Can't stop eating in Tokyo

Like all trips to Tokyo, the eating is non-stop.  Well, it stops when you are so full that you walk it off and then you're ready to eat again.  There's so much to eat and not enough time.

With all our favorite cities, we go back to our favorite restaurants.  Ramen Street in Tokyo Station is a must for every trip.  Some ramen shops change while our favorites remain filled with lines.  The station always has new restaurants and food stalls, plus many food attractions for the kids from burgers to snacks both sweet and savory.

Convenience store eats are another fun place to stock up for breakfast.  I've been pretty obsessed with ikura (salmon roe) lately, so I really enjoyed the 7-11's ikura onigiris (rice balls) every morning.  On the other end of the eating and price range, our hotel Japanese restaurant at the Palace Hotel has such a great ambiance for tradition Japanese dining.

And just when you think you can stop eating, Haneda airport has such a quality selection of eats before getting on the plane.  You have a last chance for tsukemen and ramen; but my favorite is the Japanese curry in the ANA lounge.  It's better than a lot of restaurants.

I got full and hungry again from writing about these eats.  I can't wait to go back to Tokyo!

Shoyu Ramen with Handmade Noodles at Menya Shichisai

Serafina of NYC in Tokyo

Aside from the hotel restaurants, the Palace Hotel Tokyo also offers restaurants in their basement arcade.  They vary from Japanese specialties, like soba or shrimp tempura, to Korean cuisine and Italian American cuisines.  Something for everyone.  The restaurants cater partly to the hotel guests and mostly to the office workers in the nearby buildings.

Serafina is a standard meal each time we check into the hotel.  At least once a visit, and this time we ate there 3 times.  It's satisfying and comforting, while have vibrant taste.  The original location hails from New York City with several branches around the city and continues to grow internationally.

Italian is a cuisine the Japanese have perfected, and here at Serafina Tokyo it's really perfection.  We came for the pizzas, but I fell in love with the pastas.  Perfectly al dente and sauced so well.  After hours of walking around Tokyo and carrying shopping bags and nephews across Tokyo Station, a hot plate of carbs taste so deliciously good.

Margherita Pizza

Rigatoni Bolognese

Izakaya at Teppen

The fun of staying at The Palace Hotel Tokyo is the constant discovery of Marunouchi's restaurants.  Up in the buildings, the ground floors, and countless establishments in the basements - you can't stop eating in this financial hub.

Most of Marunouchi's eats are casual, but casual among the suits from work.  After work restaurants are filled with drinking, smoking, and eating the day's stresses away.  It's a fun environment, and the more crowded the restaurant, the tastier the food.

In one of the many buildings, !iiyo! or the Eiraku building holds countless eats in a matter of meters.  In an attempt to find a smokefree environment for my nephews, we saw an table made of milk crates.  It seemed like decoration, but still function.  And the menu was filled with grilled and fried Japanese izakaya dishes.  Thankfully, the decorative table was indeed function.  So sitting on cushioned milk crates made for a fun night of eating at Teppen.

There are so many great eats in Tokyo.  I love that these restaurants are understated and low key, while shining with overwhelming plates and tastes.

Vegetables to start the meal.  Look at these beautiful colors!

Always revisiting Tokyo

Tokyo is one of those cities that leaves you wanting more.  One trip, two trips, x number of trips are not enough to be satisfied.  It's so repeatable.  You can always discover new areas in the city and constantly go back to the same places which feel familiar.  Japan and Tokyo are always updating and improving.

We made it a family trip with my little nephews, so it was a balance of shopping in Ginza and a journey to Tokyo Bay for the Legoland Discovery Center.

Here are some pictures from our hotel, around Ginza, and at Legoland:

View from the Palace Hotel Tokyo at night

Food Chronicling around Japan

Japan is a country where the great eating and drinking never stops.  Something tasty is around every corner.  Some bites are better than others.  And some bites have been the best I've tasted in the course of my food travels.

