Breakfast baked goods

A couple of different breakfasts for this post. First, on our way to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka we bought some small things at Tokyo station to eat on the way. It was from a counter of Cozy Corner. They offered a variety of western cakes and bakery items, and we got a chocolate eclair (￥116) and a 'little bird' custard filled-waffle (￥116). The 'waffle' was not exactly what you would think of as waffle, a bit soft for that, but very nice and fluffy, almost cake like texture with lots of cool and creamy filling! It even came with a little icepack to keep it cool, impressive attention to detail! Cheap and nice breakfast on the go!





Second, our breakfast on our final day. We made a quick stop at Harajuku again before the weekend mob descended and went to Caffe Solare on Takeshita-dori. We got some (organic but slightly expensive) tea (¥300 each) and some Western style baked goods. They were cream corn bread (¥190), mini pizza bread (¥180) and cream cheese pie (¥170):



I love the cream corn bread! Another slightly Asian fusion creation? They were actually not that small, so not bad value and filled our stomach nicely. There are some similar style bakery goods in the Japan Centre in London, so when I miss my Asian style bread I can get my fix there.

Denny's Japan, Ikebukuro

On our last full day in Japan we met up with a friend to go to karaoke, and beforehand went to get lunch. American readers may be familiar with Denny's as it is a popular place to go at 3am in the morning when there is nothing else open and you are not that choosy about the quality of the food/grease in the small hours! We were reassured by our friend that the Japanese version it is quite different. Apparently the Japanese Denny's are owned by the same company as Seven-Eleven, great conbini (again better than the American version) and one of the few places you can use your non-Japanese debit cards to take out cash. There was a very long queue stretching outside the door of the place and although after a while we did get to sit down while we waited for a table to be free, we did begin to wonder if it was ever going to happen.

Once we eventually got sat down, we got some brightly coloured drinks (yep, the melon soda again and some pinku lemonade). We got free refills, but have just been informed by our friend that they have just stopped doing so as of June, boo!



The menu didn't have an extensive range of vegetarian options but there was enough to get things we were happy with. There was no English menu, at least we weren't offered any, but there were nice pictures, so even if you don't read any Japanese it's easy enough to figure out the menu. IF and I got a salad to share and each had a pasta dish.



Like most items on menu, this seemingly 'western' dish showed its Japanese twist. The salad included Asian mushrooms and a light dressing, not a creamy one. It wasn't that big, but tasted decent enough.




The spaghetti with tomato sauce and aubergines was ok. It wasn't anything too special, but it did the job, definitely better quality food than American Denny's. Our friend had her favourite omelette rice (omu-rice オムライス) , another Japanese western creation that I wouldn't mind trying, but unfortunately it came with meat so I only got to try a small bite of it, which was nice. Guess will just have to try making it at home!




The desserts were definitely the winner here, and most definitely in a different class compares to American Denny's! The selections were very impressive! They looked great (as seen in the photo above) and tasted just as nice too!

The prices were quite reasonable (most main dishes were from ¥500-800; steak type entrees were more), though the portions were smaller than US standards, so maybe not so 'dirt cheap' like the American counterpart. They also change their menu quite a bit according to the seasons (the summer menu online now looks a bit different from the one we saw in January). It doesn't have the most amazing choices for vegetarians, so I'd say it's an OK choice for lunch or if you are not too hungry, or only want lots of sweets!


Denny's (池袋東口店/ Ikebukuro east exit branch)
〒170-0013　東京都豊島区東池袋１−１３−６ (2F)
Tel: 03-5950-9351

R Burger - Roppongi

We had heard of a few different Japanese burger chains before going, including of course MOS Burger that we tried. On continuing our Roppongi exploration we managed to stumble across one which we hadn't read anything about, and which had some vegetarian options too! Near the famously rowdy Roppongi crossing was R Burger.



This place had all of the burgers in different-looking buns that are quite far away from a western burger. We ordered a set meal (￥750) that came with Steamed-Bun Sandwich with Avocado (アボカド蒸しサンド) - steamed five-grain Chinese style buns with avocado, tomato, cottage cheese, mixed salad and mayo sauce. The menu entry on their website for this one actually says 'ベジタリアンでもOKです' - OK for vegetarians! The fluffy buns were quite nice though the sandwich as a whole tasted quite salady - not as good as the MOS rice burger though not bad, healthy for sure and certainly quite interesting to look at! The set included a drink and french fries, but we paid an extra ￥70 to upgrade the fries to tofu nuggets (豆腐ナゲット). Tofu nugget is an excellent concept, and they were as great as we hoped. The portions were not too big, but not a bad price for what we got.



