I’d hoped to finish my Tokyo reports this week. Thanks to some unexpected chaos at home—with two appliances suddenly requiring repair—I’ve not had time to get to all of that. As a result there are still two reports to come after this one, which covers lunch at a famous yoshoku restaurant in Tokyo: Taimeiken. Taimeiken has been around for a while—I believe the current owner/chef is from the third generation of his family. Among their claims to fame is their omuraisu or omurice, specifically their Tampopo omurice, which was developed by the restaurant for Juzo Itami’s film Tampopo in 1985. My good friend John B. was my roommate in graduate school for a few years and Tampopo was one of his very favourite films. As a result I think I’ve seen the film (in whole and in parts) several times. I wish I could say we ate at Taimeiken in tribute to John; the truth, however, is that the younger boy, having seen many videos of the preparation on Youtube, had really wanted to eat omurice in Japan and Taimeiken seemed like a good place to eat it as they serve a full spectrum of yoshoku dishes.

You may know—as I didn’t before planning this trip—that the term “yoshoku”—which literally means “western food”—refers to Japanese takes on western food/dishes which began to enter and become popular in Japan from the mid-19th century onwards. (I mean, I knew there were such dishes but not that they comprised a sub-cuisine with a formal name.) “Western food” here refers broadly to foods that came in with western contact: it also includes, for example, curry, which came with the British via India. But somewhat like what is known as “continental food” in India (of the kind served at Mocambo in Kolkata, for example), yoshoku is very much “western food” passed through local filters; very few of these dishes resemble the “originals” from the source cuisines. And at this point many of these dishes have become traditional and iconic Japanese foods in their own right and their names too have gone through a process of Japonification: see hambagu, hayashi rice, Naporitan etc.

Taimeiken currently occupies two floors of a building in Nihonbashi, alongside the river, not too far from Nihombashi Bridge. The ground floor houses a casual restaurant and the first/second floor a more formal restaurant. The latter is closed on Sundays—the day of our visit—but it was the more inexpensive casual restaurant we were after anyway. We were not sure how popular they were going to be on a Sunday morning but we didn’t want to risk having the rest of the day’s activities potentially held hostage by a long wait. So we deployed our standard “hack” of showing up 30 minutes before opening. There was no line at all when we arrived and rather than stand in the hot sun for 30 minutes we decamped to a coffee shop across the street and took up strategic positions with a view of Taimeiken’s store-front. When a queue started forming about 15 minutes before opening, we headed back across and were seated comfortably with the first wave. The restaurant didn’t fill up completely for another 15 minutes but we were glad we’d come early anyway as we got a nice table overlooking the river (there’s also outdoor seating, which is presumably nice when it’s not crazy hot and humid).

Once seated, we quickly got down to business. We were going to get omurice, of course. Indeed, we got two orders of omurice. The first was a classic prawn omurice, which features an omelette stuffed with prawn fried rice and draped with ketchup. The second was an order of their famous Tampopo omurice with beef. In this case, a soft-cooked omelette is draped over the fried rice: you cut it and let the two halves of the gooey omelette drape over the rice. And then you pour ketchup over it like god intended. We also got an order of hayashi rice, which is a Japanese take on beef hash in a rich demi-glace gravy, served with steamed rice; and to be safe we also got an order of pork katsu/cutlet curry with rice.

Oh yes, I started with a small bowl of “borcht” and a small coleslaw. I confess I was mostly trying to find out why the Japanese menu outside had a note reading “please refrain from ordering the above items separately” (200 yen seemed like a reasonable investment); but there was no controversy at the point of order and I actually liked both dishes a lot. Frankly, I liked them more than the hayashi rice, most of which fell to my portion: it started out well but got cloying fast; the pork cutlet and curry was much lighter. Both omurices were very good, however, and the younger boy was well-pleased to check this long-desired item off his Japan list.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much the meal cost and to see what’s coming next on the food front.

The total for all of the above, plus two glasses of juice for the boys, came to 11,400 yen or just about $77. Not the best value, in my book, of all the meals we ate but the younger boy would tell you differently.

Alright, what’s left from Tokyo? One more sushi meal and one shabu shabu meal. I will get both of those up next week for sure. But I might have them sandwiched around my first Twin Cities report in two months: we’re hoping to eat lunch in St. Paul today. Let’s see how it goes.