cheap eats (Page 3)
Moulded by hand by a sushi chef in front of you at the counter, this impressive selection is the type of special locals usually keep a secret to themselves.
Delicious maguro tuna and all-you-can-drink coffee for less than most fast food set meals.
This chain’s 100-yen pasta and noodle dishes are just the thing when you’re looking to stretch your budget.
Prepaid tempura plan is totally the way to go, and even lets you choose fried chicken if that’s what your heart desires.
Tenya buries the lede (under other types of tempura) in its new “Bacon Chicken Tempura Bowl.”
Come for the unlimited beer, stay for the Japanese-style fried chicken (and probably the ramen).
This impressive restaurant ticks all the right boxes in terms of quality, atmosphere, service and price.
This cautionary tale proves that the Japanese word for “large serving” could result in having to eat a truly mountainous meal.
If you like delicious dumplings, cold beer, and having plenty of cash left in your wallet, you need to eat here.
KFC Japan’s summer of all-you-can-eat fried chicken is ending, but at this Tokyo restaurant limitless chow can be your all year long.
By the look on Seiji’s face you might think he just discovered the cure to a rare disease, but the truth is much better. He found a way to get a delicious chicken sandwich for only 140 yen (US$1.34) from McDonald’s.
Coco Ichibanya rolls out a new curry roux in select locations to better serve its health-conscious and non-Japanese clientele.
In Japan, takoyaki (somewhat unappealingly translated as “octopus balls”) is known as “B-Class Gourmet” food. Takoyaki is the domain of sometimes shady street vendors and national chains where there are literally no chairs whatsoever on the premises. They’re meant to be consumed while still blazing hot, fresh off the special cratered griddle used to make them, chewed and swallowed at lightning speed while you suck in air to make them just cool enough that they don’t burn a hole in your esophagus on the way down.
Therefore, takoyaki is not, one would think, within the purview of the Michelin tire company’s prestigious Michelin Guide for world-renowned restaurants. But, surprisingly, the 2016 Michelin Guide contains not just one but several restaurants specializing in takoyaki, okonomiyaki, and other “B-Class Gourmet” foods famous around Osaka and the Kansai area.
One of those featured restaurants, Aizuya, is, it turns out, actually rumored to be the restaurant that flat-out invented takoyaki. And since that sounds like a good premise for an article, and gives us an excuse to stuff our faces with this delicious local street food, we went to check it out.