Asterix – 93 points

The Gaul.  An old favourite and rightly so.  This place does by far and away the best pepper sauce to ever grace a hunk of dead flesh. The guy ruling the stove is an old surly bloke, who always appears to be in a cow of a mood and regularly abuses his staff in the foulest French a non-native has ever spoken.  There is a tendency of a lot of French restaurants to adopt the typical Gaul service style, i.e. rude, unhelpful and generally not the sort of people you want to sit down and have a pint with.  This is annoying in France, but even worse here as you always get the feeling that if the waiter was in any other restaurant, he would be formal and polite as expected.  At the Gaul however, the guy behind the counter really does appear to be a grumpy old git; he can probably get away with it because the food is so good.

 

The food:  Fantastic.  The steak is great, it is better than great, it is a force surhumaine that goes well beyond la potin magique.  The menu consists of two options, an A course for 1,500 yen and a B course for 2,000 yen.  Both courses have 3 or so options as a starter, 3 options as a main and a desert plate that contains more calories than a grown man needs for a week.  I have visited a number of times, and almost always have the steak, but the lamb there is also very good.  37 points.

 

The price:  For what you get, a bargain. 8 points.

 

The volume:  Only 1 point lost for its ability to induce sleep about half an hour after eating. 14 points.

 

The extras:  A coffee and Tokyo’s best lunch desert place.  14 points.

 

Bonus.  Full bonus points because I always leave this place happy.  This is a place to look forward to, a Friday lunch to celebrate the end of the week, the sort of lunch that if you had more than once a week (or year perhaps) you would keel over with a heart attack.  20 points.

 

The details: 6-3-16 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 5561 0980

 

The Taj – 55 points

A couple of drinks the night before had left me feeling a bit foggy.  With drinks planned for this evening with a couple of old colleagues, curry was the obvious choice.  I have written before about the incredible health benefits of a curry when trying to deal with a hangover, and following some sage advice by a cabbie, I have recently starting drinking turmeric supplement drinks before a session.  I am usually not a fan of old wives’ type potions, but I think there is something to turmeric as a hangover remedy. 

 

I had been to this place before, wasn’t overly impressed, but given that RB complained about the size of the portions at Moti, this place, which served a lunch time buffet, seemed the obvious choice. 

 

The food:  This is another quantity over quality place.  Not the best curry in town, but by no means offensive.  The buffet had a chicken curry, vegetable curry, dal curry and prawn curry.  Each had generous servings of meat.  There was also salad, popadoms, nan bread, rice, some potato balls and chutney etc. on offer.  The nan was a bit dry, but to be expected after sitting in a heating dish for a while..  22 points.

 

The price:  1,200 yen for all you can eat is a pretty good deal for this part of town. 8 points.

 

The volume:  It’s a buffet, could have as much as I wanted.  Even better, with unlimited coffee (not very good), desert (a rather bad tapioca desert) and salad (shredded lettuce, cabbage and carrot, with dressing – not imaginative in any way, but a more than satisfactory way to get some roughage). 15 points.

 

The extras:  They did have desert and coffee, but they just weren’t that good.  The popadoms and chutney was nice though.  8 points.

 

Bonus:  Lost points as there was no where suitable to wait.  Having to hang around a very crowded entrance way with people banging into from each direction was just annoying. 5 points.

 

The details: 3-2-7 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 3586 6606

Web site: http://www.thetaj-jp.com

 

Dante – 78 points

Michael Jackson’s favourite restaurant in Tokyo apparently.  Unfortunately not the recently deceased brilliant beer and whisky writer, but that kind of weird sepo that sung a few songs back in the 80’s that were sort of cool, but has been generally weird since.  Which reminds me of a joke, ‘what is the difference between Michael Jackson (the US one) and Neil Armstrong – one of them was the first man to walk on the moon, the other is just a weirdo that molests children’ (credit to RB).

