Bar Earth Brothers

Rating: OK
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: Around 3000 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Garlic cheese pizza, carbonara
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:Yes

 I don't typically review bars, but Bar Earth Brothers is an exception.  I recently found out they are cigar friendly and about 2 minutes from my apartment.  After spending a pleasant evening there with some excellent whiskey and a very nice cuban, I thought I'd return with my wife to try the food.  My wife doesn't mind cigar smoke, while neither of us enjoys cigarette smoke.  The proprietor of Bar Earth Brothers is a very friendly and dapper man who has been very welcoming.  I really recommend it as a nicer spot to enjoy a cigar and top shelf whiskey.

Garlic pizza

As for the food, it was actually surprisingly good, and my wife and I debated as to whether to go with a low Very Good or a high Ok. I settled on a high Ok, mainly because the price was pretty high for what it was.  But for bar food, it was quite tasty, and both of us left satisfied.  I probably won't be ordering food there typically, but mainly because I have so many other restaurants still to try, and the drinks there are quite spendy too.

Speaking of the drinks, we did try some different items, me a gin and tonic (quite good), and my wife asked for a recommendation and got a watermelon salty dog.  The bartender takes great pride in his cocktails and makes them with the best ingredients, so there was fresh watermelon juice in the drink and a small wedge of watermelon to eat with it.  I don't generally like watermelon based drinks, but even I thought it was excellent.  The salt on the rim complemented the watermelon flavors perfectly.

Toriyoshi

Rating: OK
Meal: Dinner
Price: 3085 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Chicken wings, chicken hearts, vegetables
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:Yes

Well it's my first Izakaya Thursday without my son in a while.  He's now attending boarding school in the Philippines, so I'm on my own for Thursdays now.  My wife continues to prefer the company of her knitting group on Thursdays.  Fine by me, I can be a bit more adventurous!

Chicken hearts

Toriyoshi is a new restaurant that opened in the same spot as Isomaru.  There is another Isomaru located nearer the train station, so I just moved that review over there.  Toriyoshi is an izakaya but they specialize in chicken dishes.  Their English menus is nicely laid out and easy to use.

Chicken wings

I went with the signature chicken wings (twice cooked somehow) which were...meh, I wasn't too impressed.  The chicken heart dish was a bit disappointing too as it was all chopped up and the sauce was super sweet.  The vegetable dish was just fine.  Overall, not super impressive, but not bad.  The staff was very nice and at least one waitress spoke English quite well.

Veg

Bairinshan

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 2
Price:  2970
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Wanton ramen with half fried rice, scrambled eggs with veg and a half ramen, shiso wrapped shrimp spring rolls wrappers, meat stuffed steamed dimsum
English Menu: No
Smoking:  Yes

We are checking out a new church (to us) near the old Negishi base, so we have new restaurants to check out, yay!  Driving home we saw a bunch of restaurants near Negishi station and drove around for a long time trying to find a parking spot.  Finally we noticed that there was a Chinese restaurant with parking in the back.  We parked and walked around to the front to find it was quite nice looking.  Their menu goes on and on, but their lunch specials are quite cheap and generous.  The flavors are pretty good too.  We also ordered some items off the main menu, some dimsum type dishes.  These were very good indeed and it makes me want to come back and order off the main menu.  There is no english, but the menu is nicely illustrated with pictures.

Wan ton ramen

Half ramen and rice

Scrambled eggs and vegetables

Shiso wrapped shrimp spring rolls

Half fried rice

Meat filled dimsum

Nichols Airport Hotel Restaurant

No sign to photo, so here's some beer

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Dinner for 2
Price:  Not sure but over 1000 pesos
Payment: Credit cards accepted (kind of...if you are staying there you can pay by credit card at checkout)
Dishes: Pancit, ampalaya (goya) dish, lechon kawali (roasted pork stomach), rice
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  Yes (on the upstairs patio)

This is the hotel restaurant at the Nichols Airport Hotel that we stayed at the night before flying home to Japan.  There is a rooftop patio/bar and a first floor indoor restaurant, but they both use the same kitchen and menu.  We sat on the rooftop because there was beer.  San Miguel tastes best in the Philippines, that's for sure!  There were some western dishes on the menu, but of course we had none of those.  They are probably terrible.  But the Filipino food we had there was actually very tasty and we both really enjoyed our dishes.  I'm sure it was a bit expensive compared to what could be had nearby, but the environs were nice and hey, it's a hotel, what do you expect?

Pancit canton

Ampalaya (goya) and beef

Lechon Kawali (roasted pork belly)

Tim Ho Wan

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 2
Price:  1465 pesos
Payment: Credit cards accepted (but the machine was broken and I had to go change money to pay)
Dishes: Lots of dimsum, see below
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  No

Oh man, this was a delicious find!   My wife and I had taken a 3 hour taxi drive (should only take about an hour) in the heat of the day from the outskirts of Manila to the Mall of Asia which is near the airport and our hotel for the night.  We decided to spend the night near the airport so we could make our flight the next morning easily and with less stress.  I must say, this was a great idea!  The Mall of Asia is a huge new mall in Manila that looks out over Manila Bay.  We wandered around a bit to see what we would eat for lunch, but as soon as I saw Tim Ho Wan, I knew were done looking.  Amazingly, the line wasn't very long, so it didn't take too much waiting to get in.  Tim Ho Wan is a Hong Kong based chain that boasts a Michelin star.  I don't know that that means the same thing for all the branches, but it's certainly nothing to look down on!

We ordered just about everything on the menu and were quite full afterwards, but wow, it was all delicious.  Not the absolute best dimsum I've ever had, but still up there, and I would *kill* for a franchise to open up near us in Japan.  It was the first real "dimsum" meal we've had in years, and boy do we miss it.


Enough talk, here are the pictures:

Mang Inasal

Rating: OK
Meal: Lunch for 2
Price: 371 pesos
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Spicy chicken leg, several roasted pork sticks and halo halo
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Mang Inasal is a very common "fast food" joint in the Philippines that can be found all over the place.  They serve roasted chicken and pork dishes mostly, pretty simple fare, but much better than typical fast food.  We had been in Manila for several days but had yet to eat any local food (we were there for other reasons) and were very glad to get the chance to eat something tasty for the first time on this trip.  So despite the Ok rating, we really enjoyed it.  I just know there is much better roasted meat (ahem, Andok's) available.  Sadly I didn't get a picture of the halo halo, I was too intent on eating it!

Nan Lin Ka

Rating: OK
Meal: Lunch for 3
Price: 4500 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Fried rice, ginger seafood on noodles, seafood on rice
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Another Haneda Airport restaurant, Nan Lin Ka is a Chinese restaurant located on the upper area where there are tons of different restaurants.  We ate here because my son requested Chinese food...but it wasn't great.  My wife's dish was the best, with the lovely flavor of ginger helping things along.  The seafood portions were generous, but the prices were very high for what we got.  We thought if the prices were more typical we might have given it a Very Good, but as is, it just gets an Ok.  There are much better places to eat at Haneda.