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Went to Nihonbashi on Thursday.

I wanted to check out the new biscuit shop that Alain Ducasse opened 

In Europe, cookies are known as biscuits. I think in French they are called sables

I purchased the Tablette Biscuit, Graines & chocolat.

The biscuit is chocolate, like a shortbread and has different seeds in it (flax, pumpkin, sunflower) and is covered with 75% chocolate on one side, a little dry and not sweet, love this

They were so nice to wrap up some samples of their other biscuits...Pur Beurre (pure butter), Palet Fin Noisette (hazelnut covered with chocolate) and Biscuit Sarasin (buckwheat)...the two without chocolate are savory, all would be nice with wine.

I also went next door to the chocolate shop and purchased the 75% Mendiant Pistaches Sablees (chopped pistachios)

The pistachios are not chopped, so delicious!

Bummed that the chocolat staff that offered me a sample didn’t wrap it up for me like the biscuit staff did…(I didn’t want to take off my mask to taste the sample.)

And then I walked about 5 minutes to Bakery Bank.

I purchased their curry pan, this was wonderful! Still crispy even after bringing it home!

It was filled to the gills with curry, a little spicy, chunks of meat, even a little crunch from some fukujinzuke, would get this one again.

I also tried their cinnamon roll! this was delicious too.

A little different from most cinnamon rolls, this was flaky and cinnamon-y!

For dinner, I also purchased  their pate sandwich, so I could have it with some wine.

It was cloudy all day and the wind was super fahreezing, but I was glad to be out and about.

this and that

Remember the bacon cheese bagel I put into the freezer?

Well, I think I figured out why the filling was skimpy

It's because the filling seemed to be all on one side of the bagel especially for this bacon cheese bagel, so depending on how I cut the other one, I probably took the side that didn't have much filling.

Leftover demi glace sauce from Frou Frou is good on scrambled eggs.

Tokyo People: drinking coffee outside the convenience store

It was Seijin no hi (Coming of Age) and a holiday for us on Monday.

It was nice to see the "girls" dressed in kimono.

This year black and white kimono were trending, I enjoyed seeing the more vibrant (festive) colored kimono 

For our anniversary I bought these oeuf purin (egg custard)

Oeuf in French means egg

It comes in this egg carton and the custard are in egg shells! so cute!

I bought the plain and strawberry, both were delicious!

Since our anniversary was on a weekday and Satoshi had German class, I bought some chirashi for our dinner from Sacana Bacca

Satoshi's chirashi was larger.

Flowers from Satoshi, ranunculus & carnation

The pink house that was demolished last year, a new one was built in its place, I like their huge windows.

The temperature went up to March temps for a day and then Mother Nature slammed us back to fahreezing.

The weather dude says that summer is gonna be longer...like starting from April?! until November...if that's true, I'm so sad!

Hope you have a safe weekend.

oxymoron

Tried Oxymoron's Ethnic Soboro Curry the other night.

We tried Oxymoron when we were in Osaka, their main shop is in Kamakura and they also have one in Tokyo.

And we've tried their caponata , spice cereal and caramel custard recipes from their recipe books.

The Tokyo department store they are located in is renovating, so they are only selling takeout these days.

The fish sauce and the greens are chinese parsley, shiso, green onion and mizuna made this fragrant

Just heat up the rice and soboro (minced meat) and sprinkle the greens, squeeze the lemon and enjoy!

Would get this again, and look forward to eating at the restaurant when the renovations are over.

25

Grateful for all the adventures, looking forward to the new ones. 

Appreciate you always putting up with me.

Love you

back to hachiju

We went back to Hachiju the other day for lunch since the shop was featured on a New Years program.

After showing our point card, I chose their ajitama as my free topping.

The owner "heated" up the egg when he scooped up the noodles from the pot, but the egg could've been a tad warmer...

Still this was a good bowl of ramen.

Previously I said the soup was porky, apparently they use beef…oops!

Satoshi had their moyashi (bean sprout) ramen and he chose menma (seasoned bamboo shoots) as his free topping.

We found out they also have an okonomiyaki shop in Shibuya, so we want to try, since moving to Tokyo we haven’t found okonomiyaki that we like

foodie saturday

Saturday, we went to see "The Solitary Gourmet" (Kodoku no Gurume) movie.

It was mostly food and mostly fun.
 

Since the movie ended at about "our lunch time", we went to look for something to eat.

Spice Factory inside of the JR Shinagawa Station, seemed like a great place, not a long line...

Buy your ticket at the door...I chose Spicy Chicken Curry...1000 yen (tax included)

And a spice egg...170 yen (tax included)

The curry was spicy, there were all sorts of Japanese side dishes, even sweetened pieces of apple...

Do not get the spice egg, it was cold.cold.cold!

Satoshi tried the Keema Curry...1000 yen (tax included)

He said enjoyed this

After lunch we tried to visit Hebikubo Shrine, since it is the Year of the Snake...but the line "snaked" around several blocks...and at the very end of the line we were told it would take 3 hours!

Since it was kinda fahreezing...we decided to walk to Hatanodai instead 

cool looking book store along the way

for banana and chocolate parfaits with coffee at Caferia

And then picked up dinner (german potato, and demi glace hamburg) from Frou Frou

It was a nice day, lots of food and some walking...

akihabara

Back at the beginning of December, social media/blog friend Lily wrote to say she would be in Tokyo at the beginning of January with her daughter 

After several message exchanges, we were lucky to be able to meet up last Thursday

While her daughter did her own thing, Lily and I got some of her errands done, like buying an adapter for electricity and a USB-C thingy

Since she hadn't slept too well on the flight over and wasn't too sure what she wanted to have for lunch, I figured we should stay around the Akihabara station area (where she was staying).

We went up to the top floor of Yodobashi Camera and Lily chose lunch at Pom no ki, an omurice shop.

Tablet ordering and self serve water, cutlery pick up and self serve miso soup.

We chatted while we waited for our meals.

I had a beef stew omurice while Lily had a chicken katsu omurice.

It was interesting learning about Finland (where she lives) and Brazil (where she grew up)

After lunch we went to look for a currency exchange kiosk.

so much sensory overload inside of Yodobashi Camera, like these huge Lego statues…

that took over 30 hours to make!

We also had coffee and more conversation at Marufuku Coffee.

Lily was so kind to give us so many things...thank you!

Even a handmade snake for the Year of the Snake!

These Karl Fazer chocolates are super creamy, delicious!

Thank you for making time to meet up Lily! 

It was so nice to meet you IRL (in real life)

I hope you enjoyed your first trip to Japan and enjoy the rest of your trip.