 

Dante has been an old favourite.  When in need of a meat fix, the Ladds would even make the trek over the hill from our old digs all the way to Akasaka to get a protein fix here.  It was still a bit of a surprise to end up here.  Big Trouble wanted to have lunch together and apparently spent the morning searching for child friendly restaurants in Akasaka, and she came up with Dante.  They were great, had a high chair, didn’t bat an eyelid when Little Trouble decided that she would rather eat with her hands, but the idea of a three year old sitting within 20cm of a white hot metal plate and some bloke doing a dance with knives wouldn’t have been my choice of a child friendly joint.  Still though, I am not the sort of guy that would turn down dead, rotting flesh

 

The food:  The meat here is not prime grade Kobe beef, 40 day aged prime New Zealand Rib Eye (which, in my opinion tastes about as good as there is, perhaps something to do with the cows eating grass all year long as opposed to dead sheep and what ever other muck is in the grain that animals are fed elsewhere), it is rather pinkish looking unidentified meat – probably Ocker.  This is definitely a place where quantity prevails over quality.  Still though, a very pleasant way to get a fill of protein.  30 points.

 

The price:  I always end up spending around 2,500 yen, which is expensive for lunch, but perhaps not expensive to leave with a gut full of meat.  A Friday special, after pay-day type joint, but the sort of place you always look forward to visiting and are happy, if a little sleepy, after visiting. 5 points.

 

The volume:  So long as you order the large steak (at a mammoth, for Japan, 300g) and another dish, such as the ginger pork or chicken, you leave stuffed. 15 points.

 

The extras:  No coffee unless you enter after 1pm, also no dessert.  Still, three different sauces for the meat, including a very tasty tomato one, and rice, salad and soup.  Not bad.  8 points.

 

Bonus: For the shear weirdness of having photos of Micky J on the wall (as opposed to Off the Wall), along with the fact that this is an old favourite. 20 points.

 

The details: 2-14-9 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 3583 5460

Web site: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g139000/

Housen – 55 points

How many roads must a man walk down, before he finds the perfect lunch.  In a Bob Dylan sort of way, Cherry led us down (or up as the case was) one of the roads less visited in our new stomping ground.  Down Hitotsugi dori and turn left at the corner where Sam and Dave’s and up the road.  Today’s was about being disappointed, not bitterly disappointed like every true rugby fan is at the final of a World Cup (except the magnicent one in 1987, the only one that really counts), but just a mild feeling that things were not as good as they could have been; perhaps with no particular reason why.

 

Sam and Dave is one of those places.  I used to go there every time I was in the Kansai area, brilliant place, packed with cheap booze and even cheaper women.  A place you would always leave with a smile on your face and something smiling on your arm.  When I heard that they were going to open in Tokyo I was happy; when I heard that they were opening in Akasaka (and not the hell hole of the Pong) I was even more happy.  Every time I have been in there though, there crowd has not quite been enough, in fact it has been near empty.  For a dive to be fun it needs to be crowded, perhaps S&D’s could have moving partitions so even if there are on ten people in the joint, they can all feel squashed together like they should at a dive.  For every additional ten people in the room, they could even move the walls together another 10cm, sort of like that scene in Star Wars where Luke and the Princess are in the garbage compactor and as the walls get closer and closer, you know that they are also going to get closer (although at that stage, I am betting that not many people thought it would be in an incestuous way).  One of Tokyo’s greatest, sorry perhaps Tokyo’s greatest ever dive, the Rolling Stone (R.I.P.) lost almost all of its magic when it moved to a larger place.  The whole point of the place was being so squashed into a bunch of other sweating maniacs that you could not tell whose limb belonged to who.  The only problem with the new Stones is that it is not the old Stones, and therefore for anyone who knew the old Stones, just not enough.  I am sure to a younger generation, it is a great proper dive, but to us old timers, we know that the young’uns of today never had it as good as we did.

 

Back on track.  Housen was not a dive, not was it overly crowded.  It was a rather attractive looking Japanese restaurant.  It had a sort of stone path on a stone garden leading from the road to the door; an impressive single piece of lumber used as a counter for at least eight people; waitresses wearing Kimonos (which must be, next to a gimp suit, one of the most uncomfortable get-ups for doing what is a rather active job); a well priced menu that looked very tasty; all in all, it looked very good. 