Looking at the menu online it also offers 'green stick salads' (salad wrapped Vietnamese summer roll style) as well as tofu cake (as in sponge cake!), so definitely one of the most vegetarian friendly fast food places. There are also 2 other branches in Tokyo area (Ginza and Hachiōji), and interestingly 2 additional branches in Bangkok. If you want healthier, and certainly more interestingly and refined fast food, you should check out R Burger!


R Burger - Roppongi Branch
港区六本木4-9-8 リラビル1F
TEL ： 03-6805-3119

Koots Green Tea - Roppongi

Tonight we set out to look at the some of the cool new buildings and the famous nightlife in the Roppongi district. After our huge lunch, we figured we didn't need a big meal and would just grab whatever looked good along the way. We started out at Tokyo Midtown, a 6-buidling (including the tallest building in Tokyo) mixed-use development that opened in 2007. It houses a number of fancy shops and restaurants, but we decided to get something cheap and small in the Plaza/B1F level to exercise some money saving measures when coming near the end of our trip/ assaults on our bank accounts. We figured that most of the fancy stuff would not have been vegetarian anyway!

We decided to give Koots Green Tea a try because it has something a bit more substantial than Starbucks or cakes on offer, and their menu with English in front of the shop made it easier as well.



I guess they get quite a lot of foreign visitors at Tokyo Midtown, since a number of international companies like Xerox and Cisco have their offices in this building, and the server spoke some English. We ordered some onigiri (around ¥200 each and much larger than you get for a similar price in the UK) and were told we had to wait a few minutes for them.



From right to left, the onigiri were perilla and hijiki, green perilla and leaf mustard, and edam and olive. All were good but it was the edam and olive was the best and most interesting, with slightly melted cheese working surprisingly well with the rice. Definitely worth the (short) wait and not something you're likely to get anywhere else than Japan.

We also had ice tea and a green tea cream an-mitsu, green tea soft cream with red beans (¥790 as a 'dessert set' together).




Tasty but we had better green tea parfaits! The place was not somewhere you would go and sit to eat for too long but for a quick stop and some interesting onigiri it might be worth a go if you are in the area and want some comparatively cheap eats.


Koots Green Tea (Tokyo Midtown branch)
東京都港区赤坂9-7-2 B-B101
TEL： 03-5413-7131

Chien-Fu

After visiting the magnificent Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, located in the western side of the greater Tokyo area, we went for lunch somewhere that was further west from the centre of the city. The Granduo department store in Tachikawa (立川), which was right next to the JR rail station, has a 'China Street' on the 7th floor that houses a number of restaurants that serves various Chinese regional cuisines. We were there for Chien-Fu (健福), a Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant. Chien-Fu also follows the same buddhist vegetarian principles as was at It's Vegetable!, so the food here did not contain strong-smelling plants such as garlic, onion and leek. The name of the restaurant means something like good health and good fortune.



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

Japanese street crepes

We got back Tokyo this evening on Shinkensan. We had a vague plan for the evening but we changed our minds kind of last minute. So somehow we ended up in Ikebukuro, and by the time we were trying to find something we eat, the shops and restaurants in shopping/entertainment/hotel megaplex Sunshine City were closing (might have been interesting to visit Ice Cream City in Namja Town, one of these Japanese food 'theme park' type place where you could find all sorts of ice-cream/soft serve type creations).

Since we already had quite a sizable lunch in Osaka, we decided to just grab some Japanese street crepes at the Crazy Crepes stall next to the Sega Aracde. As the location of the stall suggests, Japanese street crepes are popular with young people. It's very causal and cheap food that you might eat while standing or walking on the street. Some of you might have managed to try this lovely Japanese interpretion outside Japan, as you can find them in San Francisco, Melbourne or Vancouver. I think the main difference between Japanese and French crepes are the toppings, but also Japanese crepes perhaps have slightly less egg?

Most of the selections at this 'Atlanta Crazy Crepes' were with sweet and cold toppings, but there were also a few savory toppings (tuna, egg salad, teriyaki chicken - the most bizaare combo was cabonara teriyaki chicken!) and also a few combos with chocolate or custard cream served hot. Depends on toppings, they were around ¥400 each. I got one with strawberries, and IF got a chocolate one. They were both quite yummy, but the downside was there was no place to sit down and we weren't too sure if we were allowed to go into the arcade with the crepes! Depends on the type of crepe (how much cream it has!) you get, I'd say it's definitely enough for a snack or light lunch.

