Yes, they had an even larger number of food models outside than most places! Less need to spend time studying since everything was vegetarian. Inside the restaurant looked really nice. They had backlit pictures of vegetables up on the wall (you can sort of see them in the middle of the photo above) which were quite arty and cool.
They had rather large menu, with a range of starters/side dishes on offer. Among these were very nicely pan-fried vegetable dumplings and pan-fried turnip cakes (大根もち). You could also get steamed turnip cakes at Chinese dim sum restaurants, but pan-frying gives a crispy exterior which is better in my opinion. Most of the turnip cakes in normal Chinese restaurants come with ham and dry shrimp, so we took advantage of the opportunity to indugle ourselves! We are dumpling fans, so we got some pan-fried dumplings (焼餃子) as well.
And for good measure, we had to get the boiled dumplings (水餃子) too! Boiled dumplings are appreciated differently because this way you could taste the freshness of the dough and ingredients and juicy-ness of the whole dumpling. Ihascupcake couldn't resist the range of deep fried starters on offer; rather than going for the usually easily available veg spring rolls, we picked the crunchy deep fried veggie 'prawns' (海老風フライ). They were very tasty, the texture of the 'prawns' were rather realistic, and they went well with the ketchup type sauce provided.
There were so many different noodles, rice dishes, main entree dishes to choose from (and all vegetarian!!) that it was slightly overwhelming. We both decided to go for noodles, maybe to compensate for the lack of noodles during this trip, since most places did not have meat-free broth. Ihascupcake went for taami/danzi noodles (担仔麺), a humble siganture dish from Tainan (southern Taiwan). This vegetarian version contained a mixture of fake pork, beansprouts and chinese vegetables. It was lovely though in a sublte, home cooking sort of way.
I had braised aubergine and noodles (麻茄魯麺). It was very saucy, and the aubergine was delicious.
All of this came to ¥3,790. Great value for a very wide choice of great tasting vegetarian food! The place wasn't packed when we went but we probably arrived towards the end of lunch time; there were quite a few customers that came and went during our stay, and most of them seemed middle age. The staff were friendly; we chatted with a couple of them in a combination of languages. The young man at the front counter spoke very good English; he explained to us that he was the only Japanese member of staff there, so he was trying to learn a bit of Mandarin.
Tachikawa is a bit away from central Tokyo, but if you are already in west side of Tokyo, an express train on the JR Chūō Line can get you there relatively quickly. There is another branch of Chien-Fu in Kunitachi (国立市), also in western greater Tokyo, but I think only the local train stops there and it worked out easier for us to get to the branch that was further out west from Mitaka. For those who don't have time to venture outside central Tokyo, we found out that Chien-Fu also has a food counter inside Matsuzakaya (松坂屋) department store in Ginza on the food floor at B1F. There is an additional branch in Iga city in the Kansai region in western Japan.
健福 Chien-Fu
Granduo bldg. 7F, 3-2-1 Shibasaki-cho,Tachikawa, Tokyo
東京都立川市柴崎町3-2-1グランデュオ立川7F
TEL: 042-540-2296
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