 

The food:  I ordered the teppanyaki set (1,300 yen), which looked very good, bowl of rice, bowl of miso soup, a nimono dish of chicken and winter melon; some pickles and a cook-at-your table plate of bean sprouts, white asparagus, mushrooms and some very well marbled beef.  The problem was, after everything looking so promising, the food was not bad, but just not that exciting.  The beef was very tender, but perhaps lacking in flavour a bit, the sauce it was cooked in was a sort of sweetish soy-sauce based sauce, not bad, but just not that impressive.  The rice was nice, the pickles were a standard selection of takuwan and kuri asazuke.  I wanted to go wow, but I didn’t.  The food is by no means bad, it was just not as good as the lead up had lead me to want to believe.  22 points.

 

The price:  Not bad for what you got. 7 points.

 

The volume:  Although the serving was not huge, extra rice was on offer.  I guess I can’t really complain. 9 points.

 

The extras:  No desert, no caffeine, which are the essentials for scoring high on extras, but for a Japanese style place, in line with expectations I guess.  7 points.

 

Bonus:  Walking back to the office, RB asked what I was going to give the place.  After a bit of debate, I said probably about 55 points, i.e. it wasn’t bad, would not object to going there again, but it is not going to be the meal I order on my death bed.  Lapp said that I was doing the equivalent of sticking my finger in the air and coming up with a score as opposed to conducting a thorough analysis based on the categories set out above.  Today that is what I have done, so to come up with the score which I reckon is about right: 10 points.

 

The details:  Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 5545 4161

Web site: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/p868700/

 

Hostellerie Suzuki – 56 points

In memory of what happened on a date that shares the same date (at least in terms of day and month) many years ago, the lads decided it would be appropriate to raise a couple of glasses to fallen heroes near one of Tokyo’s well known (notorious) centres of remembrance, Yasukuni Jinja.  Unfortunately, whilst the location chosen to remember the history that brought us where we are today was the lovely and high recommendable Kudan Kaikan, due to the existence of a very reasonable nomi hodai (i.e. all you can drink) plan on the menu, none of us are in any position (or until at least a couple of days after, any condition) to give any comment on how the place was.  Photos of the evening suggest however that the local wildlife was rather pretty.

 

Which leads me on to lunch, which at least, if not more memorable, I can remember more about.  Hostellerie Suzuki is a very nice French restaurant, just up the road and almost opposite what is currently my top French restaurant for lunch in Tokyo (more about that soon).  I had visited this place before and had a very tasty bit of lamb with Big Trouble, so it was with hope that we ventured out into the oven for a bit of Frog.

 

The food:  Not quite as good as the first time round, but still not bad.  RB had I both went for the homemade bacon, on a salad bed.  The bacon was good, but a little overcooked.  As a result of my recent interest in charcuterie, much credit goes to a restaurant that will make the effort of curing its own bacon, although to really show off a home made bacon, it needs to be cooked to the stage where there is a little crispiness around the edges, but the meat is still soft so that when you bite into it the flavours of the cure come through.  The place can do better, I know as the lamb I had there a month or so ago was fantastic, which is saying something a city that doesn’t generally do lamb well.  25 points.

 

The price:  About 1,500 yen for a lunch that comes with a salad or soup, main, bread and a choice of three deserts from the desert buffet. 6 points.

 

The volume:  Not quite there, although extra bread was provided (on request). 7 points.

 

The extras:  Coffee and a desert buffet, with good deserts.  Almost perfect, the only lost points were due to the coffee being a bit small and the desert buffet being limited to a choice of three cakes.  13 points.

 

Bonus: Sorry, but not having the air conditioner working properly at this time of year almost gets you no bonus points, the only redeeming point was that some workman was in there trying to fix it.  Still French is generally not the type of cuisine that goes well with buckets of sweat, unless there is a well-chilled bottle of something pink to go with it, hopefully next to a beach. Still though, we will visit again, hopefully when the heat has dissipated a bit, the bonus score should be a bit higher as this place deserves more than 56 points.  5 points.

