Sushi Restaurants

 

Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera

This is one of the best quality sushi restaurants in Omotesando.  It's called a kaiten sushi restaurant but nothing is moved on the conveyor belt.  Each seat /table has a tablet where you can place up to 5 orders at a time and the orders are brought to your seat.  This is great and allows you to eat at a leisurely pace without waiting too long for each plate (even when it's busy!).   The tablet has English as well as Japanese. There are seats at the counter and a few tables for larger groups.  Each seat has a cup, there is a container with green tea powder and a hot water dispenser between every 2 seats.  

Some plates come with 2 pieces and some are single pieces so be sure to check when ordering.  Most of the fish comes with soy sauce already applied but there is a soy sauce container and saucer for dipping the gunkan (boat) or maki (roll) pieces.  

My recommendations:  chuu toro (medium fat tuna 620 JPY), shime saba (pickled mackeral 440 JPY - generally I'm not fond of this type but it is done very well here, the vinegar is very mild), salmon harami (salmon 400 JPY), shima aji (mackeral 650 JPY), kanpachi (amberjack 600 JPY), tuna nakaochi gunkan (minced tuna 720 JPY)

To pay, take the tab with your seat number (it's clipped to the tablet) to the cashier by the entrance; take all the tabs for your group even if you only ordered from 1 tablet.  For repeat visitors, there is a reward program where you can collect 1 point for every 3000 JPY spent.  After 10 points, you get a discount coupon of 1000 JPY.

NOTE:  No reservations are allowed.  To queue, get a ticket from the machine in front of the entrance.  For the weekend, try to get there at least 10 mins before opening at 10:30am, otherwise be prepared to wait awhile. (Last time I grabbed a ticket just as the store opened on a Sat and was 22nd in the queue. Luckily 3 groups didn't show up so we were the second last group shown in.  When we left at noon, the wait time was 2 hours).

Sushi no Midori Akasaka

The sushi is generally decent but the service setup is not as good as Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera.

You can order sets or a la carte.  Sets will generally save you 50-150 JPY per set (having waited in the restaurant for long durations, I have had ample time to calculate the meager savings to be had by ordering sets).  There is an English menu and you can place orders with the waitress.

My a la carte recommendations:  The broiled engawa (flounder 250 JPY) is really great and the main reason I return.  The fresh engawa, salmon and hotate (scallop) at 250 JPY are generally good.  The chutoro (medium fat tuna) at 400 JPY/piece and the ootoro at 500 JPY are hit and miss.  

I don't usually order the premium a la carte items as they are often not available, or when it is available, have not enjoyed it (tasted sour). 

The wait times can be really long when it is busy.  Having been seated at the counter, I am often amazed by the terrible setup.  Fish is placed on the plates to be made into sushi by different chefs.  Sometimes the plates progress to being made into sushi quickly and sometimes just sit there for a long time waiting for one of the 3 to 4 chefs to notice.  I have sometimes seen a chef making takeout sushi (to be placed in the refrigerator at the front entrance) rather than making the many plates of fish waiting.  I'm sure that they are trying to catch the lunch crowd who want to buy the ready-made containers but I think that serving customers who have already ordered food should be the priority.  For this reason I have started to avoid this restaurant during weekday lunch/dinner time and anytime on the weekend.

Note:  Reservations can be made in advance using their app but not for the current date.  For the current date, go to the restaurant and take a ticket from the machine at the front of the entrance.

Tenkasushi

There are several menus for 130 JPY, 190 JPY or more.  The pieces of fish are small but for the price and quality, it's a great place for those minding their budgets.

I recommend the chu toro (medium fat tuna), toro tekka maki (tuna handroll), iwashi, yaki salmon (grilled salmon), Canadian maki (salmon and avocado roll), and salmon.  The hamachi (amberjack), ika (squid) are also decent. 

For my list of restaurants, check out  my new map.

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

Kua 'Aina Burger Restaurant - Shibuya Stn, Tokyo

 There's nothing sadder than watching tourists queuing at a McDonalds or Burger King.  I feel like saying "Stop! Stop! There is another choice!"  It's not that I don't understand their yearning for something familiar amidst the exotic and strange.  I've known perfectly sane Japanese people who bring Japanese rice with them when they go overseas.  But honestly, if you've paid several hundred dollars to fly to Tokyo and probably an equally large amount for your hotel, why not spend a few extra bucks for a really good hamburger at Kua Aina.  And since Kua Aina is originally from Hawaii, it's should be just as comforting as the other American fast food chains.  Ordering at Kua Aina in Tokyo is even easier than Mickey D's because most branches have a huge English menu written on a chalk board attached to the wall by the cash registers and the usual picture menus at the cash registers written in English and Japanese.

