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

 

Moti TBS mae branch – 71 points

Certain states of wellbeing (or in my case, a certain state of rather unwellbeing) require certain food.  Chicken soup for a cold is an obvious one, although I still struggle to understand how watery rice porridge can be attractive to any person in any state of being, expect perhaps a somewhat deranged state.  Hangovers also demand certain food types, namely curry or a meat pie.  People may try and tell you that a litre of water of water followed by a good brisk walk is the best way to get right of a few cobwebs, but those are the sort of people that haven’t experienced the pain that comes after a 12 hour bender ending with you coming home bleary eyed at the same time as you should be heading out to the office.

 

Whilst my preferred hangover remedy is to lie in a darkened room moaning in agony, last night was a school night, and today was a school day, and going on a 12 hour bender on a Wednesday night was a school boy error; but bloody brilliant fun.

 

So for lunch there was only one choice – a good curry (given that you can’t find a decent pie in this town).  The Office Manager having seen my bloodshot eyes (and also probably being able to smell me from 100 meters away) did not dare to even consider raising her usual cuzza veto.  Physical violence being a real possibility if anyone tried to stop the dying from getting cured.

 

The food:  Perfect, just what I needed.  If there is any food that deserves to be the top candidate for a miracle food, it is the curry.  The press often gets excited about berries from the Amazon that cure cancer, fish oils that will make you super intelligent, Tuscan olive oils that will make you live to 140, but the only proven food with the power to cure a medical condition is the curry.  The A set I had came with three curries, chicken, mutton and vegetable, all of which were very good.  The vegetable curry came in a creamy milder sauce with a strong accent of cumin seeds; the chicken curry came in a slightly hotter marsala sauce; the lamb curry came in rather flavoursome sauce with I assumed to be based on a stock taken from the meat.  All of the currys had different flavour profiles, different levels of heat and different consistencies, which in a town which often serves the same sauce over different meat and tries to call it a different curry, was very good.   30 points.

 

The price:  1;150 yen for a lunch set with three curries, nan and a drink it not bad, a bit of tandori chicken thrown in though would have been nice. 5 points.

 

The volume:  The curries were a little small, but I guess I had the right amount to match the nan. 8 points.

 

The extras:  A little bit of salad on the plate, along with that sort of radioactive looking orange oniony stuff you get at curry houses here.  Neither here or there really, but a bit of something from the tandor in addition to the nan would have been nice.  8 points.

 

Bonus:  For helping me so much to get rid of my hangover, a full 20 points.

 

The details: 2-14-31 Akasaka, Minato-ku

Phone 03 3584-6640

Web site:  http://www.bento.com/rev/0918.html

Thai Suki Dining – 45 points

There is old saying in this part of town about mad dogs and the Lads. Just as a rabid infested mongrel would say (assuming he could talk as opposed to just foam at the mouth), Lapp came up with a cracker as we walked out of the air conditioned cocoon of the ‘stork in the dump’ to the searing desert of Akasaka’s pavements. It was hot, it was damm hot, it was so hot that even rabid dogs would be sensible enough to find a bit of shade. So there I was standing in this heat, sweating like a swine in an abattoir, when Lapp suggests that we should go and have a Thai curry. Having vetoed it the day before, I was not in a position to put up much of a fight to his delight. Although I strongly believe that his need for heat has something to do with being brought up somewhere north of the North Pole with only polar bears and penguins for friends. Perhaps there may even be a concept in this mystical land of the northern lights and human eating polar bears that if you do not experience an average temperature of more than zero during your life time, then you are dammed to spend eternity in a frozen wasteland.

So anyway, after swimming the approximately 5 million centimetres between the office and Thai Suki Dining, we arrived in to its every so slightly air-conditioned environment. Cheery then suggested it was a nice day so we should all sit at the outside table. Now I am all in favour of al fresco dining. Get me outside in almost any weather and suddenly the food tastes a little better, the beer goes down just that little bit more smoothly, but next to a jam packed road with taxis belching out fumes when the mercury is higher than the Crane sitting outside is not a good idea.

Anyway, getting to the point.

The food: a few more chunks of meat and the score would have been a few points higher. The green curry consisted of sauce and aubergines. Not that I don’t like aubergines, they are in season now, a great versatile vegetable, but as the sole filling for a curry, just not quite enough. The curry was average, a bit too much heat without the flavour to match, and disappointingly no where near as good as their sister store Ti Nun over in Tameike Sanno, the Lads old regular for a Thai curry hit. 23 points.

The price: 1,000 yen for as much as you can eat is not bad in this part of town. Also they had a couple of curries, a couple of other dishes as well as a bad desert, so price wise, not bad. 7 points.

The volume: Begrudgingly I cannot fault them on this as being a buffet, I could have as much as I wanted. 15 points.

The extras: There was a desert, but it was some sort of pumpkin based muck, so no credit for that. Also a couple of jugs of ice tea or coffee at a buffet isn’t too much to hope for these days is it?. 0 points.

Bonus: None, it was hot, I was grumpy, I had to sit outside, all I really needed was a caffeine hit and the meal didn’t even come with a coffee. 0 points.

Dudes, in summary, the Lads are wet behind the ears (probably as a result of the heat), lost in a new town, albeit 10 minutes walk from the old stomping ground.  We need a good curry, we are open to options.  A bit of work at it could be you, but it needs a bit of work. 

The details: 2Fl, 2-13-1 Akasaka, Minato-ku
Phone 03 5114 5507
Web site: http://www.spiceroad.co.jp/tenpo.html