 

The details: B1F Maeda Building 5-4-17 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 3585 6080

Web site: http://www.hos-suzuki.com

 

OGO Ono-loa Hawaii – 64 points

The Sepos (RB’s term) are generally not known for their culinary expertise.  Admittedly they like to talk about it a fair bit, but at the end of the day they are just not that good at it.  They can talk all they like about their appreciation of food (and everybody knows that they like to talk a fair bit), but this is the country whose greatest offerring to global cuisine is hot milk with a hint of coffee flavour (come on *$s, that is not coffee) and a real estate company famous for its cheap hamburgers, which I am guessing were the invention of an immigrant from that other bastion of fine cooking, Scotland.  To support my claim, I would suggest taking a look at this great site (http://fxcuisine.com/default.asp?language=2&Display=129) for its explanation of artesian Jock cooking.

 

Anyway, enough bad mouthing a country with more nuclear bombs that Michelin stars.  There is one thing the Sepos do well, and that is pigs.  They can create food from a pig that no other country can get close to.  Whilst the Portuguese can do great things with a whole pig that deserve due credit, and I am sure the Chinese can use every bit of it in some way, they are no match for the yanks and what they can do to a swine.  Southern style ribs, dripping in a sauce that makes you want to use the rib as a spoon and eat the sauce direct; Mr. Brown & Mrs. White sandwiches of pork so soft and tasty it could be used as a pillow; bacon, that essential food stuff that can be abused so much (Danes in particular should be banned from ever touching a pig; perhaps we could adopt a sort of kosher eater for pigs, pigs should not be touched, processed, baconed or eaten by anyone with any connection to Denmark), can reach levels in the Big ‘ol US of A that it really reaches anywhere else.

 

The only state in the union to proudly bear Her Majesty’s insignia on its flag also can do great things to a pig, most famously its Kalua Pig.  I was recently in the Islands and had some steak, which was OK, but over priced and not that exciting; some fish that was fine, next to the beach, romantic and all, but not a shade on what you would get here; most other stuff tasted as if it had come out of a factory that uses by-products of the oil industry to produce human consumable products (sorry I am not going to call such muck food).  One of the more memorable meals I had was a loco-moco using Kalua pig instead of the usual hamburger in a dive of a bar a couple of blocks back of the beach with dodgy looking crew-cut boys from Ohio trying to chat up the hookers whose skirts were shorter in length than my belt was wide; real comfort food, rice, with a heap of shredded pork on top covered with a smallish lake of gravy and finished off with a fried egg.

 

The food:  So the test for today was, would Ogo’s pig, be as good as the pig in a dive on the back streets of Waikiki.  And low and behold the answer is yes.  The pork was great, flavoursome, dripping with just enough oil to be moist, but not overbearing, ripped into more pieces that Roy, Siegfried’s mate.  31 points.

 

The price:  Small portion 800 yen, medium portion 900 yen and large portion 1,000 yen.  I instinctively went for the large portion and it was a good size.  A lot of places skimp in the meat in their large portions and try and fill you up with the cheap carbs, but Ogo did not do that.  A good generous serving of meat, the way it should be.  8 points.

 

The volume:  I arrived hungry, I left full, of meat, I was happy.  Oink oink. 13 points.

 

The extras:  100 yen for the desert set, a coffee and 4 ice cream balls, not much other than that, but I had my caffeine and sugar hit so I was happy.  8 points.

 

Bonus: .The place is obviously an old hostess bar, where the guys have put up a couple of Hawaiian posters, some grass on the walls a fish tank and try to pass off as being like a local beach shack in the Islands, doesn’t quite work, but I found it kind of cute, in a high school festival stand type of way.  What didn’t work was the sound system.  They claim to have Tokyo’s largest selection of Hawaiian karaoke songs (although I would try and hide that point if possible), but the sound system just didn’t work.  In the days of digital radio from any planet within a few gillion light-years available from the net, why their Hawaiian sounding radio channel had so much static was beyond me.  Surely they are not picking it up by shortwave in this day and age.  If so, bonus points for being retro cool, but I doubt that was the case.  5 points.

