With five days to try and get the best food in town, we didn’t skip a meal! Noodles, sushi, tempura, sweets... we wanted it all! Plus, Chase and Quinn can attest that every time I saw a stand for matcha ice cream, we had to stop. Keep reading to see our “Must Eat” list.We already covered a few food related things in our previous articles. To see more about piss alley’s yakitori and the eight layer soft serve ice cream I devoured, head here. In our cherry blossom article, we talked about two coffee spots and some street dango we got. Finally, in our Tokyo attraction article, we mentioned some sweets we got in Harajuku, including crepes and five layer cotton candy. That’s found here. The rest of our food experiences are below, broken down into meal times. Breakfast- If you've read any of our other Foodie Editions, you'll know that breakfast, specifically coffee, is one of the things we research most before taking a trip! Other than Onibus and Sidewalk Stand, we were able to get breakfast at a few other awesome spots around town. Streamer Coffee Company A coffee spot housed inside a container flipped on its side. There is cozy seating on the second and third floor. We got iced sakura lattes and a few pastries and enjoyed some views of the Harajuku neighborhood. Vault Coffee This was an afternoon pick-me-up stop. Vault specializes in Charcoal fire roasted coffee, something the Japanese have been doing for centuries. It was a black cup of coffee with a couple sugar cubes on the side. If we don't get lattes or americanos, we get our coffee black so this didn't bother us. The flavor was incredible. Turret Coffee Turret was our breakfast stop on the way to Tsukiji Fish Market. Their shop is tiny but adorable and the coffee was incredible. Possibly one of our favorite places in Japan! Airstream Garden One of our favorite coffee places in Austin is inside a vintage Spartan trailer and the owner was the the one that told us about The Airstream Garden. On our way to Shibuya, we made an afternoon pitstop for some caffeine and sugar. The place was good and in a super cute shopping area, tucked away in the narrow streets. Lunch- Our first lunch in Tokyo was karaage! We’ve had karaage in Austin and Australia and simply put, it’s battered, fried chicken served with rice and veggies. In Tokyo, we also got a side of miso soup. Downing it all with a local beer, it was a great lunch! We're not sure this was the place we researched so we can't even tell you the name with certainty... We circled the block a few times and google maps led us here even though the address wasn't exact. We were in the Roppongi neighborhood, I know that for sure! Gundam Café In Akihabara, most of the restaurants are themed. Gundam is a famous robot in Japanese cartoons and we figured his restaurant would be a fun stop. We got some fruit sodas, tofu rolls and udon noodles. In America, themed restaurants tend to focus less on food but that wasn't the case for Japan. Everything was a tad expensive but it was all really good. Sushi Shou One of the many sushi stalls in the outer markets of Tsukiji. We briefly discussed Sushi Shou and our decision to go there in this past post but I wanted to share some photos here. I got a tuna bowl with tuna prepared three different ways, while the guys got the Omakase (essentially meaning chef's choice) 14 course sushi lunch. Our chef was so friendly and created a truly memorable lunch for us. Matcha Tea Ceremony While in Japan, we wanted to make sure we did a traditional tea ceremony. We found out that Hamarikyu Garden had a teahouse and that the ceremony is great for beginners to learn the process. The house was gorgeous with pretty views overlooking the pond. We educated ourselves on how to properly participate in a tea ceremony and enjoyed the matcha tea and scrumptious wagashi treats! We'd recommend this place to anyone new to tea ceremonies. Dinner- Ichiran Ichiran is pretty famous around Japan and has expanded into other countries, including the States (Brooklyn). This was our first experience with the vending machine menu. Super easy and convenient! Once we were seated, we had our own individual counters, equipped with dividers for privacy and water fountains! The waiters would grab our tickets, fill our orders and then they’d put the shade down for complete privacy to slurp away. It’s been debated as one of the best ramen places in the world. Regardless of if it is, we were fortunate enough to get there during a lull and waited about 40 minutes for a seat. When we came out, the line was down the block. It could have been the jet lag forcing us to eat earlier than normal but it helped us beat the rush. Aoi-Marushin A tempura spot near Senso-ji. They were not