 Kua Aina's signature burger is the avocado 1/3-lb burger which is topped with lettuce, tomato, a slice of grilled onion, mayonnaise and of course, avocado.  Each table has ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles, but the burger doesn't really need either.  The avocado burger set comes with fries and a drink but the price varies a little for lunch or dinner.  Lunch is generally ¥1280, with dinner being ¥1380 but having an few extra onion rings tossed in.  Sets can also be had for the regular hamburger, bacon burger, cheese burger, and pineapple burger.  The meat patty can be upgraded to 1/2-lb for an extra ¥200 and extra toppings can be added at a cost:  cheese (¥120), pineapple (¥100), pickles (¥120), bacon (¥230), and avocado (¥230).  Along with the usual array of drinks, Kua Aina offers guava and momi tea.  The momi tea comes with tapioca balls but since it only comes in a large size, you'll have to pay the difference to upgrade if you order this with the set (¥120).  The guava is a bit of

Dinner menu

a novelty - it isn't offered it at many restaurants, but the Ceres brand of fruit juice has a guava juice that tastes much better.  Under the alcohol section of the menu is a beer set, that has not been translated into English.  If you order this set, you get draft beer, french fries and onion rings: small (¥680), medium (¥830) and large (¥980).  The sizes probably refer to the cup sizes for the beer.

  For those who prefer something lighter than 150g of beef, there's also the usual cold lunchmeat sandwiches: turkey, roast beef, pastrami, etc.  Kua Aina also offers a Mahi Mahi fish sandwich.  The mahimahi fish is also known as dolphinfish but is not related to actual dolphins.  Like the burgers, the Mahi Mahi sandwich comes with lettuce, tomato, onion and tartar sauce instead of mayonnaise.  There are multiple choices for bread: white, hearth rye, multi-grain bread slices or a kaiser roll.  If you get the Mahi Mahi when it's just off the grill, it can be quite good; however, it sometimes comes out cold, the edges completely burned, or worse of all, dry.

 Though the menu offers a lot of side dishes, most are not worth trying: the soups are terrible, the salads are ok, the chicken fingers dry.  The only good side dishes are the onion rings and the french fries, which are part of the dinner set already.   The onion rings are great but very oily, so the small portion that comes with the dinner set is a reasonable daily amount to ingest.

 There are multiple Kua Aina locations throughout the Kanto area: Shibuya station, Tokyo station, Ometsando station, Kamakura station, Sakuragicho/Yokohama station, Odaiba station, etc.  In general, Shibuya, Tokyo and Kamakura tend to be very good. I haven't been to the other ones enough times to judge but they all seemed decent except the one by Omotesando station which I have been to many times and been often disappointed.  It is unreliable - with the burger over-cooked and dry and the fries soggy and limp (every other branch manages to make them crispy and delicious - why not this one?).  If you're willing to walk an extra 10 mins, you can get to the Shibuya branch which have wonderful burgers - slightly pink in the centre, but not bloody.  If you don't like yours this way, you can ask the staff to make it a bit more well done when you order. All locations seem to be smoke-free or, if they have the space, to allow smoking on a separate floor or an outdoor area.  This is a bit annoying in the spring, when it's nice to have a meal in the sunshine and fresh air -unfortunately, the air is usually tainted by cigarette smoke.  But at least all Kua Aina's have a proper non-smoking room, which is better than most places in Japan.

 Each branch has a few differences.  For example, the lunch menu usually runs until 5pm and then it's switched for the dinner menu.  Some branches seem to run the hours differently and the Shibuya branch is one of them.  The last time I went there was at 4pm.  It was not the typical lunch menu that I had seen at other branches where there are a limited number of lunch sets for slightly cheaper than the dinner sets. At the Shibuya location, each sandwich/burger could be made into a set by adding ¥300.  The Mahi Mahi sandwich is not usually offered as a set at other branches, so this is a far better deal at Shibuya.  However, the avocado burger set comes out to be about the same price as the dinner set but you don't get the onion rings.  If you really want a burger in the late afternoon, you're far better off paying the extra ¥100 to get a perfectly cooked burger at the Shibuya branch.

