Restaurant-Dining Critiques

Tel 3842 4001
Taito-ku, Komagata 1-7-12
Open 11:30am-10:00pm
Credit Cards
Prices: Expensive (due to the rarity of the specialties)

This restaurant is an institution and it stays open all day without a break until 10pm. The two items they specialize in, whale and small fresh-water eel are now so rare that prices have kept escalating over the years.

It opened its doors in 1776 the same year America gained its independence. While they have a menu with some classic Japanese dishes most everyone comes to eat the white part of the whale, with plenty of burdock root and green onions displayed in side-dishes, which you may add to the steaming pot in the center of the table, and Dojo, which is a small fresh-water eel found in the rice fields. In my two visits over the years I have never seen anyone order anything else but these two items.

In the main dining room on ground level everyone is seated on the floor downstairs offers some table seating, however.

Tags: historic, restaurant, river eel, Whale

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Tokyo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.