Mos Burger

Sometimes you just need a burger. After a long day of sightseeing, we ended up at Tokyo Tower for dinner and treated ourselves to Mos Burger – Japan’s native burger chain. Playing on the novelty of a store at the Tower, Mos Burger only offers the ‘Tokyo Tower Burger’ at this location – a 14 layer beast that apparently is the chain’s tallest burger. Obviously we had to try it. I was quite impressed when the burger came out that it actually looks like the advertised picture, something that fast food rarely does in Australia. The layers included two buns, onion rings, lettuce, two beef patties, mayonnaise, tomato, two layers of chopped onion, ketchup, bacon and two layers of a hot sauce that added a really nice kick to the whole thing. The patties were thin by Australian standards, but had good flavour for a non-gourmet restaurant and the onion rings added some great texture. The toughest part was working out how to eat it – there was no way to squish it down and get a taste of all layers at once without some serious oozing. Not elegant, but tasty and very filling, plus the added novelty factor, of course.

Mos Burger, 4 Chome-2-8 Shibakoen, Minato, Tokyo Japan                  http://www.tokyotower.co.jp/eng/foottown/2f_food_07.html

Ladurée

I’ve been to a Ladurée salon de thé in Paris, but when I tried to visit the Ginza one while living in Tokyo in 2009, I couldn’t get a table (they don’t take reservations). On this visit, I was very strategic about when we went (5pm on a weekday) and we only waited 10mins to get a seat – winning! This was Mum’s belated Mother’s Day gift – we started out with a pot of Thé Eugenie each, served in silver teapots with pastel coloured cups and saucers. The black tea had a fruity fragrance, with strawberry, cherry, raspberry and redcurrant part of the blend. It wasn’t as overpowering as some of the other options (there are samples to sniff while you wait for a table) and we enjoyed every sip. For cake, I picked the Ispahan – a large macaron filled with fresh raspberries, lychee and rose-flavoured cream. The flavours all worked so well together and every mouthful was delicious – the macaron shell was crisp, the raspberries were very fresh and the cream spiked with lychee was just as decadent as you would expect. If you get a seat by the window you can people-watch while enjoying your luxury sweets. Swoon.

Ladurée, salon de thé, 4-6-16 Ginza, Chuo, Tokyo Japan                                             http://www.laduree.jp/

Ujicha Gion Tsujiri

After an amazing dinner on Pontocho-dori, we wandered across the river to Gion, Kyoto’s famous geisha quarter, also famed for its tea stores. I had a real craving for icecream, and was a bit sad to see so many stores closed for the night along Shijo-dori, the main street. But when I spotted a couple of people walking along with soft serves in hand, we kept going and eventually found Ujicha Gion Tsujiri serving take aways. Yes! I hadn’t had many traditional-flavoured icecreams on this trip, so I picked the more exotic of the two options – hojicha, rather than the standard matcha. Hojicha is a green tea that’s been roasted over charcoal, giving it a more complex, smoky flavour. This was evident even from the colour, which was more a khaki than bright green. I absoutely loved it. The flavour had more bitterness than your standard icecream, but the roasted flavour really added a lot of depth and it tasted like what I imagine tea with cream would be like. The texture was rich and creamy, as soft serves should be, and I devoured the little cupful happily.

Ujicha Gion Tsujiri, 573-3 Gionmachi Minamigawa Shijo Dori Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto http://www.giontsujiri.co.jp/gion/store/kyoto_gion/#_=_

Gogyo

I remember my first meal at Gogyo very well – it was first time I really fell in love with ramen. Here wasn’t just an oily or fatty broth, here was broth with some serious flavour. Years later, it was just as good as I remembered. After exploring the Nishiki Market, we lined up to be the first in for dinner at Gogyo. The service is quite excellent – the staff are attentive to your every need and are really professional. Dining on a weekend, we received a starter for ¥300 and had a choice between ‘radish’ or ‘chicken’. I picked radish and enjoyed the warmed little dish with its mysterious sauce (whatever it was, was delicious). Next up was a plate of fresh cucumber with a spicy sesame seasoning – a nice contrast between the heat of the seasoning and the cool cucumber. Then the main game – the burnt soy ramen. Yep, bring on the black broth and its rich, salty flavour. The ramen themselves have plenty of bite and the pork was lovely and tender. I adore soft-boiled ramen eggs and this was one of the best. All the ingredients combined to make a really special ramen unlike any other I’ve ever eaten.

