Asuka, Otemachi (明日香)

Nothing like some nice grilled eel, is there? Gives you stamina. Power. That’s why I had the chicken at this underground eel specialist; wouldn’t want too much power to interfere with the afternoon…

The creatively-named Japan Building features a whole set of odd little places underground. My current target is actually not Asuka, but rather the yoshoku specialist ‘Steak Peter’. Unfortunately with Wolf in his not-eating-beef-and-wearing-a-dress mode, I figured that was out, so we wandered around aimlessly until settling on this place.

Your basic options are all variants on una-ju (うな重), a box of rice topped with barbeque eel. For some reason neither of us went for normal items – Wolf for the eel-and-egg version (lightly coked scrambled egg poured over pieces of eel, then slid on top of the rice en masse like an oyakodon (which they also had on the menu), and me for the hinakatsu. This is one for the memory banks, because the waitress seemed very embarassed to have to explain to me that it’s a chicken katsudon…Anyway, better luck next time. The chicken, egg and onions blended well together into a sweet, creamy, fatty mass underpinned by the firmness of the rice, exactly 157 grains per bit (OK, not really, but it cracks me up when sushi chefs give customers some rigamarole about how their years of training enable them to pick exactly some number of rice grains per piece of sushi, and/or adjust depending on the type of fish).

Not bad, not bad. Worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood for lunch, but Wolf says there’s an even deeper unagi place in Kanda that’s better. Live and learn. Oh, and hey, you get a Y50 coupon at the end.

Didn’t ask if the eels were Chinese, oops.
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