 

The details:  Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 3585-5337

Web site: http://www.ogo-onoloahawaii.com/

Kyosuke – 38 points

Simplicity in the search for perfection should never be overlooked.  Some of the simplest foods are the best, a slice of perfect fish, raw, uncooked and unadulterated; a Naples pizza, a perfect base with a dash of tomato sauce etc.  But is soba such a food?  I am a fan of soba, and have had many memorable meals, but if simplicity is one of the routes to sublimity (and yes, I made that word up, but I am sure you get the jIst), the soba must be one of the hardest paths.  Although it is not uncommon for certain other ingredients (such as normal wheat or potato starch) to be added to the mix, for many purists soba should be made from 100% buckwheat.

 

Now I am not going to dismiss a grain (actually ground seeds from a flower I think), but there is not that much to soba, no gluten as in wheat, no enzymes do much to change things, not fermentation and drying process that gives us the god of grains, malted barley, not even a bit of added mould to coax out the flavours as used with rice.  The only thing added then is a bit of water and call me a philistine, but even if the water is from some magical spring that gives eternal youth, it is still only good old H2O and probably not likely to make a huge impact on the final taste.

 

Even old time locals who rave about soba almost always praise it not for its taste, but for its texture.  The ultimate praise given in respect of a good soba restaurant is koshi ga yoi or nodogoshi ga yoi,.i.e. the texture is firm or it goes down the throat well.  I appreciate good soba, hopefully as much or perhaps even a little more that the next guy, but given that it is a food whose ultimate praises are about its texture as opposed to its taste, I cannot see those men from the tyre company in there anytime soon to check it out for their red book.

 

The food:  The soba was good.  Not the best I have ever tasted, but still pretty good.  I had mine with a duck soup, which was based on a fish stock with a good citrus accent (yuzu I guess).  25 points.

 

The price:  1,680 yen for a small plate of noodles and a small bowl of soup containing 4 slices of duck is taking the piss.  More expensive ingredients perhaps, but we are talking about a meal made out of buckwheat flour, hardly up there with gold as a precious commodity. 2 points.

 

The volume:  Sorry, but if you are going to price you self at over 1,500 yen for lunch, you need to ensure that your punters leave satisfied, and I wasn’t. 4 points.

 

The extras:  Soba yu was about it, and that comes as a given with soba, and also is something that would be thrown out anyway.  OK, I know that in the naughties, being ecological and using things which would otherwise be thrown out is all good, but at the end of the day, this is just the water that boiled the noodles in.  Come on, I don’t think anyone would be impressed if a spaghetti house did the same.  2 points.

 

Bonus: House in a nice old house, kind of felt Japanese; also the tea was soba-cha, which I guess is worth a couple of points for keeping in nature of the place.  Lost points though for not turning up with a fork/bowel for Little Trouble until we asked.  There is a rant welling up inside me as to why young Japanese female waitresses generally don’t have a clue about how to deal with child customers.  The next time a waitress carries a hot meal over the head of Little Trouble, I swear that I am going to take the hot meal and pour it all over the waitress in question.  This is something that older (i.e. probably have kids) waitresses never seem to do. 5 points.

 

The details: 3-10-7 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 3505 5338

Web site: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/a970700/

 

West Park Cafe: Akasaka – 68 points

 

By the heat of the debate over today’s lunch about what extras are needed to make a hamburger complete, you would almost think a slice of cheese or accompanying soft drink were more important than the hamburger itself.  Lapp in particular seemed to take it personally that they would charge extra for a coke and slice of cheese; making bold statements that a burger is not a burger unless is had cheese and came with a coke.  For me so long as the meat is tasty and there is some bread on the same plate then I am satisfied, but I guess if I was forced to eat nothing but herrings for the first 20 years of my life, I would feel that I had a right to be demanding about what I ate after that.

 

RB, true to style though, came up with a great one, the ‘Hobo Burger’, which he described as consisting of two McDonalds hamburgers squished together with a layer of chips and tomato sauce between.  If 20 years of herrings had an impact on Lapp; one can only guess the impact of a similar amount of time at an English boarding school had on RB.  The mind boggles at what would drive a man to take bad food and deliberately making it worse in order t eat.