Gogyo, 452 Jumonjicho Takoyakushi Sagaru, Yanaginobamba-dori, Kyoto Japan http://www.ramendining-gogyo.com

Kagetsudo

I was lucky enough to be in Tokyo for Sanja-matsuri, one of the city’s largest festivals, held in Asakusa. Unfortunately, this meant that many of the district’s traditional stores had queues out onto the street for blocks to pick up their specialties. Kagetsudo’s specialty is melon-pan (melon bread), which they make in jumbo-size, but as the queue was a bit silly, we decided just to try their soft serve icecream. There are about thirty odd flavours to choose from, including only-in-Japan flavours like matcha and red bean paste. I picked sakura, which also falls into that category, and was surprised at how large the portion was. It was piled up in a perfect soft serve spiral and we hung around near the store to enjoy it. The icecream was really creamy and, as expected, had a beautiful floral flavour. The sakura tasted so familiar, and we decided that it was a bit like rose, but not quite. There were also little crispy bits inside the serve, which we decided was crystalised petals, but we couldn’t be sure. I’d love to come back to try both the melon-pan and more of the soft serve flavours.

Kagetsudo, 1-18-11 Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo                             http://www.asakusa-kagetsudo.com

Ladurée

On my last day in Tokyo I spotted something I hadn’t seen before – a Ladurée icecream store! It’s part of the store in the Lumine 2 complex, just outside Shinjuku station (on the JR side), and I couldn’t help myself. I ordered the icecream interpretation of the Ispahan cake I’d had at their Ginza store, which I’d fallen in love with. The icecream itself was a creamy soft-serve and had a delicate rose flavour. The portion was huge but what made it completely delicious and decadent was the array of toppings. There was a raspberry sauce, rose crystals, fresh lychee slices and raspberries, and a raspberry macaron shell crumbled over the top. Yep, not even kidding. I’m not generally a huge fan of rose as a flavour, but the icecream was so soft and the flavour went so well with the toppings that I polished the whole lot off. The macaron crumble added a good bit of texture and of course the fresh raspberries were perfection. I also grabbed a Marie Antoinette macaron from the store, which was flavoured with their tea of the same name – it was everything you would expect from this sweets stalwart.

Ladurée, Shinjuku Lumine 2, 1F, 3-38-2 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo   http://www.laduree.jp/

Tiger Gyoza Hall

Good gyoza are an amazing thing. One night I went for a wander and found a particularly good gyoza place, although to be honest the only reason I ducked in was a) they had a huge tiger on the side of the building and b) my brain was tired of translating Japanese and the restaurant’s name was in English. It may have been the best decision of the whole trip. We ate four plates of gyoza on the waiter’s recommendation, plus the tomato and avocado salad. The salad had us in raptures – topped with fresh cress and corriander, the avocado and tomato chunks were doused in an oily corriander dressing – we licked those plates clean. Seriously, seriously good salad. The first two plates of gyoza were equally amazing – each plate had six dumplings – one normal-sized the other giant. The giant gyoza (called bukkuri gyoza) were the pick of the menu – packed with pork, crunchy sprouts and cabbage, they were to die for served with the corriander, onion and chilli condiment sauces. We weren’t as keen on the green soup gyoza which came third, but the yuzu gyoza on the final plate were refreshing and incredibly tasty. We dined here twice on this trip and I will most definitely be back.

Tiger Gyoza Hall, Hiroo 5-14-2, Tamachi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo Japan (in the backstreets opposite Keio University East Gate)