I got to Tokyo Station at 7 in the morning and headed straight to Tsukiji to meet up with my foodie group. When you’re travelling in Tokyo, Tsukiji is about the only place where you can get a proper breakfast, so it’s handy to know it well. I’d long wanted to work my way through the various shops in Tsukiji’s inner market, but getting up early is just impossible for me -_- so I’d only properly tried a handful. Which made this a golden opportunity.
The original plan that day was a place called Takahashi, but the opening hours didn’t fit, the line was long, and on top of that the dish we’d wanted wasn’t available, so we switched on the spot to Kato, the seafood place right next door. The shops in the inner market are, fair to say, battle-hardened veterans specially chosen from within a market with over 100 years of history, so you can walk into pretty much any of them and the food is almost guaranteed to be good. There are exceptions, though: a few sushi places make you queue for over an hour and aren’t anything special taste-wise, so I’d only recommend them to tourists who absolutely must have sushi at Tsukiji.
Inside, the place was small and looked like it would struggle to take a large group. There’s a wide range of seafood on the menu, and you just order whatever grabs you. In our case the resident food master ordered for us, focusing on fish in season.
Squid shiokara
Squid cut into small pieces and cured together with its guts. It came out as the otoshi with our beer. The pieces were two or three times thicker than the usual squid for shiokara; I’d never had shiokara this meaty. It tasted wonderful too. I suspect this kind of thing is hard to find anywhere but Tsukiji, where all the serious gourmets gather.
Buri (yellowtail)
I’ve forgotten which cut of buri this was. Maybe because the weather had turned chilly, it was nice and fatty and delicious. The garnish on top is shiso flowers. We had them at Joël Robuchon last time, too.
Maguro
Again I can’t remember the exact name, sadly, but it was maguro from a special cut. I think it may have been yokowa (young bluefin), and the freshness was to die for.
Kaki-dofu, oyster tofu
I’d pictured something like uni tofu, but what came out was an oyster soup, packed with huge oysters. On a chilly morning you really want a hot broth.
Shirako
If I remember right, it was cod milt. Soft and rich, to the point I wondered if it was some kind of cheese. Hands down the best shirako I’ve ever had. True to Tsukiji, whatever you order comes out top-notch. It’s practically cheating; I don’t know how anyone else is supposed to stay in business.
Simmered monkfish
The rich, fatty flesh falls apart and just melts in your mouth. Eat it quickly while it’s hot and a bowl of rice disappears in no time.
So we had a generous seafood feast, even a beer first thing in the morning, and it was a happy start to the trip. After eating, we had to walk it off with a stroll around Tsukiji Market. The last time I went – also around 8 or 9 – I don’t think this many shops were open, but on this day almost every one of them was. Fresh seafood everywhere. After a lap spent smacking our lips, we decided to check out the outer market as well.
There are two big-league famous places in Tsukiji’s outer market: one is Inoue for ramen, the other is Kitsuneya for motsu nikomi. People say other places are good too, but these two are on a different level. Neither is a seafood place, but they serve food of such a high standard that you really couldn’t eat it anywhere but Tsukiji.
First we dropped by Kitsuneya, which is close to the inner market.
Kitsuneya’s niku-dofu and nikomi
We’d only just had breakfast, so we ordered just this much for a taste. The house specialities… well, nikomi and niku-dofu are pretty much the whole menu. At around 600 yen they didn’t seem that expensive. Back in the early 2000s there was a time when nothing on the menus around here went over 500 yen, so prices have gone up a lot, but I still think you’d be hard pressed to get food this good at this price anywhere else.
This is nikomi of the very highest level in Tokyo.
Fresh offal simmered in miso. The tenderness of the meat, simmered to just the right saltiness, is beyond words. On its own it’s slightly lacking in kick, but a bit of shichimi should fix that. It’s great by itself, but I think it would be delicious as a rice bowl too.
Niku-dofu, meat tofu
A little sweeter than the nikomi, and it melts away in your mouth. It puts most sukiyaki to shame. Poured over rice it would instantly become top-grade gyudon; I’ll have to try that next time.
Kitsuneya’s noren
The man you see in the photo works hard in the cramped kitchen. The line never let up the whole time we watched; there’s always a reason a famous shop is famous.
Inoue’s chuka soba
Having been to Kitsuneya, there’s no way you can skip Inoue. As befits the number one of Tsukiji’s outer market, there’s a long line of tourists waiting for ramen. That day, as always, out came top-class chuka soba. The clean, refreshing broth made my tiredness vanish.
Meal done, time for dessert.
We moved to Ginza, planning to keep it simple, but the dessert shops I’d assumed would open around 10 don’t open until 11. After searching around, we went to the newly opened La Maison du Chocolat at Matsuya Ginza. The counter is on the department store’s ground floor, with about 8 seats further inside. It’s not cosy and it isn’t cheap, but it works as a small place to take a break.
I looked over the menu, but nothing really tempted me. They don’t even sell cake, of all things! The éclairs are supposedly famous, but you have to queue for them and they’re only sold at certain times, so we just ordered something from what was available.
Cappuccino
or maybe a caffè latte… I can’t drink coffee, but I nibbled a few of the little chocolates and they were really good. They’d have made a nice omiyage too, but I didn’t have time to buy any.
Espresso
Can’t say much about the taste of this one either, but given the price, it must be decent.
Glacé
It’s ice cream, and not as good as I’d expected. It was rich, sure, but it didn’t live up to La Maison du Chocolat’s reputation. I was told the shop’s pride, the chocolate-loaded éclair, only goes on sale from around noon, so I just gave up on it, which I really regret… Anyway, I was in a hurry for my next appointment, so I said my goodbyes there and moved on.