I took my camera along, only to find out the memory card wasn’t in it. Some days are just like that… sob… Feeling that hollow emptiness of losing a whole day’s worth of photos, I’m at least leaving a record in words.
There’s no place I end up going to as often as Shinjuku, but finding a good place to eat right in the middle of Shinjuku is always hard. The young people and office workers who gather there tend to care more about price and speed of service than taste. Even so, there’s one shop that has kept its name alive in Shinjuku for a very long time: Shinjuku Nakamuraya, an Indian curry specialist.
Nakamuraya is a restaurant famous for its curry and Western-style dishes, and on the first floor there’s a bakery selling their famous curry bread plus a small café. The second floor is a proper Western-style diner, and the third floor is a restaurant. For an important get-together the third floor would be the way to go, but today I kept it very casual and had the lunch menu on the first floor.
Since the place is famous for curry, I looked over the menu to order one, and it’s not cheap at all -_-;; The cheapest curry item was a curry omurice at around 1,000 yen. There was pasta on the lunch menu too… no idea how it tastes, but the portion is small. And 850 yen is enough money for two bowls of gyudon…
Apart from being a bit pricey, the omurice was pretty decent. Rice fried with curry, a soft half-set omelette laid over it, and the sauce poured around it was a slightly sweet curry that felt like a half-and-half mix of Japanese and Indian styles. I wouldn’t call it outstanding (it’s not on the level of Loup de Mer), but it’s good enough to count as a proper good-eats spot. It’s also easy to find, so it’s a good option when you’re not sure where to eat around here. Eating on Nakamuraya’s third floor will run you 3,000 yen even at lunch, which is a bit steep, but it’s nice when you occasionally want a taste of luxury. Then again, Shinjuku is about as far from luxury as it gets -_- so I haven’t had the chance yet. And I have a feeling it’ll stay that way…
Work wrapped up without a hitch, and I had dinner in Shinjuku too. Considering who I was eating with and the budget, where to go was pretty much decided already. How many better choices are there than Tsunahachi, the tempura place that’s the star of this neighborhood…
We got there right at mealtime, but strangely there was no line. -_-;; That was a first. So we went in and looked at the menu, and oh no, the prices had all gone up. The cheapest item is now 1,980 yen. They used to have meals in the low 1,000s. Well… the taste can’t have changed, right? In we went to order.
The tables are neat and the service is good. The rice, miso soup and side dishes that come standard with a set meal were all properly made, which surprised me. Especially the clean-tasting miso soup loaded with shijimi clams, the best miso soup I’ve had in a while.
The cheapest set comes with about seven pieces of tempura. As you’d expect from a place with a reputation, the frying skill is good and the ingredients are fresh, but they do use cheap ingredients. The thrill of the monster prawns I had at Kawakamian before wasn’t repeated. (For the record, Tsunahachi’s prawn tempura comes without the heads.) Still, the miso soup alone makes me want to come back.
A few years ago I thought the tempura here was really delicious, but now I notice a lot of shortcomings. ^_^ I guess my palate has gotten a lot fancier. Well… even so, the calorie pressure of wandering around in search of truly great tempura is considerable, so I don’t really feel like chasing anything more high-end…
It used to be hard to just drop by casually because of the long lines, but since the big price hike it actually seems easier to get in. It’d be hard to find a better place for business get-togethers in particular. I highly recommend it to anyone wandering around Shinjuku with no idea where to eat.
Without photos, this has turned into a really disappointing review. Since I’ve made the mistake once, I should be fine for a good while. It seems something like this happens about once a year…