More Tokyo Dining: Jidori Chicken, Izakaya and a run to the Tokyo Skytree

[726]

Hi 726!

The Westin is a great hotel. Superb service, very convenient location and large guest rooms (It only occured to me when you mentioned it that many of the other hotels in Tokyo don't offer a large bathtub.). The room decor is a little ordinary, and as mentioned I am not really a fan of this style of classical dark food furniture, but other than that, this would be one of my preferred hotels in Tokyo.

I am surprised you had issues around smells in your hotel room in Osaka. In Japan, people here are so fanatical about cleanliness and smells, almost every hotel and public place I have been to has been spotless. Certainly the Westin was sparkling clean and odour-free. Could it be that someone was smoking in your hotel room? One thing about Japan though, people do smoke. Smoking is allowed in restaurants too.

Yes, about the bathtub, I remembered only Mercure Ginza, Hotel Hankyu International in Osaka, and several transit hotels in Narita have it (but with the exact same design - I think it was made by Toshiba)

Regarding the smelly room, the smell was some kind of old wood smell mixed with cigarette smell. And I remembered my hotel in Nagoya too has that smell (maybe due to old age). Yes, a lot of people do smoke in Japan, but at least they honour the "kinen" sign (no smoking sign) unlike in Korea. In fact it is quite rare to find non-smoking male Japanese (well just found out that my Japanese language teacher is also non-smoker and he was the only Japanese male I know not to smoke).

BTW thanks for the food review.. Enjoyed it, and thank god, just one ramen pics. Ramen pics makes me hungry which will never be satisfied in Japan due to pork broth. I do not eat beef or pork. Those salmon sashimi looks good. Where is the second izakaya? Looks like a kanda area, but not sure.

[yflyer]

On another occasion, my Japanese colleagues brought me to another small Izakaya with outstanding cuisine. It was down a street in a very popular part of Tokyo that was famous for its food and nightlife…



However the name of this next restaurant must remain unpublished, because the chef in this Izakaya had very clear views on what his patrons could and could not do. Pictures of his sublime dishes were fine, but no blogs. “This is not Disneyland” he said in English with a slight scowl, and in some ways his point of view was valid.

Again, small plates accompanied by sake…



Sea snails, teased out of their shells with toothpicks…



Tofu with bonito flakes and that crunchy green local vegetable again…



Jellied meat…



Superfine slivers of sashimi…



Diced sashimi tartar with sesame and a raw egg yoke…



Shirako (Fish milt) was still in season…a delightful treat…



Barbequed vegetables, which tasted amazingly flavourful…



Simply grilled fish…exceedingly fresh…



And tofu…



Another varied and marvellous dinner, sadly in an Izakaya whose name and address I am not in a position to share.

Next up, a run to the Tokyo Skytree.

To be continued!

[yflyer]

And then something entirely unexpected…chicken sashimi…a fairly uncommon dish…

I suspect my hosts were trying to put something on the table that I would not dare try. No luck there, of course I ate it.



There are health risks consuming undercooked chicken, however given the focus on food safety and quality in Japan, this was one of the few occasions I was comfortable eating raw chicken, and I enjoyed more than a few slices of this dish.

That old favourite, chicken kariage…



Omelette, Japanese style…



Beancurd with mushroom…



And if all that wasn’t enough, there was ramen as well!



Quite an amazing feast…washed down with copious pours of a wide range of different sakes…

The chef/proprietor, a young, friendly and very welcoming person, not to mention an extremely versatile and talented chef came out of his kitchen and thanked us warmly after dinner.

It was just a short walk in the cool night air, through narrow winding streets, back to Yebisu Garden Place and the Westin.

[yflyer]

And then a procession of small dishes and larger plates, each a microcosm of local flavour…

Tiny whitebait…



Thinly sliced marinated meat…was this heart or gizzard?



This next one was a local Japanese vegetable, which looked like a translucent type of celery, but didn’t taste anything like it. It was crunchy and served cold. My hosts didn’t know what the English name of this vegetable was.



It did have a very distinctive aroma that I found very familiar: During my NS days I spent a lot of time sitting in moist jungle vegetation. This vegetable dish had a raw green and fresh aroma…it smelled of the jungle, in the best possible sense! Delicious…

And then a sashimi platter…good, although not quite as outstanding as what you would get in a specialist sushi/sashimi joint in Tokyo…



Simmered fish…delicate and comforting…



An enormous local Japanese aubergine…impressively large even by local standards, topped with shaved bonito flakes…very refreshing!



A rich-tasting dish of cured (or was it smoked?) squid...



A duo of crisp chicken wings…they really know how to do chicken wings in Japan…

[yflyer]

Continuing with the TR...

One style of cuisine that in Tokyo I have been reluctant to try when eating alone is Izakaya – which means something similar to a restaurant or pub serving food to accompany sake and other drinks. These are invariable small places, popular with locals, with very extensive food and drink menus, often only with Japanese language menus.

