Manchinro Honten

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch for 2
Price:  10300 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Lots of dimsum
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No (but maybe somewhere, it's a big building)

My wife and I are dimsum fiends, but it's been hard to find good dimsum in Japan.  I stumbled across some reviews of Manchinro Honten (a restaurant in Chinatown) that raved about their dimsum, so we gave it a try after church one Sunday.  It's a very fancy looking restaurant and was apparently founded in the late 1800's, was destroyed in the firebombing of WWII and has since been rebuilt.  I believe they now have a few branches around too.

They had an easy to read English menu and a dimsum lunch special that would have been about 3500 yen per person, so we thought we could beat those prices and get the items we wanted for less, so we proceeded to order ala cart.  As you can see above, we did not beat the price of the lunch special at all, but we did get to taste our favorites.

There were a few very tasty items, the green beans being amazing (though I cannot justify the 2000 yen price tag), and their home made dumplings were the best bang for the buck.  I can't comment on every single dish, but I will highlight the best ones in the picture comments below.

Overall we had very good meal that was very expensive.  Honestly too expensive for what we had.  I think there are probably better priced options available among the thousands of restaurants in Chinatown, but without spending some serious time investigating all the options I don't know if I'll ever find them.

Amazing green beans with XO sauce

So-so shumai

Adequate

Not our favorite beef balls

Very good pork in rice noodles

Best flavor for the price housemade dumplings

I would skip the beef spare-ribs (oily and bony)

Incredible tofu skin wrapped bamboo shoots and meat

Decent charshiu buns

Very expensive and interesting rice dish