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

Tatsunoya Ramen Restaurant - Shinjuku Stn, Tokyo

 One of my favourite restaurants in Shinjuku is Tatsunoya, a ramen restaurant that serves tonkotsu (pork-bone broth) ramen and tsukemen.  The piping-hot tonkotsu ramen is great for wintertime but not during the humid Tokyo summer when just walking down the street causes sweat to pour down your neck.  So when you crave noodles in summer, luke-warm tsukemen is a more practical solution.  Tsukemen consists of cold noodles and accompaniments that are dipped into a warm broth.  Both are tasty:  the tonkotsu being a bit saltier of the two but having soft pieces of cha shu (bbq pork); the tsukemen more filling since it comes with a porridge as well as noodles but the pork pieces are tougher.  Whenever I visit Tatsunoya, I generally alternate between the tsukemen and the tonkatsu with a hard-boiled egg (which always has a perfect, slightly-runny yolk) and finish with the torokeru purin, which translates directly into 'melts in your mouth pudding'.   It's made from yellow bean and is utterly amazing.

  When you enter the shop, simply place your money in the vending machine on the right and choose from the picture menu.  Each bowl of ramen comes with 2 pieces of cha shu, green onion, fungus and a serving of thin, straight noodles. The shop offers tonkotsu in 2 ways: regular and strong-flavour (with added miso paste).   The top row of the vending machine, from right to left is:  an extra serving of noodles (¥100), regular tonkotsu (¥700), strong-flavour (¥750), regular with a hard-boiled egg (¥800), strong flavour with a hard-boiled egg (¥850).   Tsukemen is on the 2nd row from right to left: small (¥750), medium (¥750 - yes, you've read it right, the same price as the small), and large(¥850); followed by extra vegetables (¥100) and an extra egg (¥100).

Torokeru purin

 The third row are side dishes: a small bowl of rice with mentaiko (pollock roe - ¥250), rice with tororo (grated Japanese yam - ¥250) and rice (¥150).  The fourth row is: extra green onion (¥100), 3 extra slices of cha shu (¥250), and the last in this row is torokeru purin (¥300).  The last row is a bottle of beer (¥400).

Once you have received your pink tickets and got your change back from the machine, the waitress hovering nearby will show you to your seat.  Glasses of water will be placed in front of you and the waitress will take your tickets.  This shop offers to prepare noodles to differing consistencies: harigane (extremely hard), barikatai (kind of hard), katai (hard), futsuu (normal), yawarakai (soft), bariyawarakai (very soft).  Each seat usually has a card on it, with these options on the bottom right.  If you have ordered ramen, this is the first thing that she will ask you.  If you order beer, she will ask you how many glasses and you can simply count with your fingers.  If you order pudding, she will ask before or after, so simply say 'ato' (after).

 After stating your preferences to the waitress, you'll notice 3 jars in front of you.  These are the appetizers and are meant to occupy you until your order arrives.  Simply use the chopsticks to scoop some into the small white dishes.  Do not use these chopsticks to eat with.  The disposable chopsticks are in the rectangular box under the white dishes.

Tonkotsu ramen

 Then the ramen arrives, which most people seem to inhale.  If you have broth left after eating all the noodles and are still feeling peckish, simply order another serving of noodles by flagging down a waitress, pointing to your bowl or saying 'kaedama' and giving her ¥100 - this is possible for both ramen and tsukemen.  If you order another serving of ramen, you'll have to choose the hardness again.  Note that this is for noodles only, no extra broth will be forthcoming.

Tsukemen comes with green onion, bamboo shoots, seaweed and pork.

 When you have completely finished your tsukemen noodles, you'll probably still have quite a bit of broth left.  Flag down the waitress, point to your empty noodle plate and nod to her question.  She'll bring you a bowl of warigae, rice porridge, which you're supposed to dump into the broth to dilute it.  It's still remains flavourful and this allows you to spoon up all the bits of meat on the bottom along with all the broth.

 The restaurant itself is a bit cramped, with only 2 tables at the back.  The majority of the seats are stools at the counter which runs most of the length of the restaurant.  However, the counter seats allow you to see directly into the kitchen where the staff can be seen flinging ramen noodles into the air.  It's also comforting to see the cooks place the already clean bowls into boiling hot water right before they fill it with noodles and broth.  Hygiene is sometimes a bit questionable at ramen shops- I've come across places where I've wondered if the bowls are only cleaned once a day and even then it's probably only done by the cockroaches during the night.  In a typical ramen shop kitchen,  the water from the noodles is flung to the floor with abandon and this is the case with Tasunoya, but it's by far the cleanest ramen shop I've been to.  It's a good place to eat but not to linger and chat, as there really isn't the space to relax.  But the staff are friendly, the prices are reasonable, the food is great and the entire restaurant is non-smoking.  If you're near Shinjuku station, you really must make the 8-minute walk and check out this restaurant.


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