It makes no sense to me how bad Japanese food is in America. Especially in L.A. and S.F. there are large enough populations of native Japanese peoples that you’d think there would be some good restaurants. Although there are some good sushi places, almost without fail anything that is not sushi in pretty craptacular. There are a few places that are okay but none have been true Japanese food.

That is until now. Wakasanchi is 100% authentic. Everything I was given was not in the least bit out of place from my experiences in Tokyo. The “Omakase” or leave it to the chef thing might be a little off putting for some but I think it’s for the best because unless you’ve lived in Japan you would not know what or how to order.

This is not a place for Teriyaki Beef or Chicken (something I **NEVER** encountered in my 7 years in Tokyo).

If you want the REAL thing. This is it.

Do not go if you are a picky eater. Do not go if you are vegetarian. Do go if you want to experience true, delicious, healthy Japanese food.

Let me note that Japanese cuisine covers many kinds of foods and this is only one kind but so far it is the only kind that’s made it to America un-touched and un-changed.

Wakasanchi is on Westwood Blvd between Santa Monica Blvd and Olympic Blvd.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but the last couple of months before I left Japan the Bio Ojiyan Cafe became one of my favorite cafes.


Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but Ojiyan is actually the name of a dish that I believe consists of taking rice and cooking it with an egg and some soup stalk. What you get out if it is like a thick egg-rice soup. I’m guessing it’s common to put toppings on that. The bio ojiyan cafe offers bbq pork + onions, raw tuna + kimchi, fried chicken, tuna salad among other things as toppings.

They also include some extras like a soft boiled egg, some toast and a small weiner cut to look like an octopus. That’s a common thing for moms to do for their kid’s lunch.

It is one of those things that even though I had never had it before came across as totally delicious comfort food.

They have other stuff on their menu as well if ojiyan doesn’t sound like your thing. They also have setup a table with breads and pastries on it. I didn’t quite get the relationship between the cafe and the bread. Whether they were just putting the products of another company on the table or whether they were making those bread items there and just selling them with a different brand name.

In any case their bread logo is hella cute

The Bio Ojiyan Cafe is in Harajuku at the end of Harajuku street. That in itself is just a fun and interesting area that I was always happy to be in. Directions and a map can be found here

I’ve looked for food like this since I moved to the Bay area. This is the first place to actually deliver.

I’m going to guess they have their off days seeing how busy they are. In fact we arguably had some pretty bad service. 6 of us went. They brought the first 3 people’s food and forgot about the other 3. We finally reminded them 10 minutes later and they got 2 more but again forgot one person. Another 10 minutes we finally reminded them again and got the final food.

On the other hand it as all pretty delicious to me. They brought us free dessert as well to apologise for being late. Good food and politeness = apology excepted.

I’m definately going back

I had the kouroufan (Stewed Pork Rice). In Japanese we would call it Buta-no-kakuni (豚角煮） but my understanding is it’s originally from Taiwan.

I think it was $4. I couldn’t wait so that picture is already half eaten.

My friends ordered various combos. For like $6 they got all this food.

Even their pearl milk tea (珍珠奶茶) was like double the normal size.

Supposedly this is a popular chain from Taiwan and there are a several locations in the states now including one in Irvine. There’s a very interesting story about it here.

I don’t know of it’s authentic and I don’t know how to the noodles are but if you want something to come back for at Best of Thai Noodle, order their “roast duck over rice”. That is heaven on a plate. I keep thinking I should order something else but I know my friend is going to order the duck over rice and then I’m going to be jealous.

I have had their larb and their fishcake salad. They were both unsurprising (read good but not exceptional) Their chicken wings in their appetizer section were pretty tasty too.

The #1 reason we go here is because they are open late (1:30am?) as I often get back to the city after 9:30pm when most other places are closed. At the same time the duck over rice is so good we always look forward to going.

If you order something else well, all bets are off but order the duck over rice and see if you don’t agree.

My experience with ramen in the states continues to disappoint. Kahoo was no exception. The noodles sucked. Not even close to authentic ramen noodles.

On the other hand I ordered the tantanmen and on the one hand it was not what I consider tantanmen. Good tantanmen, at least the kind I like, should have the consistancy of mud. It should be seriously thick and opaque. On the other hand even though this tantanmen was soupy it was pretty tasty which made me want to drink the whole bowl.

If they could just find some good noodles they’d be 4 stars.

It really makes me said how bad ramen is in America. 7 years in Japan taught me how good ramen can be. Now that I’m back in the states I get people telling me how good places like Santa Ramen are. I then go try them only to find they are about high school cafeteria quality in taste compared to the real thing in Tokyo. (yes, I know ramen is actaully Chinese food)

I ordered the Santa Ramen Tonkotsu Chashu Ramen. The meat was cold and flavorless. The soup was barely passible as Tonkotsu based and the noodles seemed more like spagetti than ramen noodles.

