The best things I ate in Tokyo

The only problem I’ve had so far in this country is that everything I’ve eaten has been incredible, making it difficult for meals to truly stand out. Perhaps this honeymoon phase will end, but at the moment, nearly everything I have tried tastes amazing and is very reasonably priced. I will be proud of myself when I can definitively say that a bowl of ramen is better at one place than the other, that the soba here is better than there, etc. The only way to get to this point is by trying everything and trying the same items at different spots. I’m not there yet.

I am eager to return to Tokyo. I didn’t spend nearly enough time there nor put in enough effort to ensure I was making the most of my brief stint. In Tokyo, meals cost me slightly less on average than in most American cities, but I was presented with better options and higher quality at every corner. The main difference in price point was that I could get a bowl of soba or ramen better than any I’ve had in the US for very cheap*. The same can not be said about meals from higher quality restaurants and touristy locations like the fish market.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the portion sizes here feel smaller, but not at all inadequate. It's probably for the best considering I have a pretty impressive appetite and won’t stop eating until I physically can’t anymore. I might turn into a lean hunk of meat with this forced moderation. Who knows?

Enough blabbering, here are the highlights:

Tonkatsu at Kanda Ponchiken

This Tonkatsu takes the top spot so far. It’s about a 20-minute walk northeast of the Imperial Palace, and I have been dreaming of this golden and succulent piece of meat ever since. I do think Tonkatsu is easier for a Western palate to enjoy. After all, the dish's origin was inspired by French veal cutlets. However, instead of a shallow fry like a cutlet, Tonkatsu is deep fried like the Japanese tempura cooking style. It results in a surprisingly light feeling in your mouth for having been dunked in oil and leaves behind a perfectly golden and flakey crust.

We opted for the more expensive pork loin lunch set, with meat hailing from Japan as opposed to Mexico, and it came out to $20. The pork was served with kimchi for the table, miso soup, and a heap of cabbage. This restaurant is featured on the Michelin guide, so it’s not a low-key spot, but I would still recommend it to anyone based on price and quality. The pork was inexplicably juicy. The crust was perfectly crisp. I will chase this for the rest of my life.

A tuna carcass at the entrance of Tsukiji fish market.

Uni and Oysters at the Tsukiji Fish Market.

The Tsukiji Fish Market was by far the most touristy location I found myself at during my time in Tokyo, and it’s easy to understand why. As soon as you enter the labyrinth of several small vendors selling their catch from the day, you are surrounded by white people like me gawking at the Toro and Uni that would cost a limb at any restaurant in America. I was overwhelmed by the sound of sizzles from prawn skewers cooking over coals and the efforts of vendors to lure me into their stalls like the lobsters lured into their traps not too long ago. There was a distinct lack of queasy fish smell because everything here was likely brought in that same day.

I tried the largest oyster of my life. It was at least 3 times the size of any East Coast oyster I’ve ever encountered which made for getting it down in one slurp a bit of a challenge. I enjoyed it with a dash of yuzu juice to provide some acidity to the briny and oceanic taste. I then had the pleasure of watching my friends taste uni for the first time. I’ve heard Uni described as the peanut butter of the ocean, I think because of the creamy texture. I’m not sure if I love that comparison simply because I associate peanut butter with the comfort of a pantry and a warm piece of toast, and these are literally the gonads of a spiky sea creature. Regardless, both make me happy.

Other things I ate at the market were: white strawberries, raw prawn in a Szechuan sauce, and several pieces of nigiri. The strawberries were awesome. At around ¥2000 for a bag they were expensive, but I’m glad I tried them because I have always seen them on the Internet. They lacked the tartness of strawberries you would find in a grocery store, and they coated your mouth with a subtle almost candy-like sweetness. They were better than any supermarket strawberry I’ve ever had, but do not top most strawberries I’ve had from a farmers market. I ate the raw prawn just because I liked the vendor a lot, he was funny, and I had never tried prawn in the raw. The flavor was dominated by the spicy sauce, but I was a little bit unsettled by the fibrous raw texture. The head juices, my favorite part of cooked prawns, tasted comparable to the uni I had eaten not long before. There are few places I’ve been that I can say for sure had better nigiri than this market, but I certainly could come up with a large list of worse places. The sheer abundance of the sliced fish on top of a mound of rice was impressive. It was like 800 Whole Foods sushi sections worth, sans the unease I get when buying from a grocery store.

The bottom line is, you have to see this place. Go on an empty stomach and try everything. Don’t be afraid.

Seared Fois Gras drizzled with a shoyu sauce on top of Daikon.

The dish featured above is far and away the most opulent thing I’ve consumed so far, and it was pretty damn good. It came as the 2nd of 6 courses at the teppanyaki restaurant Mikasa Kaikan Yamato. It was the best course in my opinion, outdoing a ball of crab meat and cream cheese, a French onion soup, seared oysters and mushrooms in a “curry” sauce (it tasted and looked more like beurre blanc, I was confused), a strip of wagyu complemented by seared vegetables, and a yuzu sorbet.

My favorite part of this dining experience was seeing French techniques blended with Japanese ingredients. Daikon is everywhere in Japan, and its crunchy flesh acted as a perfect canvas to complement the sumptuous foie gras. The shoyu sauce drizzled over the two ingredients and completed the dish with a Japanese punch of flavor that I found to be mouthwatering.

I was unaware of Teppanyaki as a style of cuisine before I got here. Teppanyaki is cooked in the same setting as what we Americans call hibachi, with a propane-powered searing hot piece of metal that diners eat around. I knew that hibachi came from Japan but I was for some reason under the impression that it evolved to what it is in America. There are notable differences, the biggest being a complete absence of theatrics. I was spared the embarrassment of missing a piece of shrimp flung into my mouth just to leave a stain on my white shirt, and my eyebrows remained intact without an onion volcano to burn them off. Fun was substituted for the quality of ingredients. Sake filled in the gaps.

A bowl of cold soba in Tokyo Station

I have no idea where exactly I purchased this Soba. I know that it was in Tokyo Station, I know that after a big night out my health bar was running low, I know that I ordered it from a machine, I know that someone had to help me order it from that machine, I know that I had no idea what I was ordering, and I also know that it only cost me about USD 7.

To my memory, this is my first time eating soba. I didn’t know the noodles were going to arrive cold, but I’ve since tried them warm in a bowl of broth and I prefer the chilled version. I think it preserves their perfect al-dente nature. This train station order has held up against higher-end places that I’ve been to since. Meals like this get me excited about the food in this country because I think you could charge $18 for this on a corner restaurant in Manhattan and people would be lining up out the door. I got this in two seconds from a machine in a train station. You just don’t get that in the USA.

Up Next: What I’ve eaten in Nozawa Onsen, and how Japanese ski food holds up against American ski food. Spoiler: Japan is winning so far. By a lot.

*The Japanese yen (¥) is currently at the most favorable exchange rate to USD in about 30 years.