Tempura Royal Sampler (by G)

I had a bit of a trying day - I was hoping to go to the baseball but got to the stadium and found the game was sold out... who knew the Swallows were so popular - to sell out a game, on a Tuesday, before midday.

No matter, I checked out my dinner location for tomorrow, which happened to be nearby, drank a lot of coffee, then did some shopping, then got totally lost trying to get back to my hotel - I mean totally lost on the streets of Tokyo - I made it back after about 2 hours of wandering.  After a wee nap I woke re-energised but determined to find somewhere for dinner that didn't involve turning more than one corner. I was hoping for yakatori - unfortunately all the places I passed were closing for the day. Other than Ronald McSombody's restaurant I couldn't find any place that looked promising. I ended up at this place - it looked to be a family restaurant, mercifully free of families and served beer. I got a kind of tempura royal sampler - there was a prawn, a cross section of a mackerel with parsley, a clump of enoki mushrooms, a sort of hashbrown of vegetables and some other things on top of rice. The rice was great, as were the pickles and the prawn and the mushrooms and the mackerel. I got a side of karage chicken, which was pretty good.

After I had finished I decided to get a dessert of tempura cheese. I know I wouldn't have forgiven myself, and Biggs may not have either, if I hadn't tried it. It was shit - cold in the middle, unflavourable mozzarella. Dinner overall was adequate and cheapish and not more than one corner from my hotel. I dropped about fifty bucks on sushi breakfast at tsukiji market and I have a costly, but awesome, dinner plan for dinner tomorrow so I don't feel too bad - also, I resisted buying the $110 bunch of grapes I saw earlier in the day so I will probably come out ahead.