Far D

Next day we were at Hep Five in the Umeda area, famous for its big red ferris wheel although we didn't go on that. There 10+ restaurants and cafes on the 7th floor, but we didn't want to spend or eat too much. It would have been interesting to try one of the dessert viking places, デザート王国 (Dessert Kingdom), but I wasn't in the mood to eat lots of cakes and sweets. We tried to find something suitable by looking at all the food models on offered and in the end we settled for Far D, partly due to the bizarre claim of their cooking style made outside.



Vegetarian options were limited but to their credit they were quite happy to accommodate us. We showed the host our 'no meat no seafood' writing, and he checked with the kitchen and assured us it was ok. He spoke a tiny bit of English, and suggested that they make the dishes without some of the ingredients listed - for example, taking the ham out from the creamy pasta (no hamu!). The food was a bit closer to Western style than other places we went to.



The carbonara pasta type dish (minus the ham) was nice, and the cheese and tomato pizza wasn't bad. We probably could have found something better if we bothered to go around other areas nearby, but the food did the job for something simple and not that expensive (less than ￥1000 for each dish), even though we weren't any closer to understanding what was 'Canterbury' cooking style.


Far D
〒530-0017 大阪市北区角田町5-5 HEP FIVE 7F
TEL: 06-6366-3686

Tabasa Pasta Viking

Our second Viking buffet experience (after It's Vegetable) was at Tabasa at the bottom of the hill end of Takeshita-dori in Harajuku. The plastic models give a good idea of what was on offer; there were a couple of suitable salad & pasta dishes and we were lucky enough that there was also mushroom/tomato pizza out for most of the time we were there. The different prices seen in the photo depended on whether you were a man (¥1155) or woman (¥1050), although I'm not completely sure I ate that much more to justify the extra. There was also an option including all you can drink beer, but we thought it was a bit pricey and wouldn't get our money worth.

The highlight was definitely the fact that desserts were also on an all you can eat basis (there was a one hour time limit for everything) - green tea ice cream and red bean pancakes were enough to make me wish I left more room for them.



Overall all it was an alright experience, a good place to avoid the pouring rain since we didn't feel like walking around and getting more wet! It was also slightly amusing with all the American hip-hop/rap memorabilia decorating the restaurant - we had a video screen showing the same types of videos right above us on the wall and huge Eminem and 50 Cent posters behind us.


Tabasa
B1F, 1-8-3 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
東京都渋谷区神宮前1-8-3 石川ビルB1F
Tel: 03-3404-3740.