Tokyo & Hong Kong recommendations

Hi,

A friend & I will be in Japan & Hong Kong for about 12 days in late May-early June. I have pages of restaurants bookmarked/articles clipped, but I'd love some suggestions and feedback on my target restaurants.

Our itinerary:
Night 1 (Tokyo): Location still TBD, probably looking for something casual/quick since we will have been traveling for 12+ hours & heading to bed early

Days 2-4 (Tokyo-Hakone-Tokyo): We'll probably do lunch at the train station, which I understand is fun/a good eating experience. Staying at a ryokan in Hakone (Hakuunsou), where breakfast & dinner are included. Lunch recommendations for Day 3 in Hakone are welcome. Dinner on day 4 will be in Tokyo and is TBD.

Days 5-7 (Tokyo @ the Shangri-La Hotel next to Tokyo Station): For meals I'd like to do ramen (maybe Ivan Ramen or Basanova) & a department store for lunch, at least one Michelin starred dinner and a shabu shabu lunch or dinner. Dinner restaurants I'm considering include Zakuro, Cha Cha Hana, Sushi Kanesaka, Sushiko, Takamura.

Day 8 (Tokyo-HK): Lunch will eaten on the plane. HK dinner TBD.

Days 9-11 (Hong Kong at Shangri-La Hotel Kowloon): I'd love to do at least one dim sum breakfast/lunch (City Hall Maxim's Place?), afternoon tea at one of the classic/famous hotels and dinner at Chesa at the Peninsula (a place I enjoyed as a kid and want to go to for nostalgia reasons) (and maybe one course at Felix while I'm there?). I know there's a Michelin-starred dumpling house that's the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant anywhere, so I'd like to give it a try for lunch if possible. I'm traveling with a friend who's never before been to HK, so I think we'll do drinks at Jumbo. My Mom is urging me to do a day trip to Macau because she says the bread there is incredible. (I could only say that to a group of foodies...) Restaurants that I'd like to check out include Bo Innovation, Yung Kee, Mak's Noodle, Da Ping Huo, Hutong, The Peak Lookout and one of the Aqua group restaurants.

Thoughts? Feedback? Suggestions?

tokyo is so huge that giving you a ramen recomendation would be a waste of time, you will find one just as good as the ones I can recomend, closer to where ever you are staying.

but, what you do have to do is eat sushi for breakfast at the fish market. that is simply the expereince in tokyo. you have to be there before 5 or you will be stuck in line for a while. there are 2 places that are considered the best, then there are about a dozen, maybe a little more that are fantastic, but not considered quite as fantastic. as long as you are there, you might as well try for the fantastic ones. you will tell them by the lines out front, or at least the frame for controling the line, if you get there early enough to avoid the line. then, after you eat, walk around the market.


for hong kong - I like mak's noodle very much. I like Luk Ya for dim sum, very much.

have fun

globetrotter wrote:tokyo is so huge that giving you a ramen recomendation would be a waste of time, you will find one just as good as the ones I can recomend, closer to where ever you are staying.

but, what you do have to do is eat sushi for breakfast at the fish market. that is simply the expereince in tokyo. you have to be there before 5 or you will be stuck in line for a while. there are 2 places that are considered the best, then there are about a dozen, maybe a little more that are fantastic, but not considered quite as fantastic. as long as you are there, you might as well try for the fantastic ones. you will tell them by the lines out front, or at least the frame for controling the line, if you get there early enough to avoid the line. then, after you eat, walk around the market.


for hong kong - I like mak's noodle very much. I like Luk Ya for dim sum, very much.

have fun

Thanks Globetrotter! I should have mentioned that we also planned to do sushi at the fish market. Alas, the market is closed the morning after we arrive (which sounds as if it's the best say to go because of the jet lag/time zone changes), so we're planning to head there after returning from Hakone. Any sushi place in particular there that you'd recommend?

I agree about going to Tsukiji early in the morning for sushi - - and for walking around. Last week, we arrived there before 4:30 am to find a very active market. It's a short taxi ride from the Tokyo Station neighborhood. From the fish market, we hopped on a bus back to Tokyo Station.

Tsukiji is worth it even if you can't see the tuna auction. We caught a glimpse of the auction and peered into a few other places that were off-limits. Still, walking around the stalls before other tourists arrived was well worth getting up super-early. I was fascinated by the bonito-flaking stall and live eels being skinned.

