Wise Woman Travel

We’re chatting to a couple from Arizona at the grill side bar of an izakaya, Japan’s unique version of a place to have a drink and a few snacks. They tell us it seems all they’ve done since they arrived in Tokyo is eat. We agree, and I say I read that Tokyo has the most Michelin stars of any city worldwide. ” Oh, but those restaurants are always so lined up and you can never get a reservation,” they say.

“And we’d have to take out a third mortgage on our house to afford to go to one,” Lorne quips. They say nothing in response, indicating that wouldn’t be their problem. The conversation comes to a quick end.

If, like us, eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Tokyo is beyond your budget,  you’ve still got plenty of delicious eating experiences ahead of you. In the four days we were there, we had lots of fun finding restaurants, online and just by walking around and reading menus, then taking a food adventure plunge. We acquainted ourselves with many interesting dishes, and in a few cases, some even more fascinating fellow diners and cooks

Ramen and a snazzy poet

Feeling a little jetlagged by lunch on our first day, we noticed a whiteboard menu outside a ramen place near our hotel, pushed past the heavy plastic straps covering the entrance and stepped inside a tiny room that seated about 15 people. The only table for two was in a corner next to an elderly Japanese woman wearing an unusual hat and lacy blouse. She smiled her welcome and moved her table over a few inches so I could fit in beside her. In between ordering, slurping our noodles and shoveling gyoza into our mouths, I found out she’s headed off to give a poetry reading nearby and that her hat and lacy blouse were made by a friend who designs stage costumes. She was delighted to find out Lorne plays jazz trombone because “it’s the best music to read poetry to.”

Chicken hot pot, a one-man izakaya kitchen, and an impromptu translator

On a puddly, cool Saturday evening, Lorne navigated us down a quiet alley off a main drag near our hotel  to an izakaya called Morikawa (no website but the link will give you its address in case you want to try it out). We’re not even sure we’d found it, but a young Japanese woman standing outside waiting for it to open assured us we’d arrived. Again, the place had room for  14 people, and there was no English menu, so the young woman helped us to read it and made several recommendations. The specialties were hakata fried chicken pieces and mizutaki, which is chicken hot pot,  so we had one as a starter and one as a main. The cook/owner/ server  brought a heater to our table, then returned to his own barside kitchen to concoct a hot pot chock full of chicken pieces, tofu, greens and mushrooms in broth. He whisked it over to us, removing the clay pot lid with flair. Our kind female translator said we could ask for rice or noodles to cook in the leftover broth, but we’re too stuffed to eat another bite- and besides, we’d already slurped up all the soup.

Bits and bites and the friendliest cook team in Tokyo

Our meal at the  Kushiyaki Bistro Fukumimi  , that izakaya I mentioned earlier, turned out far better than our conversation about the Michelin restaurants. The youthful six-person prepping and cooking crew seemed to be having a great time together, and yelled greetings and farewells in unison each time a customer arrived or left the restaurant. We enjoyed watching each dish we ordered sizzling and smoking  in front of us, and gobbling them down hot off the griddle.