Laurier

Rating: OK
Meal:  Lunch
Price:  800 yen
Payment:  Cash only
Dishes: Ginger Pork Teishoku
English Menu:No
Smoking:Yes (extremely likely)

Or go outside and point at the fake food...

Laurier ("bay leaf" from the French word for it) is a Japanese Chinese restaurant right outside Womble Gate on 16.  It has a distinctive neon sign with a bay leaf and is directly below a giant Zero Tattoo sign, easy to find.  For all that, it's not a particularly gaijin friendly place, with no English menus to speak of.  They are happy to serve you though, and I was ushered outside to point at my dish with no attempt to see if I could navigate my way through the Japanese menu.

 No worries, I usually like to get the ginger port teishoku, so I pointed at that.  The restaurant itself is of that old school variety, somewhat grimy, stale cigarette smoke in the air, and soon not so stale smoke as a couple of patrons lit up.  The food here tends more towards the Japanese in the "Japanese-Chinese" spectrum.  Not to say it's terrible, just not very Chinesey.  They have lots of posters for their Nagasaki Champon ramen, including the hard noodles.  My wife likes it.



The ginger pork teishoku was quite good actually, ignoring the little pile of ketchup spaghetti and the pickles were not my favorite.  The pork is a bit thicker and fatty (which I like), and the sauce was thick and strong.  It really hit the spot today.  It's a bit far, so I don't usually go there for lunch, but sometimes my son and I eat there on Thursdays, when no one is smoking (he can't take even a little smoke in the air).