Tag Archives: Tokyo

An izakaya is a sort of after work drinks pub that also serves little portions of food, slightly better than your usual bar fare. You press a button at your table when you order and it was there I tried sake for the first time – warm, unfiltered and delicious, with servings of incredible salted edamame and yakitori skewers. We also tried these drinks called ‘sawa’, like alcoholic sour lolly cocktails. Although we didn’t know this till they arrived. There’s a certain charm in guessing though I suppose – damn pesky language barrier! The non-smokers section at an izakaya is a no-no, it’s tiny and isolated and conversely, the rest of the izakaya is busy and bustles with excitement – secrets, flirting, laughing, the best things in life saved for the end of the day.

I like writing about my different food experiences in Tokyo so I’m going to post the entire lot. We were going to go to this maid café but after a day out visiting shrines and exploring Akihabara Electric Town, we weren’t going to queue to get in. Eff waiting! But those cosplay cafes are that popular! So instead we walked into a Japanese curry restaurant with a giant King Kong on top. It’s funny looking at the menus at any of the curry places, they’re all pictorial, but each plate looks exactly the same, as if they’ve just used royalty free clip art to depict each dish.

You enter and order at the automated coupon dispensing machine at the door of the restaurant then take a seat and hand it over and a few minutes later, are served a giant platter of rice with curry with a side of shredded cabbage. Jenny ordered the ebi kare (prawn curry) and myself, the tonkatsu. Curry was brought to Japan by the British (those currymunchers) and it’s a sweeter, stickier affair but so so delicious, I was dreaming about it days later. 

I hate mornings as much as the next guy but I’ll do all sorts of crazy shit for good sashimi, and Tsukiji at 7am saw me, my friends and a bunch of other people with the same brilliant idea, searching and queueing enthusiastically at the outer market’s sushi restaurants. We ordered this sushi platter and two huge bowls of salmon on rice, and toro, melt in the mouth, expensive, fatty tuna. Our chef spoke broken English and was most cheerful and charming and unexpectedly swapped all our avocado sushi for toro. It was the best sort of breakfast really and mine usually consists of icecream.