super happy with the fact that we were tourists but because Chase knew some Japanese, they were willing to seat us and we each ordered some filtered sake and the “sample plate”. We were served 4 pieces of fish and crustaceans as well as a few veggies all in the tempura style and some miso soup. We didn’t take many pictures because we felt a bit unwanted but the food was awesome! Fortunately, a lot of noodle restaurants will serve tempura dishes as a side so this stop could be considered unnecessary if your Japanese is limited. Afuri A ramen spot in the Harajuku area. After we had some sweets and walked around Takeshita street, we made our way, three blocks over, to Afuri. Chase got the yuzu shio ramen while Quinn and I got the tsukeman. This, in my opinion, was the best ramen of the trip!. Apparently, Afuri has been added to Michelin’s “cheap eats” list so if you’re headed to Tokyo soon, plan a visit to Afuri before it gets even more popular. Umi Umi will be getting its own stand alone post because we want to share a bit about the process of booking reservations for a Michelin starred restaurant (in Tokyo, it's anything but easy) but this meal was incredible! A two-starred Michelin restaurant serving up a 30 course sushi tasting with chef’s choice sake pairings that was unreal! If you're going to splurge, do it somewhere with amazing food and a comfortable atmosphere. We'd suggest Umi! P.S. all the exclamation points in this paragraph are totally appropriate for this dinner! Including that one. Dessert & Sweet Treats - The Japanese are known for indulging in sweets so we did some research and made sure to get all the goodies. Matcha anything is a must but if you happen to see someone selling some ice cream, get it. Quinn and I each got a cone on the second day and we were hooked. After that, we got it everyday, if not twice a day. Taiyaki! A pastry shaped like a fish and filled with red bean paste. To some, that might sound super weird but oh my goodness, don’t knock it ‘till you try it. We also found vendors filling Taiyaki with other sweets including our favorite, matcha... Duh! Red bean paste isn’t exclusive to Japan. Quinn had similar desserts in Korea so if you’re in Southeast Asia, look for some red bean paste pastries. They were sweeter than I anticipated. Sweet crepes are also a big hit with visitors. They are stuffed with ridiculous things like mini cheesecakes, tiramisu, several scoops of ice cream, Oreos, fruit, etc. They are rather insane but so totally worth the calories. We each got one and planned to get a second one when we were in Osaka but we got distracted and never made our way back to the stand... huge mistake. KitKats are a Japanese obsession. A Western creation that’s been adopted by the East and like anything Japanese, pushed to new, amazing culinary limits. KitKats are my favorite chocolate bar so it was really hard to not buy every variety we found. Considering there were over a dozen, we had to pick wisely and we settled on strawberry, matcha, and sake flavors. The matcha was the best but it’s safe to say the original English recipe is the best! Still, so fun to try them. There were so many random things we tried from street vendors and we tended to skip the pictures and just enjoy the treat. A good rule of thumb, if it looks good, it will be! Just go for it and let your vacation self win. One of our friends told us to try Baum Kuchen. Obviously as BAUMgartners, we were intrigued so we found a couple different stands selling it. One place had a flaky crust and cream filling. The second place sold more of the bunt cake style, which is what we were expecting. Both were good but I think we all liked the former better. And finally, some drinks! It’s safe to say Japan loves their sake, it’s culturally important and delicious. We also had the pleasure of drinking our share of plum wine and Japanese whiskey. But the one thing we had planned to try was Japan’s electric brandy, Denki Bran. Our destination for this brandy-based cocktail was Kamiya Bar in Asakusa. It’s the oldest western-style bar in the city and the bar’s founder is the person responsible for creating this intense drink. At the forefront, it’s brandy followed by gin, some herbs and other secret ingredients. It was rough! Quinn couldn’t do it and I had to cut mine with some water but I’m glad we tried it. A unique experience, nonetheless.
Okay, if you've reached this point, thanks for sticking with us! There's a lot to see and eat in Tokyo so this list is by no means the end-all be-all. But if you're headed there soon, hopefully it'll help kickstart your research on some great things to try. Until Next Time, C + D
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