Chiiran

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 3
Price:  3270 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Pork and green pepper stir fry teishoku, mahbodofu teishoku, gomuko fried rice
English Menu: No (not even pictures)
Smoking:Not inside

We discovered another building near the Lalaport Mall that has several restaurants for us to try out.  Every other Sunday we have a bible study after church, so on the off Sundays we try to find some place new to review.  Today was a Chinese restaurant called...Chiiran, which seems to me to be a combination of Chinese and Restaurant (in romaji, restaurant is "resutoran", so Chi from Chinese plus Ran from that).  But I could be wrong, there are two kanji in the name that I don't recognize.

Pork and green peppers

Their lunch specials are a bit more spendy than the usual, but everything had a lot of taste to it, down to the corn/egg soup.  My wife and I both exclaimed several times over the more than usual flavors, even in the mahbodofu.  It is enough to make me think getting adventurous on the  menu might be worth while!  And even though they didn't have any "normal" fried rice on the menu, we asked for "futsu no cha han" and they fried some up for my son, making him mostly happy.

Mahbodofu

Overall, we give it a Very Good considering the noticeable improvement over the run of the mill Japanese Chinese restaurants.

Gomoku chahan

Al Ain

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Dinner for 7
Price:  About 30,000 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Lots of food, plus some drinks and 2 shishas
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:Yes if you count shisha.  Did not see any ash trays.

My wife and I had eaten at Al Ain for our anniversary several years back and hadn't been back since I started reviewing restaurants on this blog.  We met up with some friends of ours who had lived in Kuwait during the time we were there and decided to eat at the only Lebanese restaurant I know of in town:  Al Ain.  It's also in Yokohama, which is much closer to us than Tokyo.

The proprietor of Al Ain is very friendly man who was very solicitous of us.  He was also delighted by the children and very accommodating.  The prices are not cheap, but the food is quite good, as is the shisha.  Unfortunately there were "no pictures" signs posted everywhere so I didn't get much aside from a quick furtive shot of one of our dishes (shish tawouk).  But all of us really enjoyed the food.  The tawouk was made with white meat, not my usual preference, but it was properly marinated in yogurt such that it was very tender and juicy.  For more pictures, check out their website here:  http://www.alaindining.com/index_eng.html

While not Excellent, this Very Good rating is quite high, and since we don't haven't found anything better, it's essentially the best Lebanese in Japan at this point for us.

Cafeteria

Rating: Not great
Meal: Lunch
Price: 1200 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Yokosuka Navy Curry
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

***  6/14/2020 ***

This place didn't make it through the remodel of the mall and is closed now.

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This little upstairs "cafeteria" that is run by the same staff as the sweets shop below (which is quite nice BTW), is a bit of an afterthought.  I never got around to reviewing it during the initial push because it didn't open til 12pm and I go to lunch at 11am.   But I noticed the other day it had started opening at 11:30am, so I decided to give it a try.  I got there a bit early, so I bought a delicious cream filled chocolate eclair from the shop below to spend the time.

Meh...

They do have a small English menu, but their options for actual food are quite sparse, being either Navy Curry or pizza.  Given the prices on the pizzas I think we're talking tiny little things.  So the Navy Curry at 1200 yen was it.

They brought a small glass of milk and a bit of potato salad, and then the curry itself, devoid of vegetables, trace amounts of meat, and a dark, blandish sauce.  The best part was the dried onions on top.  Pretty much a dud of a meal (and tiny portions) for a rather expensive 1200 yen.  I can't really recommend the place, though the view of the ships is nice.

Doma Doma

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 4762 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Various dishes
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:Yes but if you get a cabin with a vent it's not an issue




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Update 10/12/2017

This restaurant is now closed it appears.

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Ok, last izakaya in the Gold's Gym building on Blue Street:  Doma Doma.  It wasn't very good, a step below all of the other ones I thought.  Same types of food, but everything (except the avocado) wasn't very good.  Here are the pictures:

Otoshi:  tofu with some ground meat

Tamago

yakitori

avocado on meat, bacon wrapped mochi

Cheese fondue with chicken and veg sticks

Tiger Yakiniku

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 2
Price:  3080 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Two yakiniku lunch sets (one regular, the other the "Lady's" set)
English Menu: Yes (but not lunch specials)
Smoking:Yes

So Tiger Yakiniku was recommended to us as one of the better examples of yakiniku after we explained our issues with the cuisine to someone else.  It's extremely close to Yokosuka Chuo station, down a little alley way full of several izakayas.  You might notice the sign saying something about "meat love" or something.  I think that's them, up on the 4th floor.  There's an elevator.