Here's a look at some of the tastiest bites from my week in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo:

Afternoon break on the hotel balcony
Palace Hotel Tokyo

Spanish cuisine in Tokyo

Aside from yakitori in Ootemori (the Otemachi tower) in Marunouchi, you can find the world's cuisines in the surrounding restaurants.  There's really something for everyone and for every mood.  Plus, you're in Japan.  And Japanese can make a cuisine even better than the original.  French macarons in Japan are near perfect, and I've heard even better than some of the good patisseries in Paris.  Japanized Italian food is amazing.  The pastas are perfectly al dente and saucy, and the pizzas are perfection (more on the pizzas in my Osaka posts coming up).

So, when we saw a new Japanized Spanish restaurant, we had to try it out.  Spanish food, after all, is one of our family favorites.  La Pesquera has a menu full of classic tapas and entrees, cooked with a Japanese touch - in that, some of the flavors are catered to the Japanese palate.  Overall, the experience was enjoyable in a great atmosphere with good service.  However, after trying this restaurant's interpretation of Spanish food, I prefer the traditional dishes in Spain.  In future trips back to Japan, I definitely have to try out more Spanish restaurants to get a better gauge of Spanish cuisine in Japan.  In all honesty, though, after traveling around in Spain and having a mom who cooks amazing Spanish dishes, it's a high bar when it comes to eating great Spanish cuisine.

Sangria

Chicken and more chicken in Tori Kansuke

There is way too much to eat in Tokyo.  And it seems like every time we go back, even if it was just a few months ago, there are so many new restaurants and buildings popping up.

Because of the cold winter weather, we opted to spend some meals underground so we wouldn't freeze walking around outside.  Marunouchi is one of those places in Tokyo which is perfect for underground walking.  It's a whole city down there that connects to most of the buildings in the area.

The new Otemachi Tower (Ootemori) has a great selection of restaurants with varying cuisines for varying budgets.

For a fun yakitori meal, Tori Kansuke is the spot.  It's a corner restaurant with tables low and high.  The restaurant serves specializes in classic yakitori dishes, like grilled chicken parts and karaage, as well as kamameshi rice.  Plus the drink selection has something for everyone - wine, Japanese craft beer, sakes, sochus, etc.

This is a great place to check out if you're looking for a light meal, or an epic meal where keep ordering and drinking as the night goes on.

Karaage - Japanese style fried chicken

Grilled chicken wings

Japan for the Holidays

Back in Tokyo!  This time, it was for the holidays.  The last time our family celebrated a winter-cold holiday was in New York City right in the middle of Snowpocalypse.  While snow didn't hit the cities we visited this time around, it was definitely a chilly trip.  But, Tokyo is the perfect place for any weather because of it's amazing underground world.

We stayed at the Palace Hotel Tokyo again.  It's the perfect location if you want to be based in Marunouchi and near the Tokyo Station.  Like with all our favorite cities, we revisited restaurants we enjoyed in previous visits.  Some were consistent, and others like Birdland were unfortunately inconsistent with it's quality of food.

We also discovered new eats in our vicinity.  For breakfast I was hooked on 7-11's hardboiled eggs.  It's perfectly cooked and beautifully orange.  Japanese convenience stores serve some incredible food, no joke.  And sometimes there's nothing more comforting and clean than a good plate of soba.  It's so refreshing and satisfying all at the same time.  And because it was winter, we found comfort in hot meals like Japanese curries and tsukemen.  Filling and warms you right up.

The best part about eating in Tokyo is that you walk so much everyday.  My fitness band logged in an average of 20,000 steps each day.  It makes eating all those carbs a reward.

Back in Tokyo!
View of Marunouchi from our balcony in the Palace Hotel Tokyo

Eating my way through Tokyo

When I travel I tend to let go of my health conscious eating.  I eat more salads than usual and workout double time prior to these trips.  As a result, I fly into the city a couple pounds lighter just so I can freely gain a few pounds over the next days of travel.  All to I eat carbs, fats, and sugars with no abandon.

