Ginza Tenryu is a place I’d been hearing about for ages. It’s apparently famous for serving big, tasty gyoza cheap right in the middle of Ginza, so much so that people line up for it at lunchtime. So I’d always wanted to try it, but honestly, going all the way to Ginza just for gyoza feels like a bit of a waste of time. There are so many great places in that neighborhood that I never had the bandwidth to worry about gyoza.
Then I found out they have a branch in the restaurant floor of the Tobu Department Store in Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro I can pop over to without a second thought, so I went right away.
Gyoza
The set comes with six giant gyoza, each easily three times the size of a normal one, for 770 yen. Cheap and plenty of food.
The set
It comes with rice and a side dish. Rice costs an extra 100 yen.
It’s cheap, and the gyoza are big and filling, which is nice, but as expected the taste falls a bit short. Because they’re so big the skins are thick, and that makes the texture less enjoyable. On top of that, they didn’t manage to get that seared, toasty flavor all the way into the gyoza. Making giant gyoza is a fine idea, but if you can’t fry them up perfectly, you’re stuck at B-grade. Well… then again, some people probably like them precisely for that.
If the gyoza had been a bit better I’d have ordered a beer and had a daytime drink, so that was a little disappointing. The other dishes here aren’t as cheap as the gyoza, so they don’t really tempt me. I doubt I’ll be coming back.