Sarapao

 

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 3800 yen
Payment: Credit cards - not sure...
Dishes: Salad rolls, green curry chicken, pork and basil stir fry, chicken cashew nuts, Mekong whiskey (more of a rum really)
English Menu: No
Smoking:  Yes and No (outside smoke came inside)

My wife and I decided to while away a Saturday afternoon wandering around our old Kurihama neighborhood, intending to eat dinner at some spot we found.  Near the Keikyu station we found a new (to us) Thai restaurant that we ended up at after our trek.  The menu is only in Japanese, but the Katakana names are all transliterations of Thai...so we found the actual Japanese to be easier to read to know what we were getting at least vaguely.  It's nice that after 9 years here we can finally almost read a Japanese menu!

Anyway, overall it was unimpressive, the flavors pretty bland.  I'm giving it a Not Great.

Suihou

Rating: Not great
Meal: Lunch for 3
Price: 6240 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Two lunch specials, one fried rice
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  No

Wow, this was a disappointment.  This is a fancy looking chinese restaurant right next to Ueno station and the place our church meets (we moved recently).  I've been looking forward to trying it to see if possibly downtown Tokyo near one of the busiest stations in town a decent Chinese restaurant might exist.  Verdict:  No, it doesn't.

Fancy indeed, the atmosphere is super nice, and so are the prices.  But the food is of the same general mediocre "japanese" Chinese we've come to expect here, sadly.  I didn't bother with pictures this time...it was so disappointing.  I can't believe how much they charged us...we ordered off the lunch "special" menu, except for my son who wanted fried rice, so we got one off the main menu for him.  The English menu did not have price details for a lot of things, but I thought nothing of it.  The specials were around 4000 yen together, meaning my son's one dish was around 2000 yen...crazy.  

If it had been some of the best food we'd ever had, that would be one thing, but the disappointing quality combined with high prices makes this a spot to avoid.

Fukuya

Rating: Not great
Meal: Lunch for 2
Price: 3000 yen
Payment: Paid by cash, not sure about CC
Dishes: Two tomato egg scrambles, kung pao chicken, vegetable dish
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  I don't think so

Wen to lunch the other day with a friend from work.  I needed to find a dish with mostly eggs as I'm on a short diet of just eggs.  We went to this spot which has changed ownership over the years, but I hadn't eaten at since the last change.

The menu is pretty extensive, and the owners are clearly chinese.  It appears to be the usual Japanese chinese stuff however.  I ordered two tomato egg scramble dishes and my friend had a kung pao chicken plus another vegetable dish.  I did not care for my dishes as the sauce was quite goopy (cornstarch thickener probably), slightly tomato-saucy and sweet.  I regretted my choices the rest of the afternoon.  My friend said his dish was decent enough.

I was impressed by the wall of Japanese whiskeys they had on display, so not a bad spot to come for a drink I guess.

Overall I'm giving it a Not Great, though perhaps if I come back when not on a such a restrictive diet I might raise it if the food is better.

Outback Steakhouse

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 9800 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Drinks, two prime rib meals (250g)
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  Yes

I met a friend in Shinagawa and decided to take him to the Outback Steakhouse as I had never been to one here in Japan.  It was happy hour, so drinks were half off, thank goodness!

We both had the prime rib and while it was ok, it was certainly nothing special.  Definitely not worth the price.  I probably won't be back to one of these places again.  Also, smoking.

Gintora

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 7700 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Drinks, avocado, tamagoyaki, bacon, meat platter, roast beef don
English Menu: No
Smoking:  Yes

This is the restaurant that replaced Station Grill.  It is a barebones izakaya with dark, unadorned, black boxes in which you will be inserted.

I have no idea how the price got so insane...my son and I were not very impressed with this place.  The smoke and noise seeped in from all around.

My son's main dish, the roast beef don, took forever to arrive.  All the rest of the food was eaten for a good 10 minutes before it finally arrived.  When it did he took a couple bites and declared the meat tough and not worth eating.

The avocado was unripe.  The tamagoyaki unremarkable.  The meat dishes weren't bad.

Overall not a place we're likely to ever return to.

Naru's Recipes

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 3585 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Meat pie, carbonara, sake, whiskey
English Menu: No
Smoking:  No

My son and I headed down to Horinouchi station to find a restaurant to review.  It was a bit early so the pickings were slim.  We ended up at this French restaurant called Naru's Recipes.  It was still half an hour til opening but the owner let us in and said he'd take our orders.

There is no English menu so that might make it a bit difficult to order.  Most of it was in katakana though, and if you know your basic kanji for beef, pork and chicken it's not too bad.  My son loves him some carbonara and I got the meat pie.

Both of us were a bit disappointed at the results, mainly in size.  Very very small portions for relatively high prices was our verdict.  And neither of us loved what we ate.

The price above is also reflective of a couple of drinks, but even without that the price for the two dishes was about 2000 yen.

Takao

Rating: Not great
Meal: Lunch for2
Price: 2100 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Fried rice and half ramen, stir fried pork and veg, gyoza
English Menu: Very old and not accurate
Smoking:  No

My son and I dropped my wife off at the Ikego base housing area which is near Zushi on Sunday after church.  There's a Chinese restaurant on the way back that I've always meant to try out and the timing was right.

It's a small spot, but it was pretty lively.  The menus were all in Japanese, but they did try to provide very old and tattered English menu that did't have accurate prices on it.

We got our usual options, my son going for fried rice with a half ramen and I got some stir fried meat and veg with an order of gyoza.  Neither of us was impressed.

Dr. Cafe

Rating: Not great
Meal: Lunch for 3
Price: 2190 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Omurice, egg and bacon rice dish, egg and cheese sandwich
English Menu: No
Smoking: Smoking section available

Ugh...we struck out Sunday after church.  Tried to eat at an interesting looking Halal restaurant, but it was having technical difficulties and wasn't quite open yet.  As usual after church, it's already late and we were all starving, so we didn't have much patience for wandering around.  Ended up at this Dr. Cafe spot which we could already tell wouldn't be very good, but oh well.

Sure enough, the food was entirely forgettable, with all of us commenting on the sad situation.  Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

Danke

Rating: Not great
Meal: Dinner
Price: 4286 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Steak and some drinks
English Menu: No
Smoking: No

At last I'm caught up with my backlog!  Last night I was in Yokohama again to meet a friend and afterwards ate at what I think is the last restaurant in this particular underground area of Isetan.  Danke is a german themed izakaya, but they seem at pains to scare away foreigners, from the greeting (In Japanese:  "Can you read Japanese?") to the completely Japanese menus (except for drinks!).

I went for a good looking steak that was quite disappointing when it showed up...it was much smaller than expected for the price.  Anywhoo, I ate it, quaffed some whiskey and got outta there.

Ueno Chinese Restaurant

Rating: Not great
Meal: Lunch for 5
Price: 5500 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Dishes
English Menu: No
Smoking: Yes

Pretty terrible Chinese restaurant I ate at with my family a while back...can't remember much except it wasn't very good.  I couldn't understand the name when it was pronounced to me either. Pictures:

This was pretty good

Spicy pig entrails, not bad

Cashew chicken...ok

Fried noodles...meh

Fried rice, not bad

Almond jello..meh

Chicken wings in a flavorless brown sauce, not great

The absolute worst, nasty sesame balls ever...