Torigen

Rating: OK
Meal: Lunch for 2
Price: 1760 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Nabe teishoku, mushroom soba
English Menu: No
Smoking: No (maybe a smoking section)

I was in Chiba meeting a friend at Nishi-Funabashi station today for lunch and we eventually ended up at this nicer looking izakaya right outside the station.  They have pretty reasonably priced lunch specials and I ordered a nabe teishoku while he had a bowl of hot mushroom soba.  The food was ok, not the best, but the best part was the hefty portions of szechuan pepper to sprinkle on the food.  It's the numbing pepper and isn't super spicy, but it's does add some flavor.

Nabe teishoku

La Cuisine de Kazu

Rating: Very good
Meal: Lunch
Price:  2450 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Lunch course including chicken pate and Japanese beef with red wine sauce
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Last Saturday I found myself near Chiba city way just about directly due north from Yokosuka, but across Tokyo Bay.  I was waiting for a meeting to start and it was lunch time, so I wandered about a strangely western feeling grid of apartment blocks, looking for a spot for lunch.  I saw this French restaurant and decided to give it a shot.

Chicken pate with bread

For lunch there were two courses available, and I chose the cheaper one.  I had to pick an appetizer and an entree, which ended up being chicken pate and Japanese beef cooked in red wine sauce.  I was given a hunk of bread with the pate which came on a bed of lettuce.  It was delicious.  Next came the soup of the day which was onion, also delicious.  Then the main dish, which was also...you guessed it...delicious.  Lastly the dessert, which was a slice of cheese cake with some ice cream, again very good.  It was finished off with a cup of coffee that was...terrible.  Seriously...it was like battery acid.  Not sure how they could get everything else so right, and that so wrong.  Anyway, it was the one fly in the ointment, otherwise I might have been tempted to give them an Excellent.

Onion soup

Anyway, very pleasant place, with really good food.  Due to the distance I may never eat there again, but still nice to know places like this are out there in even the most unexpected locations.

Japanese beef in red wine sauce

Cheesecake with ice cream

The world's worst coffee...

Ocean Kitchen

Rating: OK
Meal: Dinner
Price: 1180 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Locomoco
English Menu: No
Smoking: No

Ocean Kitchen is a primarily Hawaiian restaurant but mostly generic "western" with some Japanese dishes thrown in.  It's one of a few restaurants located on the "Umihotaru" (aka Sea Firefly), a structure located in the middle of Tokyo Bay where the elevated road from the Chiba side plunges into the Bay underground for almost 10km.  It's an eerie experience to be driving along above the water and the then to angle downwards into the water and disappear into the giant maw of the tunnel.  I had business in Chiba yesterday and was coming home at night around dinner time.  I had to use the bathroom so I stopped at Umihotaru and decided to eat and review a restaurant while there.

There are several other restaurants that might be better, but I was looking for something specific due to the diet I'm on now and I thought I spied something that would due at Ocean Kitchen.  The locomoco specifically looked it had the requisite ratio of carbs to meat that I needed.

The dish wasn't great, but serviceable.  I did not eat the fries or macaroni salad, but the hamburg was ok and the rice was rice.  Not bad, but not great.

Katagaiminamaeshokudou

Rating: OK
Meal: Breakfast
Price: 540 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Eggs and (not real) bacon teishoku
English Menu: No
Smoking: No

I was returning from dropping of my wife at Narita Airport this morning when I discovered I was hungry.  I had already eaten leftover 7-11 ramen for breakfast, but for some reason I was peckish again.  So I stopped at a rest area with a restaurant sign and found this food court.  Within the food court only one restaurant was open, the nigh unpronounceable Katagaiminamaeshokudou.  The "shokudou" just means "cafeteria" but still...just take a look at all those kanji!  I asked for the name and wrote down what I heard, but now that I look at the written name I can see it can't possibly be that, but oh well, I doubt they'll care too much.

Beggars can't be choosers, and of the mostly fishy items on the menu I saw a bacon and eggs teishoku (with rice, miso, seaweed and tsukemono) that looked promising.  I shuddered a bit when I saw the eggs broken over the bacon and then popped into the microwave, but it came out surprisingly all right, as long as you are prepared for the disappointment of the bacon being not...actually bacon.  Not in the American sense of course.  I mean, the strips look kind of like bacon, but none of the delicious cured tastiness or crispiness is there.  That's par for the course in Japan (aaaand pretty much anywhere not the US).

Overall I wasn't too displeased.  Still, it hardly merits more than an Ok.  Price was great though!