Tokyo was certainly no exception.  I felt like I ate 5 meals a day, including soba for breakfast from 7-11 (it's so fresh and a clean way to start the day).   Every one of these "nibblings" are still ingrained in my head as some fantastically memorable bites.

The handmade ramen noodles from Ramen Street in the Tokyo Station, the tonkatsu and katsudons, curry over rice, fresh sushi and seafood from the department store grocery, a huge piece of karaage from the department store food hall, Korean food with loads of vegetables, Japanese Italian pizza done to perfection, beer beer and more beer, convenience store soba, the tastiest salted caramel crepe, the fluffiest cheesecake, and sinful croissants that are worth all the butter intake.

Whew, I cannot wait to go back to Japan and eat all this and more finds.  In the meantime I'll look fondly at these photos and workout for the next big weight-gaining trip.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Tokyo Nibblings

Yakitori at Birdland, Tokyo

Japanese cuisine has so much to offer that every restaurant focuses on its specialty.  By doing that, the specialty is of a higher quality and close to perfection.  That's the beauty of eating in Japan.

Walking from the Tokyo Station back to the Palace Hotel Tokyo, there's an "underground world" in Marunouchi.  Almost all these financial buildings have a sort of restaurant row in their basement floors. The Marunouchi Eiraku Building has a great selection of the world's cuisine on one floor.

What looked like an unassuming yakitori restaurant from the facade actually turned out to be one of our best meals in the trip and in Japan.  Birdland is one of two restaurants.  The other in Ginza has held its Michelin stars consistently.  Here at Marunouchi, the food and service are equally Michelin worthy.

Even though we waited for our table, the service from pre-beginning to end was impeccable.  The waiter spoke to my dad in Japanese apologizing for the wait and even made sure we found a comfortable waiting area.  Suddenly his limited English ability turned flawless when he and the rest of the staff served our courses with an excellent range of English describing the dishes as though we were celebrity judges on a food show.

The service was so excellent that at the end of the meal with our last course, my mom was about to take her vitamins with the cold water.  Our waiter suddenly ran by us and yelled, "Wait!"  I stopped my chopsticks thinking he meant, "Wait, there's more food or a condiment coming."  Of course that's where my mind went.  He came back in a hurry with room temperature water, explaining it's better for my mom to take her vitamins with that degree of water.  Wow, what detail and care!

Aside from the amazing service, the atmosphere (a casual but clean wooden set up) and the food were so memorable.  All 13 courses with some of the cleanest and tastiest chicken I have ever encountered.  Each course and its progression is so well thought out and detailed.  This is a meal worth paying for and worth waiting for.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Tokyo Birdland

Tempura at its best in a tempura bar

Tempura is one of those classic Japanese dishes.  In my experience, it's either been done well or mediocre.  When it's done well, the crispy batter shines with the freshness of the seafood and vegetables.  When it's done mediocre, the batter is heavy and too oily - it becomes a heavy, guilty meal.

With all the tempura I've eaten, I can really only count a handful of restaurants that do it really well.  These days, I tend not to order tempura unless I can properly guess that it'll be done well, usually in higher end restaurants where they change the frying oil more often.

I've had two amazingly memorable experiences with tempura.  One was well over 10 years ago in Japan at an ordinary tempura bar.  I can still remember each course freshly fried as we ate and savored the lightly battered fishes and vegetables.

The second time was this most recent trip back to Tokyo.  Again at a tempura bar - that seems to be the only way to go when you want tempura done the real way.

Tatsumi is the tempura bar in the Japanese restaurant in the Palace Hotel Tokyo.  It is an exclusive six-seater bar.  You definitely have to book ahead for a seat.  The whole meal is like edible performance art.  Watching the chef's artistry and craftsmanship while he plates the raw ingredients in preparation for the frying.  You're pampered with leisure as you eat one dish at a time.

