Yearly Archives: 2016

May 2016. Strikes two and three for Michelin in this town. We were staying in the lovely residential North Kyoko neighbourhood of Kita-ku. It’s a grid of small streets, lots of modest but many traditional Japanese homes, and a nice … Continue reading →

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Sympathizer. Grove, New York, 2015. Kindle electronic version. F/5/16. A pretty dependent fiction addict, I troll the literary prizes so I don’t miss anything new and exciting. Part of my response to this book (which I … Continue reading →

May, 2016 Our first night in town, we went looking for “bib gourmand”, presented as good value in the online Michelin site. This place qualified and was within walking distance of our AirBnB, so we went for it. It was … Continue reading →

May 2016. On this Tokyo trip, this was our big culinary climax. Searching online, I was condemned to guesswork using somebody else’s idea of flavour and value as one always is. I was looking for something with a bit of Michelin-style splash … Continue reading →

May 2016. This place was highly recommended by TripAdvisor as a hot prospect tempura spot. Like Aoi Marushin – although it was a cut above – it proved to be another fast-food-style production kitchen popping out deep-fried stuff we wouldn’t … Continue reading →

May 2013. Tempura appears to cover a pretty wide range of treatments and quality in Tokyo, based on our small sample of three or four places. At Ginza Ten’Ichi we were treated, and charged, like royalty, and the food was … Continue reading →

Cunningham, Michael. A Home at the End of the World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1990. HarperCollins e-books edition. F; 5/16. I was enchanted enough by The Hours, Cunningham’s most successful novel, to take a look at something else … Continue reading →

Sante, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1991. NF; 4/16. Sante was part of the post-hippy bohemian crowd that hung out on the Bowery in the 1970s, associated with the club … Continue reading →

May 2016. I’ve been to one other Tokyo tempera restaurant a couple of years ago, Abe, which I enjoyed. This one served flawless product, but turned out to be ultra-traditional and very high priced. We identified it through internet search … Continue reading →

May 2016. In our continuing quest to expand our understanding of Japanese cuisine, we identified tonkatsu as promising because it involves pork, panko, deep frying, and a savoury sauce. Various sources identified this chain, its main branch located on the … Continue reading →