 

The food:  Very good hamburger, well seasoned high quality meat.  Even better is that they will cook it to order; when offered the choice, I will always tell the waiter to cook it rare and make sure that it is really rare.  In their case, the followed orders and it came back almost raw, which it the way I like it, but really does need a glass or three of something strong to act as a disinfectant.  Note to self, when eating beef for lunch, the need to be an alpha male is less than in the evenings (especially if stone cold sober) and in such circumstances, it is OK (if only ever so slightly girly) to order beef done medium rare.  The fries were great though. 31 points.

 

The price:  Had to knock off a couple of points for the rather high charges for slices of cheese/avocado/bacon etc.  If the restaurant can put together a lunch of soup (or salad), good fries, a good size burger and coffee for under 1,300 yen it is doing well, but after such a performance, it is pretty hard to justify 300 yen for a measly slice of cheese, and 500 yen for a can of coke is frankly taking the piss. 5 points.

 

The volume:  Good size burger, the patty must have been at least half a pound, fair serving of chips, the only thing it lets itself down with is the couple of leaves that masquerades as a salad.  Let it be noted that the first restaurant in Akasaka that serves a proper size side salad will get the full 20 bonus points. 12 points.

 

The extras:  Endless coffee was much appreciated, evening if it did leave me bouncing around for the rest of the afternoon.  RB and Lapp were not impressed about the meal not coming with coke or cheese though.  5 points.

 

Bonus:  For the rareness of the meat and three large cups of coffee, 10 points.  For stocking Metropolis, which is getting hard to find in Akasaka an extra 5 points.. 15 points.

 

The details:  2-14-3 Nagatacho, Chiyoda-ku

Phone 03 3580-9090

Web site: http://maysfood.com/wpc/wpc_akasaka.html

Kyushu Jangara Ramen – 78 points

Yesterday, Cherry needed a fix, there was only one thing on her mind.  So as we stepped out of our air-conditioned paradise into the burning sun’s rays, she suggested we walk to the other end of town for a Jangara.  Not even one of the big people, who told her that it was all boarded up could set her mind at rest.  Like the alcoholic that so desperately sucks on an empty whiskey bottle (the use of the ‘e’ being deliberate on the basis that whisky drinker, by definition, would have sufficient taste and decorum to avoid becoming an alcoholic, maybe a drunk, but not an alcoholic; the critical difference being that alcoholics go to those awful meetings, “Hello my name is Chad and I am alcoholic”, whereas a drunk would never do that), Cherry needed a fix.  So off we went to Jangara, only to find it boarded up.  The lessons to be learnt from this sad experience being, first, don’t wear a blue shirt in summer if stepping outside, and second, that every once in a while one should listen to the big people, as they are usually, or at least on occasion can be, correct.

 

As a result, whilst I managed to fix a recent pizza craving at Salvatore, Cherry was still desperate for her fix and methadone was not enough.  So today we ventured out into the desert of Akasaka, to Jangara’s new store, which thankfully retains the same inexplicable smell of the old store, but is only a stone’s throw from the office.

 

And low and behold, despite the use of a different well to make its famous soup (or a slightly different part of the Tokyo water system), it still tasted like the soup I knew and loved from the old store.

 

Noodles:  Proper Kyushu style noodles, thin, firm to the bit, not overly absorbent, which is perfect for the soup.  Cooked to request in terms of firmness, couldn’t ask for much more.  26 points.

 

Soup:  In terms of taste, one of the best, a perfect layer of fat on top making you know that this is not health food, this is food for the junkie.  The so-called milder version is so thick you could stand your chopsticks up in it (I am not sure whether this is the same as standing up chopsticks in rice, but guess this is not a good idea), the thicker version you need a spoon to eat on a good day, a jackhammer on other days.  The only reason that this soup does not get the full 30 points is that it has a smell that just doesn’t seem right.  I can’t place it other than the Jangara smell, but it is a rather unique aroma to say the least.  28 points.