Fortunately on my trips to Tokyo, I had several local colleagues and companions who introduced me to their favourite Izakaya places.

The first was Oyamada, along a side street near Yebisu station in Shibuya-ku.



The menu was very extensive, and only in Japanese.



We began with, what else, Yebisu beer…



…but moved quickly onto sake.



You chose your own sake cup from a large selection presented in a large box…

[yflyer]

Waiting for the rest of it.....

How was the hotel. I was once at a hotel in Osaka, around the same age as your hotel, and it smelled a bit.
Lucky that you have bathtub. I only found this luxury I think it was twice. Once in tokyo and once in osaka.

Hi 726!

The Westin is a great hotel. Superb service, very convenient location and large guest rooms (It only occured to me when you mentioned it that many of the other hotels in Tokyo don't offer a large bathtub.). The room decor is a little ordinary, and as mentioned I am not really a fan of this style of classical dark food furniture, but other than that, this would be one of my preferred hotels in Tokyo.

I am surprised you had issues around smells in your hotel room in Osaka. In Japan, people here are so fanatical about cleanliness and smells, almost every hotel and public place I have been to has been spotless. Certainly the Westin was sparkling clean and odour-free. Could it be that someone was smoking in your hotel room? One thing about Japan though, people do smoke. Smoking is allowed in restaurants too.

[726]

Waiting for the rest of it.....

How was the hotel. I was once at a hotel in Osaka, around the same age as your hotel, and it smelled a bit.
Lucky that you have bathtub. I only found this luxury I think it was twice. Once in tokyo and once in osaka.

[yflyer]

A wide range of different varieties of sake were also on hand, both hot and cold, available by the glass...



I am no expert on sake, but there were distinct differences in flavour in each of the different glasses we tried -- and our local hosts poured us quite a few.





Next, a chicken wing.



This was the tastiest chicken wing I have ever eaten in my life. I kid you not.



It was exceptionally large, plump, juicy, and was grilled to a perfect colour and texture.



Was jidori some kind of super chicken? I'm sure the skill of the chef had something to do with it. Or maybe this amazing meal was just a manifestation of the perfectionist streak in the Japanese national character...

The final course was minced chicken...another delight.



I am a rice guy, so I ordered a bowl of glistening Japanese short grained rice to go with my meal, but this was strictly optional...



What an amazing dinner. If you are in Tokyo, and have had your fill of sushi, beef and ramen, and feel like chicken. Come here. Highly recommended!



To be continued!

[yflyer]

We opted for one of the yakitori chicken set dinners...

I have to admit that I was a little sceptical at the start. We had just ordered 6 sticks or so of barbecued chicken. How well could that possibly go?

But, what followed was a masterclass on how to create a full meal to excite the palate using just different cuts, and parts, of chicken...



Chicken hearts...



...each skewer, from thigh, leg to heart and liver, tasted distinctive, different, and full of flavour...



Chicken livers...smooth and tender, in a sweet sauce...

[yflyer]

On another occasion, after a day at work, we found ourselves at the bar on the top of the Park Hyatt Tokyo, a location made famous by the movie "Lost in Translation"...



This was my first time up there. I've never stayed at the Park Hyatt. It is pricey, and almost impossible to redeem on Hyatt Gold Passport points...

We only got there after the sun had set, and the night time view was stunning. I think the view would be even more impressive during the day time.

We were just there for a round of drinks. For dinner, my Japanese colleague asked, "Would you like to try chicken? There is a very famous chicken yakitori place just around the corner."

This was literally a ten minute walk from the Park Hyatt.



We eat a lot of chicken in Singapore, and we have Yakitori too. What so special about this place? Quite a lot, apparently. This place does chicken supremely well, using jidori, a special breed of free-range chicken.



This was an intimate restaurant, with both table and counter seats, and the chef and his team manning a grill behind the counter.

[yflyer]

But let us banish thoughts of Western fast food for the rest of this TR...there was a lot of other wonderful food to sample in Tokyo...

On one evening, we headed to a Japanese Yakiniku place, Aoyama Gaien (焼肉 青山外苑), just one of many excellent yakiniku restaurants in Tokyo specializing in Japanese black hair wagyu (黒毛和牛) beef.



There were a bunch of us, and we were all hungry.

We started with beef sushi -- yes there is such a thing. 3 different varieties of raw beef on rice, each with a unique taste. Not the kind of thing for anyone who eats their steak well-done, but otherwise a really delicious way to start...



We moved on to the barbeque next, with thinly sliced beef tongue...firm and full of rich, smoky flavour...



And then it was on to a selection of finely marbled cuts of wagyu beef, all meltingly tender, a world removed from beef eaten anywhere else in the world...