Lightly battered, piping hot, and crispy while showing off the fresh taste of the seasonal vegetables and fishes.  This is another tempura bar meal for the books.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Tokyo Tempura

Highlights and Sights in Tokyo

Looking back at my photos in Tokyo, I didn't really take too many "tourist shots."  I now realize that's because we spent most of our days surrounded by food.  Those photos will be coming up in the next two weeks.

For now, here are a few highlights and sights:
-  Tokyo Station
The purpose and highlight of our food trip.  This is the busiest railway station in Japan with over 3,000 trains running through each day.  It was built in 1914 and just recently renovated with an even cooler "underground world" featuring a ramen street, countless restaurants, and a character street.  Plus, the station is connected to Daimaru department store, which like all high end department stores, has fantastic food hall floors.
-  Sophia University
A Jesuit university 100 years old and my dad's alma mater.
-  Roppongi Hills
There's a pretty large shopping center here, and another highlight is the density of extreme-luxury cars in this small area.
-  Marunouchi
The financial center of Tokyo with high rises and plenty of underground restaurants and food destinations.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Tokyo Sights

New History in the Palace Hotel Tokyo

Japan was so fun last year, we had to do it again this year!  This time we based our one week stay completely in Tokyo.

Last time, we stayed at the Peninsula Hotel in Ginza.  It's an impeccable hotel with a great location if you want to be in the Ginza vicinity.  For this trip, we wanted to focus on the newly constructed and renovated Tokyo station.

Opened just last May 2012, the Palace Hotel Tokyo has a half century history in its location next to the Imperial Palace gardens.  With its moat-side setting, the hotel sits in the "heart of Japan" located conveniently in Marunouchi.

The hotel is contemporary and luxuriously cozy.  If the city wasn't so amazing with endless eats, it would be hard to leave the spacious rooms with picturesque views every day.  From dawn to dusk to dark, the views of the greenery and the surrounding city skyline gives you peace in the midst of Tokyo's constant crowds and bustle.

There is so much to do in Tokyo that even one week didn't seem like enough.  Oh well, that's great incentive for another Tokyo trip in the near future!

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Tokyo Hotel

Non-stop eating at Mitsukoshi Ginza

Our main destination in Japan was exploring the food halls of the department stores, namely Mitsukoshi, Daimaru, and Takashimaya.  Mitsukoshi and Daimaru are a couple of the better quality ones, and it really shows in the brands and products they house.

For most of our early mornings and afternoons, we nibbled on sweets and savories around the food halls (which don't have tables or counters to eat.  You have to discreetly step aside like a tourist to eat it right then and there, go up to the designated tables and benches (at Mitsukoshi Ginza it's on the 9th floor), or take it back to your hotel to enjoy later).  All that nibbling really just made us hungry for a real meal.  The top floors of these department stores all have sit down restaurants with a large variety of cuisines.  Japanese, European, Chinese, Thai, Korean, etc.

Mitsukoshi Ginza was one of our highlights for food halls and their upper floor restaurants.  On the 2nd floor, we were repeat customers at Laduree for macarons.  I could eat boxes and boxes of their pistachio and caramel macarons.  So chewy and packed with intense flavor.

On the 9th floor, you can bring up food from the food halls and enjoy them on their tables inside and out on the garden patio.  Or, you can also take a break at the Minori Cafe.  Towards the end of the trip, my feet and legs needed a rest, so a Kirin and coffee break was perfectly refreshing out on the garden patio.

