Raifukushijo

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner for 2
Price: 5200 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Gyoza, wanton soup, tawainese soy sauce chicken, one other dish
English Menu: No
Smoking: Yes

Met with a friend near Keikyu Kamata station this week.  It was super cold so we went to the nearest warm place and it was this Taiwanese restaurant.  We grabbed a few dishes and enjoyed it well enough.  No details, here are the pics:

Spyro's

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price: 3310 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Grilled haloumi cheese, greek salad, yogurt chicken
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Met a friend near Kamata once again and we ended up at a Greek restaurant nearby.  He wasn't keen on eating, so I only I ate.  Ordered a bit more in case he wanted some, but he didn't.

The food was just so so, not great.  The yogurt chicken was especially disappointing for its lack of flavor.  It needed salt at least and none was to be found.  Grilled haloumi is impossible to mess up, and greek salad easy to make so while those were nice, they were not impressive.

Given the prices and quality I wouldn't recommend this spot generally for Greek.  Not that we have much choice here in Japan...

Buta Mania

Rating: Very good
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 4700 yen
Dishes:  Several plates of meat, intestines, potatoes, sake flight
Payment: Cash only
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: Yes

Wow, it's been a while!  Still eating mainly carnivore at home, so not too many opportunities to try new places.  Still I was meeting a friend near Keikyu Kamata station and we struck out to look for a new spot.  I had seen this place online prior and despite their prominent advertisement for "motsu" (innards) my friend decided to brave it.

They had several potato dishes on the menu which pleased him, while I ordered several sticks of meat and innards.  It was all quite tasty.  Also in the price is a 3 glass flight of Dassai sake, so my friend could try their low, middle and high priced versions.  Like me he agreed the Dassai 39 is the best bang for your buck.

Anyway, it was fun to eat out again after such a long time, but I do find myself enjoying eating my sous vide ground meat daily.  Somehow it still tastes delicious!

Beer Restaurant G.G.C.

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price:  Not sure
Payment: Not Sure
Dishes:  Pork schnitzel, weisswurst
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: Yes

I met a couple of friends from church at the Keikyu Kamata station the other night.  None of us really knew the area but we gravitated towards the big welcoming sign of "Beer Restaurant G.G.C." in all of its German glory.

Garlic fried potatos

They have tons of German beers, but the only one of any quality I recognized was Weihenstephan.  They had Vitus (a strong Weizen) and I had to try it out.  Unfortunately, there was only enough for one, and it tasted a bit weak to me, like it was the end of the batch...which it was.

Weisswurst

I ordered a pork schnitzel which wasn't all that great really, and a weisswurst, which was also just ok.  One friend ordered some potato dishes which I didn't taste.

Schnitzel

Overall it was just ok, not the amazing German restaurant find I was hoping it to be.  I was really hoping for a delicious schweinhaxe (pork knuckle) but they were all out.  My friend ended up paying and I gave him 2000 yen, so I'm not sure exactly how much it all cost.

Potatos and cream cheese

Pie Face

Rating: OK
Meal: Lunch for 2
Price: 1684 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted (possibly)
Dishes: Various meat pies
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  No

My wife was in Kawasaki the other day with some friends who were excited about the first Panda Express in Japan, where she saw a meat pie shop called Pie Face.  Since I am a huge savory pie fan and we needed to meet some friends at 3pm in Yokohama on Saturday, we headed up early to have lunch at Pie Face.

Pie Face is located in a mall that's a bit of a walk from the Keikyu Kawasaki station called Lazona Plaza.  There are actually quite a few good looking restaurants there that I'd love to explore, but it is quite unusual for us to stop at Kawasaki so it's not likely any time soon.

We ordered four different pies:  mushroom chicken, butter chicken, avocado hamburg, and a seasonal kabocha.  The crusts were tasty, consisting of a very croissant-like flaky crust and a cute unique face on each type of pie, which is how you can tell what you get.  They even give you a little piece of paper with a legend so you can see which kind of pie you are eating.

I listed the pies in order of their goodness.  The first two were both very good and if we had stopped there I would have given them a Very Good rating.  Unfortunately the last two were not so good and by the end I was regretting having eaten them.  So it ended up with an Ok.