We ate at Sushi Dai. The restaurant was full at 6am, but we were first in line. Waited about 20 minutes. Huge long line by the time we left.

This was the freshest sushi we'd ever had. We went with the set menu (which just about everyone does), but then supplemented with things that weren't included, such as hotatagai (awesome), abelone (skip it), and ikura (solid, but not much better than at home).

Also, globetrotter is right about finding places to eat near where you'll be. I'd say I'm a fairly experienced traveler, and I still found Tokyo difficult to navigate on foot. The way addresses are arranged is quite different from what I was used to - - plus, not all street signs are in English. Although we were there for just a short visit, we made use of the front desk of the hotel, asking them to pinpoint exactly where on maps we were going and to write destinations down in Japanese for us to show to taxi drivers.

Ronna

can't recomend any specific ones - if you come in from the entrance by the metro station (I was told it is the "main entrance" but the market is so big I can't believe that there aren't other entrances) you want to stay to the left side, about 300 feet in on the left is an area with a bunch of resteraunts. you'll see the ones that have lines, those are the famous ones. but, frankly, I doubt you can get even mediocre sushi in the market. good luck.

chgoeditor wrote:

globetrotter wrote:tokyo is so huge that giving you a ramen recomendation would be a waste of time, you will find one just as good as the ones I can recomend, closer to where ever you are staying.

but, what you do have to do is eat sushi for breakfast at the fish market. that is simply the expereince in tokyo. you have to be there before 5 or you will be stuck in line for a while. there are 2 places that are considered the best, then there are about a dozen, maybe a little more that are fantastic, but not considered quite as fantastic. as long as you are there, you might as well try for the fantastic ones. you will tell them by the lines out front, or at least the frame for controling the line, if you get there early enough to avoid the line. then, after you eat, walk around the market.


for hong kong - I like mak's noodle very much. I like Luk Ya for dim sum, very much.

have fun

Thanks Globetrotter! I should have mentioned that we also planned to do sushi at the fish market. Alas, the market is closed the morning after we arrive (which sounds as if it's the best say to go because of the jet lag/time zone changes), so we're planning to head there after returning from Hakone. Any sushi place in particular there that you'd recommend?

A good dining site for Japan - http://www.bento.com/

On the off-chance that after 12 days in Asia "getting your noodle on" you might have a home-sick craving for Chi-town, the best place to get a huge steak or burger in Hong Kong is at Dan Ryan's, a Chicago-themed restaurant in the Pacific Place Mall on Queensway Road in Central (next to the Pacific Place Marriott). It's mainly known for its huge steaks (The menu reads: "Warning: We Serve American Portions"). Added Bonus - they used to give a free beer to whomever could name all the Chicago mayors - they have pictures from Daley Sr to Daley Jr hanging on the wall behind the bar (everyone forgets Bilandic).

And I know this sounds like sacrilege, but other that doing the obligatory dim sum run, no one goes to Hong Kong for great Chinese cuisine. I lived there for a couple of years. When we wanted good Chinese cuisine, we'd take the train up to the border and cross over to hit the restaurants in Guangzhou (near the White Swan hotel and American Consulate area). I recommend getting a double-entry or multiple entry visa from the Chinese consulate in Chicago before you leave; that will allow you to cross over into Guangzhou while you're there (for Americans, the fee is the same for single, double, and multiple entry visas, so you might as well go for broke). You could also take a ferry to Shenzhen, but no one really goes there for the food (they go for the dog races). And you can get the exact same Macanese and Portuguese food on Staunton Road in Mid-levels with a lot less hassle (see below).

Within Hong Kong itself, my favorite place to eat is the Staunton Road/Elgin Road area in Mid-levels. Easy to get to, you simply get on the Mid-levels escalator, which will take you right through this great dining mecca. Northern Chinese, Tibetan, Macanese, Portuguese, Nepalese, Indian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, wine bars - it's got pretty much everything. After dinner, you can take the escalator down to Central, and hit the clubs in the Lan Kwai Fong District (good for clubbing and live music, but kinda noisy for dining).

For great seafood, take a ferry from Central or to either Lamma or Lantau Islands. There's a whole range, from high-end to Mom-and-Pop (avoid the high end - the Mom-and-Pop places are awesome). Seafood that was swimming in the ocean that morning. The Rainbow Restaurant on Lamma is a famous local place where all the seafood is in tanks, and you pick out your own fish/sea urchin/eel, etc. And a day trip to the Outer Islands is a deserved respite after the non-stop noise and traffic of HK Island and Kowloon.