For sit-down restaurants, the upper floors have a fun variety.  There are so many options that you want to go back to try almost all of them out.  For one lunch, I squeezed in 2 meals.  The first was at Hakone Akatsuki for fresh handmade soba.  On display behind a glass window, an old soba master constantly rolls and cuts the noodles with such passion and precision.  Immediately following this first course, I went for some Japanese style pizza at Maestro Ks.  Japanese style uses their own flour for more chewiness and with their unique toppings.  This is the best pizza I've encountered around the world, but unfortunately (a huge unfortunately), the service was so rude the second time around (telling the empty restaurant was fully committed at 5pm when all we wanted was a couple pizza pies).  Why give money to a place that doesn't want to serve you?

For our final dinner, we feasted on more tonkatsu at Tonkatsu Japanese Apricot, a mid-to-higher end katsu chain.  These breaded cutlets were some of the fluffiest, flakiest, and crispiest we've tasted.  The "toro" tonkatsu is a bit too excessive with fat, but the special cut and regular cut were far above average.

If I had more time, or even just more room in my stomach, I wanted to try out a couple more places on the 11th floor - okonomiyaki and hamburg steak.  Next time!

Place your cursor above "Notes" below to read the captions for each photo.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Mitsukoshi Ginza Eats

9 years later, back at Katsukura

There are some foods that are just exceptionally better in their home country.  Burgers in the U.S., tapas in Spain, Mexican food in California (while not the "home country", Hispanics are becoming a real majority - and thereby influencing the state with their cuisine), lechon in the Philippines, xiao long bao in Taiwan and China, and tonkatsu in Japan.  Tonkatsu!  I've been dreaming about this meal since my last trip to Tokyo in 2003.  That's the last time I've had great, or even good, katsu in a restaurant.

Tonkatsu is panko breaded and deep fried pork cutlet.  So many people try to emulate this Japanese dish, but I've only had memorable katsu in Japan, never in the states or here in Manila (although, I gotta admit my dad does a pretty great job of it at home).  In 2003, my family found a tonkatsu restaurant at Takashimaya Times Square in Shibuya area in Tokyo.  This restaurant had a nature-themed atmosphere  with greenery and almost a teahouse feel.  The whole katsu experience was unlike any I've had before that.  It was the first time I grinded roasted sesame seeds for my katsu sauce, and we had unlimited cabbage and rice, too.  The katsu had flaky and crusty bread crumbs that perfectly crunched and melted with the bites of pork.  Despite our limited number of days, I wanted to eat here for both lunch and dinner.  I couldn't get enough.  It's the marker I've placed all these years as my standard of how good tonkatsu should taste.

Nine years forward, and we're back at Takashimaya Times Square.  Back at Katsukura.  Would it be just as good, just as great?  After a long day of flying and a subway commute with more walking than I cared for on a hungry stomach, I was seated in Katsukura.  The restaurant itself has changed - it's more minimalist with all that natural decor gone.  Just dark wood tables, benches, and seats.  It sort of lost some of it's charm.  This chain has expanded over the years and has opted to become a mid-level katsu restaurant.  We went there twice in 2 nights and realized this place has lost its consistency.  The first night was just as delectable as I remember.  I ordered the special cut of pork which was flaky, crunchy around that buttery pork.  Plus, I had another favorite - crab croquette.  So creamy with real crab meat inside a crunchy batter.  The second night, I ordered the regular cut of pork, as did others at my table.  Some were great, but some had gristle and excess fat.  The quality in choosing pork cutlets lacked.  Although, the crab croquette was just as excellent.  Consistency is so important, especially to keep repeat customers.  After this night, we realized that while the katsu was still better than those we've had in Manila or in the states, we needed to go around Tokyo to find more katsu places instead.

The downside of this realization: the place I fondly remembered to have to best katsu doesn't really have the best katsu anymore.  The upside of all this - we got to go around Tokyo eating more katsu!

Place your cursor above "Notes" below to read the captions for each photo.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Katsukura

The Main Event in Tokyo - Department Store Food Halls!

The main destination for all our trips to Japan - department stores.  I'm talking about the higher end department stores like Isetan, Mitsukoshi, Daimaru, and even Takashimaya, and so on.  And we don't go here to shop, not for clothes or accessories anyways.

