Akasaka Fukinuki Unagi Restaurant - Shinjuku Stn, Tokyo

  I remember the first time someone tried to convince me to eat sushi and how squeamish I felt at the thought of eating raw fish.  It was a relief that sushi bars offered some cooked dishes, and the best safe-to-eat sushi was unagi (grilled eel).  Even though I am far less finicky when it comes to food these days, I still enjoy eating unagi and I often have it as a proper meal at unagi restaurants.  Unagi  is one of those dishes that lives up to its hype: the grilled eel is covered in a delicious thick sauce and the meat itself has a wonderful, tender texture. One of the best unagi restaurants is the Akasaka Fukinuki Restaurant near Shinjuku station.  The unagi here is

Hitsumabushi

extremely tender and moist, however, it lacks a crispy skin that a long grilling would give it.  If you prefer crispy-skinned unagi, the Yodobashi Camera electronics store in Yokohama and Akihabara station have a decent unagi restaurant called Unasho on the top floor that does that style.  Unasho's unagi sometimes comes out badly burned, enough so that it ruins the taste of the sauce and leaves carbonized, black flakes in your mouth.  However, when it's charred just slightly, it's amazing. 

The lunch special is in the white box on the right side of the sign.

   The Akasaka Fukinuki Unagi Restaurant is on the 14th floor of the Takashimaya Department Store on the south side of Shinjuku Station. Here they serve unagi in a variety of ways, the two most common being unaju (grilled eel on rice) and hitsumabushi (grilled eel on rice with various accompaniments).  The lunch set at Fukinuki is a great deal.  To compare, Takashimaya has a ready-made food floor in the basement  that sells unagi alone for ¥1680 or unaju for ¥1980 to ¥2625.  Fukinuki is on the 14th floor of the same building and it sells unaju for ¥1700 and hitsumabushi for ¥2200.  So, in essence, you get warm unagi and rice along with hot green tea for less than cold unagi by simply going the distance of an elevator ride.  For Fukinuki, the lunch special is available Mon-Fri 11am-2pm and Sat-Sun 11am-3pm; unfortunately,  it isn't always available for special holidays and not for the two weeks surrounding Unagi Day (the Day of the Ox), which generally falls a little after mid-July.  The dinner menu for Fukinuki is a bit more expensive with prices starting at

The sign where no lunch special is available.

¥2110 for unaju and ¥3910 for hitsumabushi. To make sure that the lunch special is valid for the day, check the sign on the stand to the left of the entrance.  If there's a lunch special, it will be written in a white box on the right side of the sign.  When you sit down, the waitress will place the menu in front of you with the lunch special on the right-hand page.  The writing on the left side of the page is for hitsumabushi and the right side is for unadju. 

The lunch special menu page.

  Hitsumabushi is recommended to be eaten in 3 sequential steps for maximum pleasure.  Using the flat wooden spoon, scoop portions of the unagi and rice from the large laquered container into the small  bowl.  The first way to enjoy unagi is with as much Japanese pepper as you like, which is in a container to one of  the side of the table.  Between each small bowlful, try some of the pickled vegetables.  This will clean your palate, so that you can enjoy the full flavours each style offers.  The second method is to add negi (green onion) and nori (seaweed).  The third manner of eating it is to mix in negi, nori, wasabi and lots of warm dashi (Japanese soup stock) from the white flask.  After trying all 3 methods, the rest of unagi and rice can be eaten in any different combination of accompaniments.  Fukinuki gives free re-fills of the toppings and dashi, which is better than a lot of other unagi restaurants which refuse to or charge for it.  To get extra green onion and seaweed, simply say "yakumi no kawari, kudasai" (more condiments, please).  Dashi, wasabi are also possible by replacing the "yakumi" in the sentence with the words "dashi" or "wasabi".  Since this restaurant is in Takashimaya, a lot of the staff also speak English, so you can try that first.

Step 1:  With green Japanese pepper.

Step 3:  With seaweed, green onion, wasabi and dashi.

Step 2:  With seaweed and green onion.

   Each tray of hitsumabushi comes with a lacquered soup bowl.  This soup contains greens and, interestingly enough, the liver of the eel, which is very mild in flavour.  The soup is hot, and I always smile inwardly when I see people awkwardly struggling to open these types of containers after they have left it closed for too long.  To easily open it at this point, simply place your thumb and finger on opposite sides of the rim.  Gently press inwards (a very slight touch will do) and this will relieve the pressure inside the container, allowing you to now remove the lid with no problems.

Soup flavoured with greens and eel innards.

  The Fukinuki Restaurant in Shinjuku is a branch of the main restaurant near Akasaka-Mitsuke Station.  They also have another branch close to Ikebukuro Station.  Since the Shinjuku branch is in Takashimaya Times Square Department Store, it is a smoke-free restaurant; and since it's on the 14th floor, you can enjoy the view of Shinjuku and its environs while eating.  The service here is impeccable with the waitresses being polite and attentive; they constantly change your cups of hot green tea, so they never have the chance to get cold.  It's a great restaurant and it has a reasonably-priced (for unagi) lunch special.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a better deal with such great service anywhere else.