Santa Ramen may be the best in the bay area, I really don’t know. But it’s not even close the real thing and was therefore a huge disappointment after all the hype. I guess the best way to put it is when I lived in Tokyo there were ramen places I craved, places that were good, places that were I would go back to if others wanted to go and places that were bland that I would never go back to knowing all the better places were available. Santa Ramen fits in the “bland, never go back to” category.

If you know what the real thing is like you won’t like Santa Ramen.

If you want Vietnamese food you could probably do better than here.

I don't mean to be mean. This place isn't *bad* per se, it's just not good. Maybe I'm expecting something different from having eating lots of Vietnamese food in Orange County but my impression was the food had been blanded down for Japanese palettes.

If that's your thing it's in the Shiodome complex.

More Kiwa / tantan-men goodness!

I found this place completely by random luck. I was going to a club called 香 (kou) in Nishi-Azabu and I decided to walk there from work.

From where I work it's a 15 minute talk to Roppongi and from Roppongi it's about a 10 minute walk to Nishi Azabu.

I like to try different paths so as I was approaching Roppongi Crossing I decided to cut into some smaller street and try to work my way across the back streets to my destination.

As I was walking through I found this place. I could see the sign in front said "east river tantan-man" so I took the picture above to remind myself to go check it out.

When I did I found out it too is another Kiwa Group store like Wan-Zu-Ji. In fact it has a very very similar menu. It's actually got a bigger menu and I'm not sure there is anything on the Wan-Zhu-Ji menu that is not also available here.

Being a tantan-men freak I tried their tantan-men and it tasted substantially similar to Wan-Zhu-Ji's which means it was delicious! Several other things like the Pitan-doufu (Chinese 1000 year old black eggs and tofu) were pretty close to the same as well.

On the other hand I was disappointed with the annin-dofu. It wasn't bad, it was fluffier than most places but it was not even close to a match for the heavenly annin dofu at Wan-Zu-Ji. On top if which their buta-bara-raman was actually pretty bad.

Still, if I need my tantan-men fix it's another good place to go.

I was looking through a guide of late night places in Tokyo and Chinese Cafe Eight was on the list. I had wanted to check it out just a couple of weeks before I read it was open 24 hours when I passed by it with some friends so I finally went and checked it out.

I wish I had found this place 3 years ago. Finally real Chinese food in Japan! I've harped on this before but Chinese food in Japan is nearly as disappointing as Panda Express is in the states. Sure, I know some people like Panda Express which is fine but it's Americanized Chinese. Here in Japan most Chinese food has similarly been Japanified and is no longer really Chinese.

Well, I can thankfully report that Chinese Cafe Eight is real Chinese. Of course at first that was just my opinion from comparing it to the good Chinese restaurants I miss from Los Angeles so in other words I wasn't 100% sure it was real but it was what I liked. But then, I met a lady from Hong Kong who has been living in Japan for 6 years and she said she had completely given up on Chinese food in Japan and just stopped even trying to find anything good. I told her about this place that I thought was good although I explained I only had LA Chinese food to compare to. Well, she decided to take and chance and thankfully she confirmed what I'm telling you. It's real Chinese. She was very happy

Even more than that, for Tokyo it's super cheap. One other problem with most Tokyo Chinese restaurants is they are so expensive that you can't eat a real Chinese meal where you order lots of different things and have a little of each. Not so here. They have a giant menu and reasonable prices. For example one of the first things on their menu is sui-gyoza (sorry, I don't know the Chinese word for gyoza 餃子). They have 26 different kinds and they are 3 to a plate, one plate is 100yen! Yea, you heard that right. 1 plate 100 yen. Any other place in Tokyo would likely be 1 plate 400-600 yen.

There are probably a few other things I could tell you about but it's best you find those out on your own.;-)

Chinese Cafe Eight is behind Roppongi Hills directly across from Grand Hyatt Tokyo hotel.

I'm in love with Tantan-men and this is a good place to get it.

This place has about eight kinds of tantan-men. brown soup tantan-men, white soup tantan-men, no soup tantan-men, with pork or with beef.  It's all good!

It's run by the Kiwa Group just like Wan-Zhu-Ji so many of the side dishes taste the same. That's not a bad think at all though.

At the moment I could eat tantan-men several times a week so it comes as no surprise that I would give this place a 4.  If you're a tantan-men or spice food fan then give it a try.  It's just about 3 or 4 minutes from Roppongi station across the street from Roppongi Hills.