Yurakucho: The wrong side of the tracks (actually, underneath them)

Hey guys,

Great, great night last night.  Remember my discussion in my Teishoku post of the restaurants underneath the train tracks, with promise of a follow-up?  Hopefully I can adequately deliver

Yurakucho station is just one stop away from Tokyo station, one of the centers of commerce in the city.  At a right angle in another direction is Ginza, "the 5th Avenue of Tokyo" with Tiffany's and Burberry's and exquisite but overpriced dining.  But tucked away in between is a neighborhood filled with places for the working man to go eat.  Not only am I usually the whitest person in the room when I come here, but I'm also frequently the only person not wearing a white shirt and dark suit.  This is my kind of neighborhood

Walk down the dimly-lit tunnel, listening to the thundering of the train directly above your head.  Do not despair, I promise there is good food waiting at the end . . .

This picture deserved to be posted again, just so you can get the feel

Your reward?  Well.  Japanese love specialization in their cuisine, and pretty much every culture that respects food understand the importance of knowing exactly where your food was grown.  Sanshoku Ishokugai combines both of those points a brilliant conceit, a conglomeration of restaurants featuring a different protein from a different region in Japan:  A restaurant featuring wagyu beef raised in Hokkaido, another with chicken from Nagano prefecture, another with seafood from the island of Shizuoka, another with horsemeat from Kumamoto . . . it's brilliant, and it's perfect, and it just doesn't get any more Japanese than that

Pick a place, order a drink and a few dishes to share among your friends, then move on to the next place.  It's amazing.  At this point, the post is probably going to devolve into a series of pictures of food.  Sorrynotsorry

Chawan-mushi, steamed savory egg custard, topped with ikura salmon eggs and sea urchin.  I can almost never resist ordering chawan-mushi in a restaurant, it's so wonderful to see top kitchens' approaches to this simple home-style dish

The centerpiece of the evening, raw horsemeat.  Most people's surprise favorite?  That light-pink meat in the lower-left of the photo, which is actually horsefat--chewy and subtly sweet, absolutely delicious

Daily assortment of shellfish, grilled in-shell.  My favorite, predictably, was the scallop, which was as sweet as *candy*

Beef nigiri-zushi, seared beef on a ball of sushi rice, garnished with green onion and sea urchin (!!).  Rich and fatty beef topped with richer and fattier sea urchin, cut with just a touch of vinegar in the rice.  Amazing

Kani-miso, crab brains with leg meat, grilled over charcoal right at the table.  Tasted like the sea, with just a touch of smoke

Possibly my favorite meal I've had so far on this trip.  Come visit me, all of you.  I promise that I'm not letting you leave without taking you here

And hey, if you still feel like a drink after you've eaten your fill, some of my favorite yakitori bars in the city are just around the corner . . . ;)

Noah out