Finally, while you're shopping in Stanley on the south end of HK Island (take a bus from Queens Road in Central) - that's where the open-air European-style pubs and street cafes line the waterfront. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were on the French Mediterranean coast. More great seafood places as well. A great place to ponder life, the universe, and how great and diverse Hong Kong is.

chgoeditor wrote:Hi,

A friend & I will be in Japan & Hong Kong for about 12 days in late May-early June. I have pages of restaurants bookmarked/articles clipped, but I'd love some suggestions and feedback on my target restaurants.

Our itinerary:
Night 1 (Tokyo): Location still TBD, probably looking for something casual/quick since we will have been traveling for 12+ hours & heading to bed early

Days 2-4 (Tokyo-Hakone-Tokyo): We'll probably do lunch at the train station, which I understand is fun/a good eating experience. Staying at a ryokan in Hakone (Hakuunsou), where breakfast & dinner are included. Lunch recommendations for Day 3 in Hakone are welcome. Dinner on day 4 will be in Tokyo and is TBD.

Days 5-7 (Tokyo @ the Shangri-La Hotel next to Tokyo Station): For meals I'd like to do ramen (maybe Ivan Ramen or Basanova) & a department store for lunch, at least one Michelin starred dinner and a shabu shabu lunch or dinner. Dinner restaurants I'm considering include Zakuro, Cha Cha Hana, Sushi Kanesaka, Sushiko, Takamura.

Day 8 (Tokyo-HK): Lunch will eaten on the plane. HK dinner TBD.

Days 9-11 (Hong Kong at Shangri-La Hotel Kowloon): I'd love to do at least one dim sum breakfast/lunch (City Hall Maxim's Place?), afternoon tea at one of the classic/famous hotels and dinner at Chesa at the Peninsula (a place I enjoyed as a kid and want to go to for nostalgia reasons) (and maybe one course at Felix while I'm there?). I know there's a Michelin-starred dumpling house that's the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant anywhere, so I'd like to give it a try for lunch if possible. I'm traveling with a friend who's never before been to HK, so I think we'll do drinks at Jumbo. My Mom is urging me to do a day trip to Macau because she says the bread there is incredible. (I could only say that to a group of foodies...) Restaurants that I'd like to check out include Bo Innovation, Yung Kee, Mak's Noodle, Da Ping Huo, Hutong, The Peak Lookout and one of the Aqua group restaurants.

Thoughts? Feedback? Suggestions?

Personally, I'd recommend a pass on the Jumbo. I've always thought it was too touristy and too expensive. The food is pretty good, but not necessarily worth that long trek back and forth to the Aberdeen quay. You'll see the jumbo, but won't have enough evening left to do anything else. Given your limited number of days to be spent in Hong Kong, I think you'll get more bang for your buck (timewise) by hitting LKF and the Staunton Road area instead. But, hey - that's just me.

chgoeditor wrote:I know there's a Michelin-starred dumpling house that's the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant anywhere, so I'd like to give it a try for lunch if possible.

I posted about Tim Ho Wan in the Hong Kong thread. Lots of other good info in that thread to check out as well.

-Dan

Thank you for all of the fabulous suggestions! I'd welcome any more that you have, but these have all been added to my notes. Ideally

I recommend using this website (got it from my sister when i was visiting the family in HK last year):
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/index.htm (click english, then you can read the reviews and see pictures of the dishes)
you can search for restaurants either by cuisine or area
its somewhat like yelp here

I grew up in hong kong and must disagree about the view that people don't go to HK for great chinese cuisine, imho, HK has the best chinese food in the world, the problem is they are all in separate neighborhood places that serve something very specific
you have to go where the locals go, not where the guidebooks tell you
i would have loved to give you names of places to check out but since i don't visit home often, i dont really remember the names of places i have been
i do recommend you go get seafood in one of the outlying islands and i find Lee Garden restaurants (with many branches) to have consistently the best cantonese foods in the area
i hate to say it but i don't like yung kee, the goose is not crispy and it is over salted, there are just so many other no name places in little neighborhoods that serve better bbq food than yung kee

don't go to jumbo either, seriously, that's the worst rendition of chinese food you can get in HK

enjoy and have fun there!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

Just to clarify (I feel as if I have to redeem myself)...I had no intention of eating at Jumbo, just going there for drinks! I figure it's the HK equivalent of taking someone for a drink at the 95th. One of those things you have to do even though the food's mediocre and the drinks are overpriced.

