Continued from the last post, and covering Days 09 to 18!
Day 09 dinner at a Pepper Lunch outlet near Suidobashi Station.280g Beef steak. The daughter — who has often eaten at Pepper Lunch in Singapore — doesn’t think the Pepper Lunch here is as good as the one back home: there is more menu range there, and she observed that the beef rice here in Tokyo was more oily.Day 10 Breakfast at an Excelsior Cafe opposite Suidobashi Station. The chain operates a number of cafes in Tokyo, offering breakfast sets of around 500–600 yen including a beverage. Breakfast sets are available until 11AM.The latte upgrade requires a small additional charge on top of the breakfast set price.Day 10 Lunch: we ducked into a small restaurant in Yanaka Ginza serving Chinese cuisine, and their gyozas — judging from Google reviews — were highly praised.Egg fried rice.The wife and daughter both thought the gyozas were overrated though.Day 11 Lunch in Nikko: at Ramen Bonten along the main street in central Nikko. The restaurant serves miso, soy sauce, and salt-based ramen.Miso ramen with butter and corn, thick noodles, costing 1150 yen. The portion was hearty!Day 11 Dinner at ガスト 日光店 Cafe, the only family restaurant with western and fusion cuisine that we could find along the main road stretch. The fare is meh, but the drink bar was a lifesaver!The hamburger with beef steak on the side. The latter was sinewy.Day 13 Dinner @ Kamakura Pasta in Aeon Mall. This is a family-friendly restaurant that serves a variety of pasta and also offers a drink bar.Bolognese pasta. There’s an option for fettuccine instead of spaghetti. The pasta was ordinary.Day 14 Lunch at Matsumoto Station. This small restaurant can be found on level 4 of the station where the MIDORI store is located.The restaurant serves a variety of pastas and 24cm pizzas.Mushroom and bacon pasta. The pasta was OK but nothing especially fantastic.Corn, tuna and mayo pizza. Yep, an odd combination. The range of pizza types wasn’t very wide. The best I can say about the pizzas is that they were, well, edible. I felt they could have spent a bit more time cooking in the oven. As it was, the pizzas felt a little too moist for my liking.Day 14 Dinner at Soba-dokoro Kippo, which is about a 3-minute walk from Matsumoto Castle [about 15 minutes from our hotel]. The small restaurant is run by a very friendly middle-aged couple, and the husband/chef speaks decent English.This restaurant is well-known for its hot and cold soba, and you can opt for the tempura sides too, as we did.Day 15 Lunch at Everest, an Indian-Nepalese restaurant just opposite Matsumoto Station. This was the third place we had naan this trip!The restaurant is open until 3PM for lunch, then reopens later for dinner. We came in at 2PM and were the only diners.We had their house special for lunch, called ‘Everest Lunch’. The naans were decent, and we place it ahead of Uomasala but behind Swad Bhanchha Ghar Restaurant.Day 16 Lunch was included in our trip package: this was at a restaurant at the Shiga Kogen highland resort. This is the (pork) cutlet curry rice. Ordinary-tasting, but on that cold snow activity day, it hit the right spot!The Sauce Cutlet Bowl. H had this one, while the rest of us opted for the Pork Cutlet Curry Rice above.Day 17 Lunch at Oskar Kebab, which occupies a small spot on Ameyoko Street.The Sand Kebab with beef. You can get the kebab as a set with a drink and a healthy portion of fries.And finally, Day 17 Dinner. I brought them to try Ichiran Ramen, but managed their expectations by reminding them that the ramen is OK — it’s the novelty of the dining experience. After this dinner, everyone also agreed that Ippudo Ramen is better!
That’s a wrap for our posts journaling selected dining experiences this trip. Next post: Final Notes!
