My god, how many food photos did I take?!? I finally made it to the first week of August in the photo backlog, and it filled up yet another Tokyo Eats - Roppongi area post! I guess it was because hubby worked there, and so I went there everyday to meet with him for lunch. That was how I ended up with lots and lots of photos of mostly food ^.^"
Right up until hubby and I went home, we were still eating at Roti Roppongi once a week. The restaurant changed their menu every week, so more often than not they served some pretty special stuff, like these beef tacos that hubby inhaled in seconds. I mostly went for the soups, which went well with my usual order of Bang Bang Chicken Salad. That salad ruined all salads for me forever. I'll never eat another salad elsewhere again.
So...I love chicken wings. After fifteen years together, hubby has taken to telling family and friends that he's married to a chicken wing, and that I was a chicken wing in my past life, which explains why I kept trying to get back to my roots. Thing is, I have standards: not all chicken wings are made equal. They must be perfectly crispy and spicy (explains my obsession with Yamachan, no?).
While in Tokyo, I had to stop myself (or rather, hubby stopped me ^.^) from ordering fried chicken every time we go out. They made excellent fried chicken there, but still I sorely missed me some wings. When J. discovered KyoChon in Roppongi, we had to go try it. The only irony remained that she had discovered the place in mid August 2016, and that location shuttered on August 31, 2016, which meant we got to try it all of one time :( Argh! All this time the place had been right under my nose and I had no idea until it was too late!
Anyway, J. and I both had actually already eaten dinner that night, but we couldn't delay sampling KyoChon any longer and went for a snack. My favorite was the Red and the Honey sauce (right). We ordered SalSal too, the chicken strips breaded with rice crunchies (left), but these turned out to be too hard. Just one strip ripped up my gums and I had to sheepishly cut the rest into bite sizes bits.
July and August at Roppongi Hills Mori Tower saw the return of the many Doraemons. They were there when we first arrived, and they came back before we left. Hubby surmised there must be a warehouse somewhere with a gazillion of these Doraemons. Can you imagine?
Pretty flowers planted around the front entrance. Of course they were torn out later and replaced with some other plants. Yup.
Ventured into Teppanyaki Kaikaya on the 5th floor one day out of boredom and actually had a good yakiniku don lunch set for a really good price of 1,100yen! Portion was ample too!
Still love Harbs but stopped going to frequently. They had stopped serving some of my most favorite cakes :(
From May until the day hubby and I left Japan, it was L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon overload. We'd told all our friends about our first fantastic lunch there you see. They too had been walking by and ignoring it for the same reason we did: it looked way too fancy for them also. But then we convinced them to try it once, and from there it snowballed from one group of friends to another. So hubby and I got our fill of Joel Robuchon, at least for a while.
I think what kept us coming back was a balance struck between artistic presentation and taste. And by taste, I don't mean the quality of ingredients, something a diner could expect from a nice restaurant, let alone a Michelin 2-stars. I mean the food was actually delicious in addition to looking pretty. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I actually have a story to tell and a comparison to make. Next post Roppongi post, I promise, next post. (Yes, there's more than enough pictures for yet another Roppongi post!)
I think I actually prefer the desserts from their patisserie than those served at the restaurant. Too bad the patisserie was for takeouts only.
Here's another get together, during which we got carried away with Veuve Clicquot.
I never liked champagne and I still don't, but I loved that pineapple champagne I had there. So good!
The dinner menu was much more "colorful" and creative than the lunch, and even more delicious.
The desserts that came with the dinner courses had extra bells and whistles, like petite fours, etc.
Around July, I got bored of my usual haunts and needed some change. The problem was my rather demanding requirements: good or at least decent food, ample supply of teas and cafe lattes, and of course, must. have. desserts. Out of desperation, I gave Fiorentina on the ground floor of the Grand Hyatt Roppongi another try. I had tea there once when we first arrived, and they scared me away with the crazy prices, 3,200yen/~$26 for 2 cakes and a pot of tea. Ouch. I mean, the people who dine in the vicinity drive these cars. What was I thinking?
Then I learned a trick or two. All I had to do was getting there between lunch time 11:30-2:00pm to get the lunch or teatime set ^.^
The basic lunch set includes bread, soup of the day, pasta of the week or choice of pizza, and an unlimited refill of any tea or coffee on their menu until 5pm (or 6pm, I don't quite remember), all for 2,500yen/$20. If you want to add cake of the day to that basic set, it'll be 2,900yen/~$25 instead.
Turned out the portion was quite large! Hubby and I had lunch here a few times, and each time the most I could eat was about 1/3 of my personal-sized pizza or half of my pasta, and I'd already skipped the bread. We ordered a salad a la cart once and it was huge!
Or if you don't want lunch, just go for the teatime set: a selection from a dozen choices of cakes, and any drink from their menu, again with unlimited refill until 5 or 6pm, for 1,800yen/$15. Still a bit pricey, but remember that one peach sparkling drink at E.A. Gran above was 800+yen (Starbucks charged around the same price per drink too!), so 1,800yen for cake and drink with unlimited refills was damn good! E.A. Gran was decent and I think they were already better than Starbucks, but still they were nowhere near the quality of Fiorentina. The cakes were of better quality than Harbs' even, albeit smaller sized. See for yourself.
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