by the way, i mean the restaurant Lei Garden, not Lee Garden
sorry about the confusion

agnesfong wrote:
I grew up in hong kong and must disagree about the view that people don't go to HK for great chinese cuisine, imho, HK has the best chinese food in the world, the problem is they are all in separate neighborhood places that serve something very specific
you have to go where the locals go, not where the guidebooks tell you
i would have loved to give you names of places to check out but since i don't visit home often, i dont really remember the names of places i have been
don't go to jumbo either, seriously, that's the worst rendition of chinese food you can get in HK

enjoy and have fun there!

Agnes, in retrospect, I retract my comment about HK and great Chinese cuisine. Since I've never been a great judge of Chinese cuisine, I bow to those with superior knowledge and experience.

That said, you do know what northerners (Northern Chinese) say about Hong Kongers (and southern Chinese in general) regarding food, right?

tahall62 wrote:

agnesfong wrote:
I grew up in hong kong and must disagree about the view that people don't go to HK for great chinese cuisine, imho, HK has the best chinese food in the world, the problem is they are all in separate neighborhood places that serve something very specific
you have to go where the locals go, not where the guidebooks tell you
i would have loved to give you names of places to check out but since i don't visit home often, i dont really remember the names of places i have been
don't go to jumbo either, seriously, that's the worst rendition of chinese food you can get in HK

enjoy and have fun there!

Agnes, in retrospect, I retract my comment about HK and great Chinese cuisine. Since I've never been a great judge of Chinese cuisine, I bow to those with superior knowledge and experience.

That said, you do know what northerners (Northern Chinese) say about Hong Kongers (and southern Chinese in general) regarding food, right?

that's what I've heard too

Foodie issues notwithstanding, I still recommend getting a multiple entry PRC visa from the Chicago PRC Consulate before you depart. If you don't have time, and the visas go unused, all you're out is a few bucks. But if you get a chance to take a day trip to GZ or Zhuhai, you already have the visa in hand. It's MUCH MUCH easier than trying to do it on the fly in Hong Kong. The American Consulate can't help you at all, and you're at the mercy of the Mainlanders and their horrible bureaucracy.

Of course, I'm assuming you do not have a HK local residency card and/or have "Right of Return", correct?

well, perhaps its a matter of taste
but from my experience going to northern china and the restaurants recommended by friends there, i wasn't all that impressed with their northern food either
i must say tourists from other asia countries do agree they go to HK for the food, and food critics all over the world love the food in HK
again, it could be taste, i still stand by my comment that HK has the best chinese food in the world

Thanks all for your suggestions! We have a lot of restaurant reservations for both Hong Kong and Tokyo. (Some of which we'll probably end up canceling, but better to have too have & cancel than to decide we want to eat somewhere at the last minute and not be able to get in.) I'll post a complete list of places we're planning to hit as soon as I'm on my other computer.

In Tokyo, we had a great meal at a ramen shop called Gogyo in Ropongi (I think). They served a "black" ramen that added black miso to the broth. It was outstanding and one of the best meals of a great eating trip. If you Google gogyo tokyo, you'll get hits. I still think longingly of this place.

Sasashu, in Ikebukuro, is an exceptional sake bar with even better food. Simply recalling the memory of their duck is enough for me to start pricing airfare. It is simply that amazing. The owner is a wonderful man with an exceptional life story. I won't spoil it here -- through broken English and many, many glasses of sake, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Sasashu
2-2-2 Ikebukuro
Toshima-ku
Tokyo

Cheers,

-Andrew

I wanted to thank everyone again for the recommendations! Here's our tentative dining schedule. Some of these may be canceled/changed depending on how we're feeling or what else we see that tempts us:

Tokyo confirmed reservations:
Banreki Ryukodo (dinner)
Nakameguro Kijima (dinner)
Sukiyabashi Jiro in Roppongi (lunch)
Cha Cha Hana (dinner)
Kanesaka (lunch)

Hong Kong confirmed reservations:
Hu Tong (dinner, window table)
Yung Kee (lunch)
Bo Innovation (dinner)
Luk Yu (lunch)
Pearl on The Peak (dinner, window table)
Yan Toh Heen (lunch)
Da Ping Huo (dinner)

Tokyo no reservations:
Ramen...either Rokurinsha Tokyo, Hirugao, Keisuke, Ivan Ramen, Basanova, Gogyo or Mutsumiya
Curry...maybe Nakamuraya
Sushi restaurants at Tsukiji...either Sushidai or Daiwasushi

Hong Kong no reservations:
Mak's Noodle
Tin Ho Wan Din Sum
Afternoon tea at the Penninsula

We leave on Monday, and I feel as if I should been following a competitive eater's training regemine for the last month with all of the meals I'm hoping to eat!