 

Topping:  As good as it come, wide choice of pretty much what ever you could imagine on top of a bowl of soup and noodles, although Lapp was of the view that the fishy flavour of the spicy cod roe and ramen did not work.  I went for a kakuni and egg topping, which was great.  Three big chunks of the most flavoursome kakuni, which must have been boiling away well before they moved to the new location; a couple of slices of chashu, that fell apart as you looked at them, balancing the firmer texture of the kakuni, a generous amount of kikurage, freshly cut scallions, ginger, garlic paste and sesame seeds at the table to adjust the flavour during one’s expedition to the bottom of the bowl.  19 points.

 

Bonus:  I want to give this place the full 20 points, just because the make the best ramen within the Yamanote line, but I will restrain myself in the interests of being objective.  There is no real place to queue (and there is always a queue at Jangara), which means that you must stand out in the heat on the street at this time of year, which is hot, too hot.  The seating is a bit smaller that the old place and they have lost the tables making it difficult for a group of more than 1 to sit together.  5 points.

 

In summary, a whisker better than Akasaka Ramen, the second best ramen shop in Akasaka.

 

The details: 2-15-15 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Web site:  http://www.kyusyujangara.co.jp/shops/akasaka.htm

Pizza Salvatore – 63 points

I once saw a great interview with Gordon Ramsey, in which when asked about whether RamGord was behind the stoves in any of the restaurants branded with his name, he went into a great rant about whether the journo actually expected that Giorgio Armani had personally stitched the Armani suit the journo was wearing.  He had a good point perhaps, but perhaps not a perfect point.

 

There are certain types of food (and perhaps certain particular restaurants) where the food may depend on the actual physical skill of the person preparing it.  It is often said that good sushi depends just as much on the chef’s knowledge as his actual physical technique in making it; hands that are too small, too warm or too week just cannot physically make the perfect bed of rice on which to lay the perfectly cut bit of dead protein.

 

Perhaps pizza may be the same.  I once had a discussion with a pizza chef from the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, who said that in training to become a pizza chef, a process that takes a number of years apparently, the first year was spend doing nothing but kneading the dough.  In the case of a pizza restaurant using a wood fired oven (that gets extra points, especially given that they appear to be using hand-cut oak to fire it), it surely takes a number of years experience to get a feeling for how the oven is operating at any one time; how hot the floor is, how hot the walls are, whether extra wood needs to be added, whether there is too much smoke in the over, and most importantly how long the pizza should be left in to reach the perfect state where the dough is perfectly cooked and the cheese, just starting to bubble.

 

Salvatore is by and large my favourite pizza joint in Tokyo.  The person behind the Salvatore chain is a guy called Makoto Onishi, one of the only (perhaps the only) non-native to win the Naples Pizzafest competition.  I am sure he is good, if the best of Naples say that he is good, he must be very good.  And whilst the pizzas at Salvatore are very good, it was clear that he was not wielding the peel today.

 

The food:  A very good pizza, the tomato sauce had the perfect balance of tangyness and fruityness, the mozzarella was buffalo and generously applied; the olive oil was seeping through the pizza onto the plate leaving a nice puddle to be mopped up.  But the bottom was burnt.  I love this place, I love their pizzas, I was looking forward to one today, but the burnt flavour just cuts through everything.  I have faith in this place, I will visit again, but the guy with the peel was not having the perfect day when he put my lunch in the oven .  25 points.

 

The price:  1,400 yen for a pizza, drink, cold soup and a couple of leaves masquerading as salad (nice dressing though)  5 points.

 

The volume:  Good size pizzas, a bit more in the way of salad leaves would be nice though, it is not as though lettuce is expensive at this time of year. 10 points.

 

The extras:  A salad, soup, drink and pizza in the set is not bad, but surely a salad can be more than a couple of lettuce leaves.  8 points.

 

Bonus: For using a wood fired oven, and burning proper hard grain wood in it – 20 points.  For not being able to use the thing properly – minus 5 points. 15 points.

 

The details: 1 Fl Prudential Plaza, 2-13-10, Nagatacho Chiyoda-ku

Phone 03 3500 5700

Web site: http://www.salvatore.jp/