If you visit Harajuku in Tokyo, you would see the two famous crepe stands on Takeshita Dori, Marion Crepes and Angels Hearts (which are right across from each other). We didn't manage to try them, but at least I managed to take a photo of what was on offer at Angels Hearts. Oh well, there is always next time!

Small eats and drinks from Kansai region

One of the joy of travelling in Japan is you could try all the interesting snacks and drinks you can't easily (or cheaply) get outside the country.

We happened to come upon the Ebisu Mastsuri when we arrived in Kyoto, and walking down the street festival and seeing endless food stalls was quite exciting, even though most of them were selling meat/fish items, notably Kansai specialties such as Takoyaki (fried/baked octopus balls) and okonomiyaki (with seafood/meat). There were also a few stalls selling fake Nintendo DS games; we didn't expect to see fakes in Japan haha! Anyway, we did manage to try some non-meat street food! Sorry about the small and blurry picture due to being taken at a busy street fair at night, but this was something I'd been hoping for - barbeque corn! It's not exactly the same as the western bbq corn on the cob, as there was some kind of sweet soy sauce was lightly brushed over the corn while being barbequed. Nom nom nom!



Later we each got a nice warm, freshly baked taiyaki (fish-shaped cake). I think I've only managed to get the most common version, which is filled with red bean/azuki beans paste, when outside Japan. However, this stall had a variety of flavours, so of course we jumped to the opportunity to get something different. My custard filled taiyaki was very nice, and IF enjoyed his chocolate one too.



We were hoping for a quick start the next morning and on a budget, so we bought some food in the supermaket next door to the lovely guest house we were staying at. A few hundred yen got us some nice veg & egg maki sushi rolls, chocolate bread/pastry and some kind of cheese bread/toast (not shown here). They were all definitely very nice as far as pre-packaged food goes. The maki roll was definitely 10 times better than your average cold, hard supermarket 'sushi' in the UK! And Japanese 'Western' bread is always interesting - they are kind of soft and a bit sweet, with favours or toppings combinations that you normally don't find back home. The layered 'Choco Zebra' below tasted sort of like half bread and half cake - different but worked quite well for breakfast, a bit like pain au chocolat??



Onto more Japanese 'Western' baked goods - this time in Osaka! After much walking around, we wanted to sit down somewhere (cheap) and have a drink and snack on the way to Den Den Town (the Osaka equivalent of Akihabara which we thought was actually better if you are after video games rather than anime and maid cafes). We didn't feel like spending ¥1000 at a UCC, a national coffee chain & cafe/eatery, and we just stumbled across a place near the Kuromon Market (黒門市場), Pane Pane, selling melon pan from a counter at their window. The 'melon' in melon pan (メロンパン) refers to the shape rather than the flavour - another Asian style bakery creation; similar to the pineapple buns from Hong Kong but with a much harder texture and exterior. We walked into the small but cosy cafe, and we managed to order a chocolate flavour melon pan (¥160) and some tea with the nice middle age woman at the shop. Our melon pan came with pieces of chocolate stuck onto the hard cookie coating around the softer warm inside. As we were enjoying our pan and little rest, we watched the lady busily serving the customers coming by the window and putting in and taking out trays of fresh melon pan out of the oven. The pan was a great snack and with a couple of cups of tea still only a few hundred yen, fantastic bargain (beats Starbucks any day)!



Speaking of tea, our favourite drink to grab when on the move in Japan was vending machine milk tea. This one is English, it says so on the front!:



Yep, it's cold tea, but the sweetened taste then works much better and makes it pleasantly refreshing. The machines with it were basically everywhere!



There were a couple different brands of 'English' or 'Royal' milk tea (and some low fat versions), but they were all good. Since it was winter, some vending machines also carried some of the bottled drinks hot. IF tried a bottled green tea which came warm and was a bit more bitter, and I quite liked a hot lemon and honey drink that was also common.

Finally, again speaking of drinks - the day after our deep fried feast, we decided to get some fresh juice to cleanse our system. We came across this juice bar at Umeda station in Osaka called Drops. The pictures of fruits and small prints of English on some of the advertisements probably made it really easy to work out what we wanted. We saw similar types of juice bar in other stations, so they are probably quite popular. We have been told that often non-native fresh fruits and vegetables can be quite expensive in Japan, so I guess you can't expect a huge Jamba Juice type portion, but it was really good and comparably priced to similar types of smoothie/juice drinks you get in the UK.