I like to eat. I have always like to eat. Food has brought me great joy over the years, from my impoverished meals consisting of half a boiled cabbage with some soy sauce packets pinched from what ever family restaurant I last visited to Michelin started temples of gastronomy, where the prices even barely start to match the size most of the egos there.
Lunch, is an underrated meal. People who write about food, tend to write about dinner, but lunch can be so much more. The greatest meals are not the 3 hour sit down dinners with a couple of bottles of what ever your ego and wallet can handle, but those lunches that start with a quick martini before hand and end 24 hours later having consumed more calories than a smallish African nation and spent more money than the dictator of such a nation. Unfortunately those are few and far between.
What is more regular however, is the chance to sit down with the Lads, eat a meal that varies in quality from the mundane to the outstanding (on occasion), talk bollocks, as the Bearded One is prone to say and have an hour away from the desk/phone/email.
Tokyo is well known as the greatest city in the world to eat; more restaurants per head of population than any where; more Michelin stars than Michelin tyres on the roads; Freshly drawn snake’s blood, live monkey brain sashimi, deadly fish than can kill you if you dare to look at them whilst they are being prepared on every corner. But it is perhaps lesser known as a place to lunch. Lunches are cheap. Even in upmarket central Tokyo you can usually sit down for a good two-course lunch with a drink for around 1,000 yen. Try that in NY or London. Tokyo also has it all, the best French I have eaten has been in Tokyo, the best Italian I have eaten has been in Tokyo, also I once had a jolly good Sri Lankan curry here.