I mildly prefer Sushidai to Daiwasushi. They are both an epic experience. Best $40 I ever spent in Toyko.

Cheers,

-Andrew

looks like a great plan, don't skip the fish market in tokyo

globetrotter wrote:looks like a great plan, don't skip the fish market in tokyo

No way I'd miss that! Alas, it's closed the morning after we arrive and then we're off to Hakone for a couple days, so I won't be able to take advantage of waking up early while jet lagged to go, but we will get there!

I went to Yan To Heen for lunch last nov, it was horrible
the dim sum selection was small and nothing was good (fried food was oily and steamed items were one dimensional tasting, service was awesome though, but nothing can saved the poor quality of food)

i understand that they got good reviews but maybe that's for dinner, i cannot recommend that place for lunch after my experience last year

Luk Yu for dim sum is really more a nostalgic experience, foodwise, i don't think its all that great

Just wanted to post an update from Tokyo...

We started our trip with two nights at a ryokan in Yugawara, about an hour outside Tokyo via train. Yugawara is on the Pacific Ocean, but the ryokan is up in the mountains on the outskirts of town.

A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn and--at least on the higher end--traditional, local food and hot-springs baths are the primary attraction. Ours featured both. Breakfast and dinner were served privately in our room by our female room attendant. Dinners included about 25 courses/bites and breakfast was 15-17. We were asked about food allergies/dislikes in advance, and had a couple choices to make at each meal (beef, fish or king crab for shabu shabu, etc.). We ate two dinners and two breakfasts at the ryokan and didn't see a single overlapping dish. Because of our ryokan's proximity to the sea, there was a heavy emphasis on seafood, but over the almost 90 courses they fed us while we were there,
we had a few dishes that included pork, a wagyu beef and at least one chicken dish. (My internet connection here is slow right now so I can't upload pictures, but you should be able to see those I've already uploaded here.)

We stayed at a ryokan called Hakuunsou, which I'd highly recommend. Ryokans are not cheap--we got one of the better rooms (which private outdoor bath)--and it cost us about $750 per night. When you consider, however, that it included a dinner which probably would have cost the two of us $300-400 here in Tokyo (if not more), it becomes a better deal. (Breakfast obviously would have been costly too, but as someone why typically eats a $1 granola bar for breakfast, I have a harder time factoring that cost into the equation.)

The ryokan was also the perfect cure for jetlag...the right speed for days when you're moving slowly!

We got to Tokyo on Friday, and have had two fantastic dinners since arriving. (We'd asked the hotel concierge to make reservations several weeks ago, which was convenient given the language barrier & time difference.)

On Friday we ate at Bankreki Ryukodu. This is contemporary kaiseki dining in a very contemporary, zen setting. They'd asked us to select one of four preset menus in advance, and--given no info other than price--we'd selected the Y16,000 menu (about $200 per person). (The range was about Y10,000 to Y31,000, and we were thrilled with our choice.) That included 7 or 8 courses that were fabulous: Conger eel with a Japanese gazpacho-like tomato puree, nigiri that included a lightly seared baracuda and edible wasabi leaf, several pieces of sashimi, miso soup, a wagyu hamburger served in a sizzling stone bowl, rice with fresh ginger to close the savory part of our meal (seriously the best rice I've ever eaten) and a sweet rice cake for dessert. (I've left a course out, I'm sure.) Beautiful setting and fantastic food.

