Sarapao

 

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 3800 yen
Payment: Credit cards - not sure...
Dishes: Salad rolls, green curry chicken, pork and basil stir fry, chicken cashew nuts, Mekong whiskey (more of a rum really)
English Menu: No
Smoking:  Yes and No (outside smoke came inside)

My wife and I decided to while away a Saturday afternoon wandering around our old Kurihama neighborhood, intending to eat dinner at some spot we found.  Near the Keikyu station we found a new (to us) Thai restaurant that we ended up at after our trek.  The menu is only in Japanese, but the Katakana names are all transliterations of Thai...so we found the actual Japanese to be easier to read to know what we were getting at least vaguely.  It's nice that after 9 years here we can finally almost read a Japanese menu!

Anyway, overall it was unimpressive, the flavors pretty bland.  I'm giving it a Not Great.

Midtown BBQ

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 2
Price: 7000 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted

Dishes:  "big boy" platter (3lbs+ of meat!), half order of wagyu brisket, 1 small beer

It's been a long time, I know!  We've been eating carnivore, and with the COVID nonsense haven't been getting out to eat at new places for quite some time.  However, I have big news...we are leaving Japan at the end of November 2020!  Crazy, we've lived here for 9 years now, but for a variety of convergent reasons, we have decided to move back to our hometown of Newberg, OR.  I am looking forward to continuing this blog as I work my way through all the new restaurants that have popped up there since we left.  Once they are all allowed to open up that is.

Anyway, as we are about two weeks away from leaving, we are starting to go out again more often.  We had a spare Saturday and decided to take the train up to Yokohama.  Now, we aren't currently allowed to eat inside restaurants in Yokohama, unfortunately, but we are allowed to eat outside.  We are still carnivores, so we decided to try one of the BBQ places we've heard about but never been to.  Midtown BBQ is a newer spot (started in Nagoya I believe?) that we checked out first.  I was sooo hungry as I'd skipped breakfast, so I was really hoping it would work out.

It's an underground restaurant, but as we came to the staircase it looked like there was no outdoor seating.  But then we spoke with the friendly manager (Mark) who said they were thinking about putting tables outside their door downstairs, where the air is still fresh, to accommodate those of us from Yokosuka who still have to follow these rules.  They hadn't done it yet, but would pull a table outside just for us if we wanted.  We wanted...so on we went.

The menu is quite full, but we just wanted the good stuff, and he recommended the Big Boy platter with 3lbs of meat.  Since we didn't have as many sides (veg) they threw a little more meat than usual, so it must have been closer to 3.5 lbs.  Then he sold me on the wagyu brisket, so we ordered a half of that.  This definitely upped the price, but without it I'd say the Big Boy platter is definitely a good deal for what you get.  Later we tried a small beer.

The food was delicious, though I wasn't as fond of the sausage (too hot doggy for me, and the burps later were intense).  Everything else, particularly the ribs, pulled pork and chicken were excellent.  The wagyu brisket was ok, I wouldn't go for it again.  Then again recently my boss had us over for a goodbye meal where he smoked a wagyu brisket for us and that was crazy crazy good...fresh of the smoker.  Hard to beat that.

So we stuffed ourselves as much as we could and had to take some home.  I did suffer the rest of the day a bit with being overfull, and couldn't eat anything else the rest of the day.  Reminded me of the times I ate OMAD (one meal a day) carnivore when I would eat that one meal prior to going to bed at night.  But I feel fine today.  My wife managed to eat the left overs for dinner though.

Overall, great spot, very accommodating, and delicious BBQ.  Highly recommended!