We tried to go there on Saturday night, but it was full up and we ended up finding somewhere else to eat.  I'm kind of glad now, as for lunch on Sunday it was practically empty.  They remember us from the previous night and apologized again for not having room.  They also gave us a little extra high quality meat for free, which was very nice.

They have an English menu, but it's the regular full menu.  The lunch specials menu is in Japanese, so you might need to do a little work.  Also, the specials are only available on certain days, which are indicated by the day of the week kanji in the upper right corner of each item's picture.  So it's a bit tricky...  We wanted to try meat, so my wife got the "lady's" set and I got a regular yakiniku set.  There was another one that was a bit more expensive, but we were both happy with our options when all was said and done.  Interestingly, the sets available at lunch appear to be very similar to the dinner sets, just lacking the "all you can drink for X minutes" option.  They are also significantly less expensive, making lunch time the best time to go.  Oh, one more thing...since Yakiniku is essentially a sub-cuisine of Korean food, they also had several standard Korean dishes on the lunch menu that were quite cheap, like bibimpap and such.

One thing that is very nice about Tiger Yakiniku is that they use charcoal in pots instead of gas grills, which results in much better flavor.  Also, the cuts of meat we were given were definitely top notch.  Of course you can order a la carte, if you know what you're doing, which we don't, being yakiniku phobes.  There were also lots of vegetables, nice and thickly cut, which we like.  Each set also came with egg soup, a bowl of rice, some sauces, a little bowl of typical Korean pickly things, and my wife's set came with some large lettuce leaves to wrap things in.  One thing conspicuously missing was any kimchi, but you can always order some if you want I guess.

Overall we were quite pleased, though it is a very slow and laborious process to cook your own meat and eat it.  The grills were a bit smaller than we were used to and the aluminum topper was easily moved if your meat stuck, but the charcoal flavor made up for that.  Both of us agreed that this was the best Yakiniku we've had so far.   However, we are still just not Yakiniku fans, so I didn't feel I could give it more than a Very Good.

Senkushiya

Rating: OK
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 5452 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Various yakitori dishes
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: Yes

Last night my wife and I went out to dinner looking to try a nice yakiniku place for my birthday.  However, they were full up.  So we walked around and tried another yakiniku place.  They were also fully booked for the evening.  So we walked around more and found a yakitori place which, though empty, we were told was completely reserved.  What gives?  Day before Father's Day parties?  Or just usual Saturday night business?  Not sure...anyway we finally found a yakitori place to try, though I mainly wanted to eat there for the hot pot picture on the sign which turns out had nothing to do with the restaurant at all...it was just a fairly run of the mill yakitori grill.

Gobo salad (not great)

So we bought a couple of drinks (yakitori places are kind of izakayas too) and ordered away.  The pictures are below.  Overall, though there were a couple of very tasty items (tsukune is one I remember), it was hit or miss.  I'd say it's a high Ok, but not quite enough to break the barrier into Very Good territory.  The smoking and priciness contribute to the slightly lower rating.

Tsukune, quite good

White meat with yuzu, ok

Garlic fried rice, pretty good

Karaage, very good

Thigh meat with stuff on, very good

"bacon" wrapped tomatoes, not great

Negi and chicken pieces, not great

IR Second House

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 2
Price:  3560 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Pork and turnip pasta in cream sauce, eggs benedict with salmon
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: Possibly outside

My wife and I were downtown on Saturday to sign papers for our lease renewal on our apartment and ended up near Shirokanedai station in Tokyo.  We used bento.com's excellent GPS location service to find nearby restaurants that they had reviewed and saw that IR Second House was recommended and close by.  What drew us was the promise of beer (for my wife, as I was driving), but while there were some interesting selections, there weren't a ton that we were interested in.  My wife ended up getting a decent hefeweizen though.

I ordered the lunch special (pasta) and my wife got the eggs benedict with salmon.  But first we were surprised with seriously hefty salads that were delicious!  The tomato in particular was so flavorful and juicy.  Then the actual food arrived and we were very impressed.  My pasta dish was a little small, but the flavors were excellent and the pasta cooked to perfection.  The eggs benedict (not a dish we've had often) was also quite tasty, the sauce just a little tart, the eggs perfectly runny, the lox was...well...loxxy, and it even had some wilted spinach underneath it all.  The french fries were a surprisingly tasty addition that was perfect to nibble on in between bites.

Pork and turnip cream pasta

Over all we were very impressed, despite the smallish portions.  We left feeling appropriately full however, which is good.  We'd be excited to come back and try their grilled meat which appears to be what they are known for.  While we were there, out on the back patio there were several groups of people next to barbecues where meat was being cooked for them fresh on the grill.  I don't know if that was a special thing or not, but it looked pretty incredible!  I suspect we might be giving this place an Excellent in the future, but for now it was a very high Very Good.

Eggs benedict with salmon