Sumida Bar Vigor is a Spanish bar near my place. It sits right in front of the Skytree and stays open pretty late. I went for Valentine’s Day.. which means this post is already a month late.
House-made sangria
The sourness of the lemon mixed into the red wine does not stick out; it just tastes refreshing. A decent sangria. The one in the back of the photo is a hot sangria, and that one had none of the freshness. A miss.
Shrimp ajillo
Ajillo is such a simple dish to make that it is fine wherever you order it, but this place gives it a flavour of its own. The owner is apparently the second generation of a sushi shop, which is probably why it somehow tastes like it has a touch of Japanese cooking in it.
Bread
Ordered this for dipping.
Torotaku maki
Even though it is a Spanish bar, they had maki rolls on the menu, so I ordered one. It is a maki sushi made with chutoro and takuan pickled radish, and at around 800 yen it is not cheap, but it is absolutely worth trying once. Both the takuan and the tuna were far better ingredients than a maki roll really calls for. I suppose this is a menu item only a second-generation sushi shop could pull off. The first floor of the building is in fact a sushi shop. The rolls are made down in the sushi shop and sent up, so they said you cannot get them unless you order before 9 pm.
Anchovy egg and avocado salad
There are plenty of bar snacks on the menu, so it is a good place for a drink. It seems to have a fair number of regulars from the neighbourhood too. The only thing is that smoking is allowed at every seat, which was a bit of a downer.
Chili con carne
The snack menu is solid. The chili con carne was done quite cleanly as well.
Pudding
This one was a bit of a miss. It looked like something bought in from somewhere, hmm..
Kanpyo maki and umekyu maki
Since the torotaku was a hit, I ordered one more from the maki menu. They use proper kanpyo, and the sourness of the ume was impressive, but it was not quite on the level of the torotaku.
Oven-baked potato and minced meat
For a Spanish bar there are some rather borderless parts to the menu. This one was good too.
There are a lot of places to drink in the neighbourhood, and I mean to go round them one by one, but there are more than a handful, so it is going to take a while. I will take my time with it.