Key to this style of dining was to cook the slices of beef as you ate...



...that way, nothing ever got cold...it was just bite after warm, juicy, bite...



And to accompany the meat, beer, wine or sake...and why not all three?



There was also seafood available, which made for a nice contrast...



Ordinarily the meal would have ended there, but we were a greedy bunch that evening, and my host from Hong Kong decided that we needed to try their shabu shabu as well.

The waitress at our table opened her eyes wide in disbelief (I think typical Japanese diners had BBQ or Shabu Shabu, but not both in one sitting) but nonetheless set the table up for a shallow dish of clear broth for shabu shabu. and a platter of thinly sliced wagyu beef, which was described as "snow beef" on account of the fine marbling of fat...



This was simply brilliant...each slice of marbled, melt-in-the-mouth beef cooked in just a few swirls of the stock...



Somehow we found room for a selection of desserts too.



This is a deceptively simple style of dining, which appears to rely mainly on the flavour and quality of the different cuts of meat to speak for themselves.

It is the perfect showcase for the fantastic wagyu beef that you get in Japan. And the communal dining experience of cooking over a common stove, and perhaps some subtle jockeying for the best cuts of meat sizzling over the flames, made it a lot of fun. I enjoyed myself that evening.

To be continued!

[yflyer]

I did a double-take when I glanced out the window...what was a French Chateau doing in the middle of Tokyo?



Turns out that this houses several restaurants which are part of Joel Robuchon's empire. This replica chateau is part of Yebisu Garden Place, a large shopping/recreation complex which is the site of a former beer brewery. There is a lot of shopping and many restaurant outlets here, as well as a beer museum. Quite an unusual part of Tokyo, not typical at all -- although it made for quite a pleasant location to stay.

Although Yebisu metro station was quite a walk from the Westin, it was all through covered walkways lined with shopping, and with a travellator-equipped skywalk part of the way.



I didn't eat only Japanese food on this trip. On a couple of occasions, mainly because of time constraints I ate Western food...not at Joel Rebuchon, mind you...but at Burger King, of all places. Maybe it was because I was hungry, or maybe it was just that every seems to taste good in Tokyo, but the burgers I ate in the Burger King outlet at Yebisu Garden Place were delicious.

I'm not sure what a certain competing burger chain with yellow arches would have to say about this product that Tokyo Burger King was advertising, though...

[yflyer]

The Westin Tokyo is a large hotel with great staff and facilities, with rooms that are very large by Tokyo standards.



The room decor itself is traditional/classical, and whether you like that or not is really up to your personal taste.





I prefer a more modern style of room decor, but the furnishings were of very high quality.



I have some colleagues who insist on a King size bed in their hotel room when travelling alone, but I am fine with two beds even when travelling myself.



Bathroom, which like most hotels in Tokyo, came with a washlet-equipped WC.



The view from my hotel room...

[yflyer]

My hotel this time round was the Westin Tokyo, located not far from Yebisu Garden Place, and a short metro ride from Shibuya.

I am now very comfortable with the Tokyo metro and public transport system. With a Suica (The local stored value card like our Cashcard in Singapore) and Google Maps on my iPhone, I am very confident of getting around Tokyo entirely by public transport.

That said, from Haneda, Google Maps told me to take the monorail to central Tokyo, then take the metro and get off at Meguro station, rather than Yebisu station. Distances were the same, however it turns out that there is a covered walkway and travellators between Yebisu and the hotel, whereas from Meguro, you end up lugging your noisy rollerboard through a quiet residential area...not ideal!

The one positive thing about getting off at Meguro metro station was this: Right outside the station, I encountered this hole-in-the wall place.



No English signs, just legs, and lots of slurping noises from within...something was cooking! And it was standing room only...of course I had to try!

It turned out to be an udon/soba stand, and once a gap appeared in the counter, I stepped up, looked around at what my neighbours were eating, and started pointing and gesticulating to the gentleman manning the counter, who patiently and cheerfully deciphered my sign language to figure out exactly what I wanted to eat...



Steaming hot udon in broth, topped with a huge tempura prawn...




What a satisfying breakfast after a red-eye flight!

[yflyer]

Dinner was served on this flight, and this was well up to JAL's standards...two appetizers, and an Asian-style rice and meat dish as a main course, and a piping hot paper cup of miso soup.



I notice the JAL crew often decorate the Y restrooms with small items, such as postcards and other art and craft.



The flight was smooth and uneventful, and we landed bright and early at Haneda, where I caught the monorail into the city.

How does the JAL 777 compare with their 767? The 767, with their newest product in both J and Y, is definitely preferable. The widescreen IFE on the 767 is much better, and the J seating on the 767 is the latest lie-flat product as well. That said, if in Y, the 777 is perfectly comfortable, and while I would prefer the 767, I would not mind flying JAL's 777 if the schedule suited me better.