Tonight we had dinner at Kijima, a restaurant specializing in hot pots. The staff spoke limited English, but our hotel was kind enough to get a menu translated for us. We opted for the chicken hot pot dinner, which seemed to be the house specialty (costing Y5000 per person), plus added on a course of wagyu beef cooked on a hot rock for an additional Y2000. I'm falling into a food coma, so I'm sure to forget all of the courses, but it included a couple one-bite appetizers (one piece of nigiri, marinated shrimp & squid, and some grilled salmon), sashimi (including the most tender piece of maguro I've ever eaten), a salad with lettuce and pieces of pork belly dressed with toasted sesame dressing, then another started with a battered piece of cod, fresh tofu, enoki mushrooms in a thick mushroomy sauce. The hot pot started with some of the broth being stirred into a cup with raw quails egg, making the richest, most delicious egg drop soup I've ever eaten. Our waitress then added ground chicken meatballs, pork belly, cabbage, fresh tofu, mushrooms and mizuna and left it to simmer for a while. All in all, it was used for four courses: The egg soup, a bowl with everything but the mushrooms (which needed longer to cook), a bowl with everything including the mushrooms, and the final bowl (which we tried to skip but thankfully--and thanks to the language barrier--didn't skip) featuring the broth with chewy, handmade ramen noodles. Dessert was a coconut-almond tofu custard that was to die for.

Hakuunsou
716-1, Miyakami, Yugawara-machi, Ashigarashimo-gun, Kanagawa-ken 259-0314

Banrekiryukodo
2-33-5 Higashi-Azabu, Minato-ku, tel: (03) 3505-5686

Kijima
1-23-3 Aobadai Towa Building, 3F, Tokyo, Phone 03/5720-7366

(Edited to add ryokan food photos link.)

Some quick notes while they're still fresh in my mind:

Restaurants we made it to in Tokyo:
Banreki Ryukodo (dinner): Loved it...highly recommend!
Nakameguro Kijima (dinner): Loved it...highly recommend!
Kanesaka (lunch): Loved it...highly recommend!

Restaurants we made it to in Hong Kong:
Hu Tong (dinner, window table): Great view of the light show, food was decent but not fabulous
Yung Kee (lunch): Got the goose, which they're famous for, but thought Sun Wah's is better. Don't bother.
Bo Innovation (dinner): Loved it...highly recommend!
Mak's Noodles (lunch): OK, and great cheap meal, but don't know that it's worth going out of your way for

Michelin stars:
Hong Kong seems to suffer Michelin star inflation. Hutong & Mak's Noodles both have one Michelin star, neither of which I would say is deserved, and Bo Innovation has two. While Bo Innovation was great, I question whether it's two-star worthy. On the other hand, Kanesaka and Banreki in Tokyo each have one star and were as far superior to the one-star places in HK, and at least equal to Bo Innovation.

Tsukiji Market:
Thanks to an LTH lurker (and former Chicagoan), we got an insider's tour of the market. At his recommendation, we skipped the actual tuna auctions and waited to see the auctioned fish being brought to the different stalls to be cut up. (You could still peak into the auction area.) We got there at 5:15ish and probably could have arrived 20 minutes later. I didn't pay attention to which sushi shop we ate at, but I suspect you can't get a bad meal here!

Ramen:
We ended up having ramen at Tokyo Station (Ramen Street in the basement) and it was OK, but not all I had dreamed of. I need to look up the name of the place, but it was one that seemed to focus on pork ramen. We were, however, spoiled because a night or two earlier we'd eaten dinner at Kijima, a hot pot restaurant, and our last hot-pot dish was the rich chicken broth with chewy, fresh ramen...an amazing dish that I'll be dreaming about. I was disappointed that the place in Tokyo Station didn't match the ramen at Kijima, but I think I'll forever be looking for its match.

Tokyo department stores:
Go to a few and check out the food halls...they put Harrods, etc., to shame. We were staying adjacent Tokyo Station, so we visited Daimaru several times, plus a couple others. The ground floor of Daimaru is sweets & gift foods, while the basement is raw ingredients, prepared foods and some gift foods (including the ubiquitous $150 box of two honeydew melons, a box of ~a pound of cherries for $100 and a box of three mangos for something equally outrageous). On weekends and evenings they had plenty of samples. The Japanese put so much care into the presentation of food that the food halls are wonderful for window shopping.

What can you possibly sputter out about a city that has some 200,000 restaurants, where whole blocks of storefronts are nothing but restaurant after restaurant, where food courts underneath train stations are literally blocks long? This place was something else.

