The first was at the basement of Takashimaya Times Square at Shinjuku. This place is really a Disneyland for anyone who likes to explore supermarkets and their eateries. Singapore shops should learn a few tips from them on how to display their food at their glass cabinets.
We settled for Chez Matsuo's little shop at Takashimaya's basement. Chez Matsuo has a range of different restaurants serving French food with Japanese ingredients. Their main restaurant in Tokyo was awareded 1 Michelin star, and they have several smaller cafes and eateries all over Japan.
This small shop sells frozen freeze-packs of their stews. But for those who want something light, they have a small corner with seats for 6 diners.
Diners are first treated to their marinated summer vegetable salad and a piece of bread.
The bread came in handy to mop up the sauces from the Chicken with curry spices. The curry here is more Indian than Japanese, and the chicken meat was very tender and flavourful.
Another main dish we had was this Hamburger with Mushroom Sauce (893 yen), made from premium beef and creamy mushroom and champagne sauce. Again, the meat was very tender and flavourful.
We also ordered a bowl of Vegetable soup to wash our food down.
Across the street at the Shinjuku subway station, there is a branch of the very popular Sabou Oiwake, which serves some of the best traditional Japanese desserts and sweet snacks.
As it was a humid and warm summer, we ordered the Green Tea Shaved Ice with Red Beans (1,100 yen). The ice was shaved till very fine (unlike the shaved ice in our ice-kachang), and the red beans were of excellent quality. They were also evry generous with the portion. At 1,100 yen, it was expensive, but still worth every single cent.
We also ordered the Traditional Mochi Dessert set (1,100 yen each). There were so much to eat in this set. Surprisingly, our favourite dessert was the one which was savoury - chewey mochi balls with a thick savoury soya sauce. It was warm and we had one scoop of the warm mochi and one scoop of the sweet ice-cream. Would strongly recommend their special dessert set.
Across Sabou Oiwake was this dessert fruit shop called Takano Fruit Parlor.
We bought a Peach Momo Swiss Roll (1,365 yen). The swiss roll cake was light and fluffy, but they were quite stingy with the peach slices as there were too little of the fruit and too much of the whipped cream.
Chez Matsuo (Traiteur)
Takashimaya Times Square
B1,
5-24-2 Sendagaya,
Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo
http://www.chez-matsuo.co.jp/
Sabou Oiwake
Metro Shokudo-gai
Shinjuku Subway Building
B1,
1-1-2 Nishi-Shinjuku
Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo
http://www.oiwakedango.co.jp/
Takano Fruit Parlour
Metro Shokudo-gai
Shinjuku Subway Building
B1,
1-1-2 Nishi-Shinjuku
Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo
http://takano.jp/index.html