We go for the food halls.  B1, B2, and lower.  They are our museums.  We didn't even go to any museums this trip.  It was all just about the food.  Japanese department store food halls are some of the best, if not the best, in the world.  There are sweets, savories, snacks, meals, a grocery.. it's all Japanese and Japanese-influenced/perfected European foods.

I was so fascinated with how the Japanese take a European product that's already tasty, and they make it tastier and perfect.  Take the macaron, for instance; I fell in love with Laduree and Pierre Herme macarons in Paris, and it's somehow even tastier in Japan - the same product and the same branding.  The same goes for all the other pastries like croissants, and even the breads.  I love Japanese-Italian pastas and pizzas, too, that are so distinctly Japanese influenced with a little sweetness in the pastas and a little tastier chewiness in the pizzas.

The only negative is that you can't take pictures.. for paranoia of copycats.  Gah!  My brother tried a few times and always got caught.  But, it's ok to take pictures of the food you purchase, just so long as the department store isn't in the background (as I got caught doing in Osaka).

Aside from food halls in department stores, the main train stations, like the Tokyo Station, also have an impressive spread of food sections with a high quality variety.  It's a great place to grab a bento box before taking a train trip, or for a lunch stop or snack.

These food halls clearly show that the Japanese love good quality food, they expect a high quality and have high standards, and they really know how to eat so well.

Place your cursor above "Notes" below to read the captions for each photo.

If you can't see the slide show here, check out my Flickr album: Tokyo Dept Store and Train Station Eats

Restful Nights at the Peninsula Tokyo

When my family reminisces about our past trips, we always talk about the food and the hotel - the convenient location, the service, and the clean luxury.  I love it when hotels make you feel like you're home with extra pampered service.

After days of research and scrolling through numerous Trip Advisor pictures, we chose a reputable hotel near Ginza, Peninsula Tokyo.  We've stayed at Peninsula Bangkok and Peninsula Shanghai in the past and are repeat customers because of their top notch service - their top notch Asian service and attention to detail.  Peninsula Tokyo is no exception.

If you frequent the newer Peninsula hotels around Asia, you'll notice that the floor plans are all replicated, with the local wood finishes as their unique factor.  While I love traveling and discovering new sights and tastes, it's also really nice to rest with a little bit of familiarity.

If you can't see the slideshow, check out my Flickr album: Peninsula Tokyo

Back in Tokyo after 9 years

My first memory of traveling in Asia goes back about 20 years when my family toured Tokyo in the early 90s.  I'm passionate about travelling and food because of my family's influence.  It's what we do best as a family - travel together and eat well together.  Every trip and every vacation has always been food centric.  Japan has some of my earliest and my favorite food and travel memories.  The last time I was in Tokyo was in 2003, 9 years ago.  (Fun little fact - at that time we stayed at the new Park Hyatt in Shibuya and saw Sofia Coppola walking through the lobby.  Turned out she was doing pre-production research for "Lost in Translation."..Yeah, it's been that long since we've been to Japan..)

This trip was a highly anticipated reunion with one of my favorite food cities.  Tokyo is just as I remember, and even more tasty now that I was pairing cold beer with every meal.  I'm in love with Japanese beer.  Sapporo, Asahi, and Kirin are the first beers I remember drinking.  They are all so much better on tap in Japan!  It's the freshness, the chill, AND the creamy frothy head.  Every glass of beer was perfect.


Aside from Tokyo, we also toured through Osaka and Kobe.  There are so many food destinations in Japan.  Every area has their own specialty.  This trip was like our re-starting point into discovering more of the country.  


This week I'm featuring Tokyo, next week will be Osaka, and the following week will show are day trip to Kobe.  To start it off, here are some tourist shots of the infrastructure, night lights, and scenes around Tokyo.

If you can't see the slideshow here, check out my Flickr album: Around Tokyo