Like Chgoeditor, my gf and I headed out to the mountains of the Hakone region after we arrived--well, after a nice bowl of udon from Matsu-udan--to cure us of jet lag; our place was called Hakone Ginyu, equally as tranquil and expensive as the one Chgoeditor stayed at. The chef at Ginyu practiced a sort of native "New Naturalism" cuisinaire, heavy on the foraged vegetables and herbs, yet also displaying some molecular (foams and gelees) and modernist (emphasizing texture) approaches--it was all very mannered, very Michelin one-star cooking; it was pretty, and pretty unmemorable. Breakfast, however, was fascinating: fantastic pickled things (especially ume), an interesting tofu porridge of sorts, and then all sorts of unidentifiable little bites that brought back that wide-eyed, trying-something-for-the-first-time facial expression I haven't experienced in a good long time (including an actually tasty natto, which I call unidentifiable precisely because it tasted good).

Recs for Tokyo

-Picking a good izakaya is tough: it feels like every street has a half-dozen to choose from; there's an area in Akasuka where there are dozens in a single two-block radius. We batted .333 overall for the week, but our one hit was a big one: Tatemichiya, a basement dive in Daikonayama, with a punk rock spirit (and music) to it. Kushi-age and tofu were spot-on, but the killer dish is a dried seafood platter you grill yourself on a cute little charcoal griller and then dip into some Kewpie. Great sake list here.

-L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele: We went easy at Tatemichiya so my girlfriend, who has been in Hanoi for the past year, could salve her Neapolitan fix; we were not aware that this was an offshoot of a place discussed in Eat, Pray, Live. Who cares: the margahrita here was revelatory, better than the textbook examples I've experienced at Sette Bello and Una Pizza Napoletena (my pace-setters). I've had lustier, more pleasurable pizzas at Great Lake and Motorino in NYC, but I've never had a pie this perfect; we talked about it for days afterward.

-Sawada: In explaining this meal to others, particularly those not so food-obsessed, I actually try to make an economic argument: though the meal was $950, I actually will end up saving money by never having to eat sushi again. We had Master Sawada to ourselves for 3/4ths of the meal, not that we could say much: the first fifteen or so courses were just astonishing, and his later "tuna" flight, including a quick-smoked o-toro whose most logical analogue is the 75-day ribeye at David Burke's Primehouse, and uni tastings were masterly; he also proffered us with the single most insane vegetables I've ever eaten in my life, including micro tomatoes with the most pronounced citrus zing, an eggplant variety that tasted like nothing so much as May, and a gooseberry that had the sort of cascading waves of flavor you would find at an Alinea or Avenues during the Duffy reign. A twilight feast for and in a twilight age. (But not necessarily flawless: there were two duds, and coherence was lacking in the final courses after the tuna tastings; the two-star rating from Michelin makes sense.)

-Birdland Ginza: Finding this place--it's hidden off a stairwell that leads down to the subway--made us grumpy; the food quickly changed that. This is quintessential Tokyo cooking: hyper-obsessed with product--they raise their own breed of chickens--and technique, executing at such a level that they make chicken (chicken!) exciting. Everything we had here, from the meatballs to the skin to even those skewers with breast meat on them, was perfect; it was made all the more better by being able to sit in front of the bincho masters, all of whom looked as if they wanted to do nothing else in the world but grill chicken over charcoal.

-Hitsumabushi Bincho: In the same vein as Birdland (and a block up the street), just with charcoal-grilled eel--and only charcoal-grilled eel. You're not in the States anymore here: the saucing is lighter, letting the smoke own the eel; you are provided a number of accoutrements to eat it Nagoya-style. Fried eel bones FOR THE WIN.

-Ramen highlights: the green curry ramen at Basanova is genius: rich and herbaceous, yet maintaining the soul of ramen, it begs for extra noodles. Nagi is noodle-focused, asking you to choose among five different degrees of past doneness (I went with soft); the house ramen had just the right notes of pork fat and garlic. We ate a lot of mannered, sometimes overly polite, cooking in Tokyo; I grew to love ramen as a rebuttal, its flavors big and true and deep. Soul in a bowl.

-Final shout-out to Au Temps Jadis: hidden in the basement of a back alley in Shibuya, just south of Yoyogi Park, this is Tokyo: an pitch-perfect in its emulation and execution of an early 20th century French creperie; the dessert crepes were the best I've ever had. We're still talking about this one, too.

Bring an iPad to track your movements in the vicinity of the restaurant, double-check the address (Google gets it wrong, often), and find a photo of the door, if you can--it worked for us 80% of the time.

great post chezbad

chezbrad wrote:What can you possibly sputter out about a city that has some 200,000 restaurants, where whole blocks of storefronts are nothing but restaurant after restaurant, where food courts underneath train stations are literally blocks long? This place was something else.

Great post...sounds like a fantastic trip!