Kushikatsu lunch date at Shuns (旬s 銀座店)

We went to Ginza early in the morning as I had a facial appointment and J went to enjoy a nice cup of coffee while he waited.

Lunch was at Shuns (旬s 銀座店).

Website: https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1301/A130101/13113887/party/

First time having kushikatsu at such a nice looking place. 

On the table is a platter of sauces to be paired with the different skewers.

As you can see, they place each skewer right in front of the sauce that you are supposed to pair it with.

Salad, rice and miso soup was also served with the meal.

This fried chicken wing here is amazing! It was super flavourful on its' own.

Then came my favourite skewer of the day - Hotate! It was super juicy and filled with umami.

The asparagus was also huge!

My second favourite is the prawn which was super crunchy and went super well with salt.

Ice cream and hot tea was also served at the end of the meal.

Overall, it was such a nice experience as we both never had kushikatsu as such a nice place before.

After that, we went to Tokyo Solamachi. A first for me.

There were some pretty interesting exhibitions going on there on the top floor. We even got to experience racing each other on these fancy looking vehicles.

When we were there, other than the top floor, there was also other areas with some events going on with other activities that you can experience for free. Hence, it made my trip there really fun as most of the things we tried were new to me.

Xmas date at T.Y.Harbor

For Xmas this year, we went to the place where we first met for dinner.

Shinagawa station was beautiful during Xmas.

Website: https://www.tysons.jp/tyharbor/menu

For starters, we had this beautifully cooked prawns, in flavours that reminded us of home!

Also, as we were dining on the floating area outside, the view at night was amazing!

Next up was the Buddha bowl and  it was HUGE!

I think if you are there alone, the salad alone is enough to fill you up.

Next up was the classic fish and chips! Yummy~! 

It was really good but at the same time super filling! I didn't even have room for dessert after that. 

After that, we took a stroll back to the station.

I never knew that this place looks so pretty at night as it was my first time there at night.

Lunch with ST

Grabbing lunch with ST-san after facial. We went to Toro Tokyo, Ginza.

Website: https://torogastrobar.jp/

We had the 2500 yen Churrasco Course.

First up was the quinoa salad, soup and Latin appetizer plate. Everything was surprisingly good.

For the Churrasco, each time, each person can order as much as they can eat as it is buffet style.

The serving size was too big for me! I prefer smaller portions so that I can try more different cut of meat. The best churrasco for me were the prawns!

After that, our taco finally arrived with the rice bowl. Not a fan of soft shell tacos.

This here was just a tiny bit of rice on a small saucer plate but this was good enough because I was super full by then. The flavours for this was lovely.

And finally came the dessert which was good and such a pretty presentation with the burnt sugar on top and fruits.

The weather that day wasn't great as it was raining the whole day. 

After lunch, we walked around the area window shopping. Both ST-san and J did manage to buy some pretty nice shoes, despite the shop being super busy and the bead weather outside. 

Bounenkai with colleagues

We had a huge Christmas Party at work where I was part of the organizing committee. We played games and there were prizes to be won. The grand prize was 8 Balmuda toasters which my team won and I was super happy about that as I love bread and eat bread everyday!

A few days later, I had a small bounenkai with a few of my colleagues. We went to the Outback Steakhouse.

Website: https://www.outbacksteakhouse.co.jp/en/menu/

We ordered some food to be shared. Everything that we had ordered was delicious!

The company for the night was also great!

We ordered some dessert to be shared and also celebrated a colleague's B'day!

I forgot how big American dessert sizes are. When we ordered, I had Japanese sizes in mind.

No regrets on the desserts though we were already pretty full before we ordered them as they were yummy! I especially enjoyed the cinnamon oblivion which had cinnamon apples, croutons, pecans and toffee sauce!!!

Thank you all for a great 2019 at work.

Weekend date at Minato Mirai

We had lunch at 美食米門 横浜. We had an early reservation for 11am.

We had a washoku lunch course.

First up was the appetizer which came with tofu and wasabi. Not a fan of tofu but I do like the combination of tofu with wasabi. 

Next up was the chawan mushi. This was a super slow lunch as the gaps between each dishes were really long.

Assorted tempura which was luckily served hot. I was super worried that it was going to be cold as there were some tempura sitting on the side table waiting to be served but I guess those belonged to other guests.

Not sure if it was a lack of servers but the service was extremely slow here.

At almost 2 hours into lunch, we finally had the main dishes. The steak was a bit too raw for my liking. Then there was a mini chirashi don with shijimi soup.

Soon after dessert was served and we were finally done with the meal, which took about 150 mins. We were mostly waiting majority of the time, along with the other guests. Not very good for a course meal because you want to have a good rhythm. When the gap is too long, you are either too hungry in the beginning or starting to feel full before the end as your hormones has kicked in to tell your brain that you are full. 

After that we did some window shopping and walked around the area.

We walked past this hk cafe (糖朝カフェ) at Yokohama Landmark Tower, which served wanton noodles and egg tarts and we decided to stop by for a tea break. It's been a long time since I had a wanton mee and I was happy to see that it was served here. The egg tarts were good too.

Later in the night, we stopped by Ichiran for ramen before heading home. I have this about 1-2 times a year and I always finish the soup because it is not that salty or oily compared to some tonkatsu ramen.