Night in Shinjuku

Well, we decided to head back to where we wanted to eat dinner.  Which proved to be a bit more difficult than we had anticipated.  The menu out front of the building, for the Teng Izakaya (which was also a chain we discovered later, recognizable by its bright red mascot) looked good, real good.  Finding the place though was a bit of a trick.  The sign said “B1F” which meant it was in the basement.  We found a door, and an elevator, and when we hit the button for B1F… nothing happened.  We left confused, and went back out.  There was a guy standing by the menu this time, so we asked him, more or less, “WTF?”

He turned around a cluster of bikes and pointed down a narrow flight of stairs behind a brick wall.  DOH!  It was right there staring at us the whole time.  We sheepishly said, “Arigatou…” and headed on down.

We were not disappointed.  We were seated at a long table, surrounded by other folks, the noise and racket of the place almost drowning everything else out.  We managed to order a pair of draft Kirins, “Nama Beer!” (生 ビイル) and perused the menu.  Luckily there were plenty of pictures and I could actually read about half of it, being able to tell what was what.

We ordered up a myriad of small Izakaya dishes.  What does that mean?  Well, instead of ordering a huge-o platter of food like you might do at your typical western bar-n-grill, you order a series of small ones.  A sashimi sampler, some gyoza, bacon wrapped mushrooms, yakitori, fried squid…  I don’t even remember it all.  It was good, not ZOMG good, but fair, not bad at all.  What you’d expect from any chain restaurant, I suppose.

We got suitably stuffed, paid the reasonable bill, and headed back to the AM/PM for another beer or two, then crashed for the night.  But not before marvelling at the neon that is Shinjuku.

No related posts.