Yanma

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price: 1500 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Steak
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Picked relatives at the airport last night and had some time before to try a couple of places out.  The first is this steak spot...I got the largest amount of meat possible, a 200g steak.  It was just ok.

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...

Cocktail Works

Rating: Very good
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 10,000 yen
Dishes:  Two drinks, two dishes
Payment: Credit cards accepted
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Not being fans of bars in general I don't review them much here.  But on our last evening in Karuizawa my wife and I were in the mood for a nicer restaurant, and we had seen this amazing looking bar earlier in the day when we happened by and bought some whiskey and gin from the very nicely supplied store next to it.  When we couldn't get into our first restaurant of choice, we came back to try the food here.

The bar itself is gorgeous, and extremely well stocked with top shelf whiskeys and other liquor.  The food menu is short, but well put together, and they cook everything right there behind the bar somehow.  Everything is expensive, but they aren't pretending it will be anything else, and luckily it was the time for a nice evening out.

My wife had the chicken, I had the beef.  Hers was the better tasting dish overall, but mine wasn't have bad either.  The only pity was it was quite small.  Our drinks were excellent too, with my wife realizing she really quite likes a Martini, which makes sense given her taste for gin (we bought a hops infused gin earlier from the other side of the store).  I had a rare-find Laphroig whiskey, which came on a hand chipped ball of ice.  So good!

The overall price was eye-popping, but definitely a pleasant experience and a real treat.

Ajihei

Rating: Very good
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 4000 yen
Dishes:  Several dishes
Payment: Cash only
English Menu: No
Smoking: No?

Karuizawa is a small tourist town, and everything seems to shut down after 6pm.  We were there with a couple of friends after 6 and needed dinner, so we wandered down the "ginza" shopping street looking for anything open.  The only thing we found that time was this chinese restaurant.

Luckily we had a Chinese native speaker with us from the same region as the owners, so they were very kind and made some special order dishes.  My wife and I stuck with some basics, and I had the scrambled eggs with tomatoes dish I knew I could count on.  It was actually quite tasty, as was everything else we had.  Definitely recommended if you are there late and need some grub.

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.

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!

Mae-an Thai

Rating: OK
Meal:  Lunch for 3
Price: 3680 yen
Payment: Appears cash only
Dishes: Fried rice, gapao chicken, some pork with veg dish
English Menu: Not really
Smoking: Didn't notice, but I think no smoking

Mae-an is a Thai restaurant in Ameyoko, the market area just south of Ueno Station.  It is located directly beneath the train tracks, so you get the occasional thunderous rumble over head while eating.  I'd been meaning to try it for years, but finally we had a chance the other day.

The menu is huge, so unfortunately I can only go off of what we had.  My son as usual went for fried rice, my wife tried the gapao chicken, while I had a dish that I thought would have big hunks of fatty pork, but turned out to be just thin strips of lean pork with vegetables.  They have 3 levels of spice and my wife got number 2 and we were warned it would be quite spicy.  Sure enough, the gapao was quite warm, almost too much for my wife, so we swapped dishes.  It was pretty good, but the egg was old and dry, not fresh and runny, sadly.  My son's fried rice tasted pretty good, but was nothing spectacular.

We enjoyed our food, but in retrospect it wasn't really all that amazing, so I'm just giving it an Ok.