tokyo food file

tu piffres, tu boissonne — moi aussi!

Enough work for one week. I'm off to piffre and boissonne.

Not sure quite what it means, but it sounds pretty good to me...

"Confit" and Wine make us happy

Pig, sheep, duck, chicken... all grilled over charcoal...

I need to check out this place.

Autumn in a ramen bowl: Afuri's chestnut tantanmen

There's always a line at Afuri. Our general rule of thumb is that if the queue only goes as far as the door — about 10 people ahead of us — then we wait. But if it extends out onto the street, then we come back later or eat elsewhere.

 

But we'd spotted the sign for the new autumn special — so we decided to wait anyway.

 

Aki no kuri-tantanmen — autumn chestnut spicy noodles.

 

One reason we like Afuri so much is the look, the style, the ambiance. The staff wear black tees and caps, and look like they're enjoying their job, despite the incessant flow of punters filling the seats along the narrow counter.

 

The kitchen is clad in white tiles and shiny stainless steel. The walls are scuffed white concrete, plain and unadorned. And overhead a widescreen monitor flickers silently, playing loops of music videos or anime movies. Post-industrial ramen was how I described it in my first Japan Times mention...

Plus the noodles are excellent. One of the features is that they grill the sliced chashu pork over charcoal before it's placed on top of the ramen, to give it an extra level of flavor.

 

Of course it also adds to the waiting time, so we usually order a beer or two. The house brew is draft Kohaku-no-toki, a premium amber lager from Asahi, with a lot more flavour and character than the bog-standard SuperDry.

 

It usually takes 5 minutes or so until the noodles arrive. They are certainly worth the extra wait. And it's always good to watch the kitchen crew in action...

 

This was the kuri-tantanmen. The spicy ground pork was mixed with bits of chopped chestnut; and alongside the half-hard boiled egg there was half a chestnut as a garnish.

 

The noodles were great, and so was the soup, even though not as spicy as I'd hoped. However, the chestnuts were sweet and straight out of the can, which I found detracted from the overall balance.

Verdict: good but not as great as anticipated.

 

However, we also ordered a bowl of the standard yuzu ramen, and that was the same as it ever was — great.

The noodles are garnished with the powdered peel, and the heady aroma of fragrant citrus wafts up with the steam from the broth.

[NB in the background, the conical cover over the pan in which the charcoal is brought up to glowing heat]

 

You'll find Afuri outside the back entrance of Ebisu Yokocho.

Here's a map link...

another sign that calls to me

白圭 is read as 'hakukei' I believe (and not 'hakkei'). In the big scheme of things that's not important. Nor is the simple bar food and booze supplied in this humble basement tachinomi bar.

It's the sign itself that I like. Simple, direct and to the point, and rendered with the barest hint of a flourish.

I'm not going to say more about this place because it's always crowded enough at the best of times. But if you find your way there, say hello.

For those who don't speak/read Japanese, tachi-nomi literally means "standing drinking" — propping yourself up at the counter (or just against a wall or a pile of crates more often).

Here's a piece I wrote for The Japan Times a few years back on classic and contemporary tachi-nomi.

a final ice cream of the season? maybe... maybe not...

Perhaps it's the pop-art-esque sign over the door, but it's hard to walk past Binya in Ebisu without pausing at the take-out window to get one of their excellent soft ices... 

Not that I need any excuse in this heat.

The moka (mocha we'd call it, of course) is the one — just enough coffee to take the edge off that sweetness. No tax either!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's only one drawback to carrying your cone along the street — in these conditions it melts faster than you can lick it.

Just down from Yebisu Garden Place, Binya is one of those old-school coffee shops where you sip your Java from chintzy china. It also serves Japanese confections such as tokoroten and oshiroko.

Here's a link for Binya...

And here's a map link...