefer the shimofuri / ‘yuki’-type beef – I want a balance of meat and fat). But it really oughta be when you’re paying Y500 per slice.
Including a bottle of wine and two other drinks, the bill was Y16,000 plus tax and tip (wait, no! Ahhh, I love Japan.). Adding another plate of beef, this would be very tasty and tastefully within the guidelines of a similar-quality French place. I guess I’d do it again, but now I’m wondering if there are better places out there…
七厘や 燈 http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g058004/ 03-5568-5011 〒104-0061 東京都中央区銀座7-7-6 アスタープラザビル1F
Go South on Chuo Dori, turn right at 6-chome crossing (Kanematsu, Resona, after Matsuzakaya), then second left. Or if you’re like me, ignore your own meticulous directions and make your guest call to be ‘guided in’.