Much to my shame and embarassment, today I inflicted the quest on others (using first person to take responsibility for my actions). Yaruki Chaya is one of the ‘under the tracks’ places needed to complete our recent quest, and it basically lived up to expectations. Actually that’s not fair to expectations, because I expect more of my expectations than that. There are some pretty good places under the tracks; it’s just that this isn’t one of them.
Not much to say, really. I had a silver cod (OK, the dictionary says ‘sablefish’, but it’s really a 銀鱈) that smelled fishy but tasted OK except for being packed with fat and bones (again, I know fish is supposed to have bones). Pon and Wolf both had skillet-pork variations, while Zone had a fried-chicken cutlety looking thing that I forgot to ask about. The side dishes are extra-abundant here (if you get something like the fish set) – a little pasta salad, some pickles, some negitoro (which was really gloppy but tasted surprisingly good), some natto (!), roasted nori sheets (seriously, it’s like in 4th grade when the cafeteria had ‘breakfast at lunch’ day), rice (OK) and soup (extraordinarily poor). All of these were priced, I’d say, slightly on the high side at Y950 or so; I guess the side dishes are there to justify the additional few yen that they charge.
やろぜ。
Oh hey, this is part of the same mega-group as Shoya (庄や), of which a branch just opened in Monzennakacho. Fortunately it didn’t replace anything better, and the little stretch of sidewalk near the white goods store and the Bambi pachinko place is a little brighter now.