Maisen

Rating: Very good
Meal: Lunch for 2
Price: 2370 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:Katsudon, mixed set
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  No

Maisen is a very famous tonkatsu restaurant in Tokyo.  This Maisen is not that Maisen.  My wife and I had to take our car into the LTO (Land Transportation Office?) for registration renewal and found ourselves out by IKEA in Yokohama.  Nearby there is a Lalaport mall that my wife had heard housed an excellent tonkotsu restaurant called Maisen.  We decided to eat lunch there and proceeded to try and track this place down.  Oddly, it isn't actually it's own restaurant.  There is an interesting food court area at this mall with several high-end restaurants providing different food options for reasonable prices.

There is a row of registers where you can peruse a combined menu, order and pay.  Then they give you a little beeper and you go find a table.  When your beeper beeps, you go to the counter for your particular restaurant and retrieve your meal.  Quite an odd setup, even by Japanese standards, but it works.  I guess this place gets pretty popular some times.  It was a Monday though, and before lunch time proper, so it was empty for us.

Anyway, we ordered from the Maisen menu, wishing to try this legendary tonkotsu.  I got a katsudon, which is tonkatsu with egg and onions on top of rice.  My wife got a mixed set consisting of panko battered and fried vegetables, a small piece of tonkotsu, and a crab cream croquette.  It was all actually quite good, though there are probably better dishes available on the menu.

Kind of a cool spot.  I'd like to come back and try some of the other restaurants some day.