For a general map of my restaurants, visit :  My map

Numazukou Kaiten Sushi - Shinjuku Stn, Tokyo

Whenever I go to a sushi restaurant, I never order a set.  Sets always come with a variety of sushi and among them are usually octopus, squid and fish roe; missing is usually chutoro or anything including "toro" (toro literally translates into "fat" - not hard, chewy lard but a blend of meat and fat that can be extremely tasty).  Since I'm not fond of the former and the latter is my favourite, I always order sushi a la carte.  This tends to quickly become pricey, especially since the sushi pieces that I like are usually the more expensive ones.  Because of this, I limit my trips to a proper sushi restaurant for special occasions and all other times go to the much more reasonably priced kaiten sushi restaurants.

Kaiten sushi places are very much about self-service.  Customers sit on stools by a counter and help themselves to plates of sushi moving on a conveyor belt.  Rather than a waitress serving you hot tea, cups are lined up on the counter, along with tea bags or powder; you must fill the cups yourself with hot water from the taps built into the counter every few seats.  Everything is within easy reach from your seat and at your complete disposal: chopsticks, saucers, wet napkins, soy sauce and ginger.  Even though you can help yourself to the sushi rolling around, you can also order things

The price menu

directly from the chef or waitress and the shop will usually provide a picture menu for this.  Above the counter, you will usually see the price list, and each plate colour indicates a different price.  The more expensive plates will not usually be on the conveyor belt unless the place is busy, so ordering directly from the chef or waitress is the only option during lull times.  As you finish each plate, keep them stacked in front of you.  When you've had your fill of raw fish, flag down a waitress who will come to your seat and give you a tally of your plates on a piece of paper which you then take to the cash register by the entrance and pay there.  As a side story, I once went to a kaiten sushi restaurant where the person sitting next to us snuck one of his plates onto our stack.  Luckily, it had been a ¥500 plate for beer - the plate literally had a "beer" label across it; the waitress gives it to you when you order alcohol since it's not easy to stack mugs or bottles.  Since we had no beer mugs at our seats while the young punk next to us was still nursing his but had no beer plate in his stack, the waitress waived the cost.  Interestingly, she also did not accuse nor mention it to him even though it was quite obviously his. This only happened once for the 10+ years we've been in Japan but it's sad that it marred our first year here.

This plate of chutoro is ¥550.

  Since chutorou is my favourite piece of sushi, I judge most sushi restaurants by it.  Chutorou is from the belly of tuna, and there are different names for the different cuts of tuna meat; akami is leaner and ootorou is fattier.  I find that akami is tough and not that tasty while ootoro is sometimes too overpowering.  For kaiten sushi, I love the shop in Yokohama, Miura Misaki-ko, which is on the 6th floor of the Cial shopping centre in Yokohama Station.  They have another branch in the World Porters near Sakuragicho Station but this restaurant is not as good as the Yokohama one.  Miura Misaki-ko always has amazing chutoro (the tuna comes fresh from Miura port), an excellent salmon toro, nama yuba, and salmon mayo - the last two of which isn't done in many shops but is great here.  Their "aburi" plates (broiled with a hand-held blowtorch) are wonderful - especially the tuna and salmon.  Most kaiten sushi bars will do these types of sushi and simply let you dip them in soy sauce, Miura Misaki-ko has a topping of mayonnaise or marinated daikon that really enhances the flavour of the dish.  In Shinjuku, the best chutorou has been at Numazukou Kaiten Sushi which is underground close to the Keio department store at Shinjuku station.

How to get to Numazukou:  From the street level, the best place to go underground is at staircase number 6 (not Exit No 6 - it's a completely different area).    After you go down the staircase, turn right.  It's just pass the glass doors.

The west side of Shinjuku Station with a view of the main entrance to the Keio Department Store Building.  Staircase 6 is across the street from the right side of the Keio Department Store.

A street level view of staircase number 6 which has a sign with its number on the side and a view of the right side of the Keio Department Store across the street.

  Numazukou is reasonably priced and the quality is consistently good.  They do a very nice aburi engawa (broiled flatfish) and a great anago (boiled eel) that they will warm again when you order.  Also good is the toro tekka, which is tuna with shiso (perilla leaf) in a roll.  The bitterness of the perilla leaf gives the roll a nice bite and this type of roll is not common to all sushi restaurants.  The chutorou is a bit pricey at ¥550 a plate but it's usually good.  I also like to have aji (horse mackeral) and buri or hamachi (yellowtail).  Numazukou is thankfully a non-smoking sushi bar, however the line-ups for lunch and dinner time can be very long, it's best to go during the off-times since they are open all-day.

Toro tekka is ¥550.

Aburi engawa is ¥400.

Anago comes in a long strip (¥550) or cut into two pieces (¥330)

For a general map of my restaurants, visit :  My map