Ko-panda, Kichijōji コパンダ、吉祥寺

Kichijōji continues to boom, seemingly well on the way to becoming a small city in its own right – in the manner of Shinjuku or Shibuya – rather than just a well developed, over populated and highly sought after village – such as Shimo-Kitazawa or Jiyūgaoka. It’s yet to be ruined though. Still plenty to draw the casual diner, and enough “nostalgic” establishments remaining to bring a tear to the eye of seasoned Tokyoites.

An area (block?) brimming with such attractions is the old covered market/ traders ground across the road from the central exit of the station. What was once little more than a fetid warren of rundown alleys and stalls is now a frightfully hip dining and drinking spot clustered with “postmodern/ retro/ neo-Asian” bars and izakaya, many of which appear to be part of the increasingly sprawling empire established by the folks behind the Mishima Bar (opposite Iseya at the entrance to the park).

Ko-panda nestles amidst the lanterns, moldering electric meters and crumbling stalls of the alley known as noren komichi. Think black and white Kurosawa movies such as Stray Dog. At best you’d squeeze in 10-12, if slim. Little counter, little tables, little stools, little menu, little izakaya. A staff of one – the proprietor one would like to think – takes orders and pokes at the vat of tepid oden.

The most memorable thing about Ko-panda is the vaguely nightmarish paper-wrought little panda – think Silent Hill only with China’s favoured fluffy diplomatic pawn. The food is limited, not costly and intended to accompany your booze more than satisfy your appetite.

We did the oden, which to fair be was less hateful than it’s wont to be; some tasty yet overpriced cubes of cheese and some seasonal takenoko. The latter were enjoyable, but clearly at the lower end of the quality scale.

Great fun, but hardly worthy of a long stay. Visit before, in between or after dining spots. 

Yukari, Harajuku ゆかり、原宿

The subdued, dark stained wood and narrow steps of Yukari’s entrance belie the three floors of roomy, if spartan, izakaya within. Besides the aluminium air ducts, bare lighting and coat hangers adorning the wall, an assortment of beer posters and hand written menu excerpts are all that brighten the otherwise instantly forgettable décor and dinner-hall atmosphere. 

My dining partners and I arrived early, a little after 6pm, to find each floor sparsely populated and unsettlingly quiet. As time wore on, thankfully, our floor – the third – did indeed become busier as a mix of middle-aged salarymen, students and Harajuku libertines settled in. For these patrons, at least, the food was secondary to lively chat and chain-smoking… We reeked of stale smoke by the end of the evening. 

For us, the food (and talk?) was secondary to the guzzling of beer. Cheap beer. ¥180 beer. We managed to polish off two-dozen of them and a good amount of food between the three of us, with the final tab coming in at just under ¥3,000 per head. In terms of price, this was almost American territory… Only with less vomit…

Although bags were provided for the overly ambitious among the young drinkers that frequent Yukari. 

Service was prompt, delivery for the most part swift – although a couple of our orders disappeared into the nether only to return after our gentle admonitions. Clearly, you’ll not be visiting here for the cuisine. It’s all about the low price, bucket loads of beer and/ or highballs, and cheap, oily and defrosted standards to line the stomach.

The evening’s fare commenced with an otoshi of bean sprouts and enoki mushrooms. Ravenous as we were, these dishes followed in quick succession, allowing barely enough time for them to be hastily snapped before the next arrived. By time we were done, repeat orders were the all we had the will to muster.

Avocado, unadorned, dipped in soy sauce, was soft and creamy, and just a tad too cold. The shioyakisoba topped with cabbage, leak and bacon was just what the doctor ordered and, according to one of my dining partners, a vast improvement upon the sauce-smothered variety.

Maguro sushi and minuscule nigiri tipped a hat at the bounty of the seas and two fingers at conservationists. If you are serious about your raw fish, don’t bother. The maruyaki ika, sadly, did little to impress. Not as soft and recently-defrosted as the stuff they cast before you at the American, but still not quite right either.  

Inevitably, the beer tally required balancing with carbs. We needed to look no further than the fried potato wedges smothered in molten cheese and then drowned in Tabasco. The fried cabbage with konbu was actually quite enjoyable, too. We made short work of it at least, although the neighbouring table managed to make a bowl of the stuff last all night. 

Although neither too greasy nor too fatty, the chicken karaage was average at best, yet filling. The fact that I enjoyed the limp, unadulterated garnish of lettuce leaves as much as anything else served for us speaks volumes.

Yukari is all about the beer, and nobody pretends otherwise between the hours of 5pm and 5am, for ¥180, Monday to Thursday. 

03-5785-4100

http://r.tabelog.com/tokyo/A1306/A130601/13050072/

Hanbei, Shibuya 半兵ヱ、渋谷

Hanbei is Disneyland. Or at least, probably what Disneyland would do if they had a Showa-land “attraction,” only without the endless queues of people having “fun.”

My esteemed colleague, the very same who introduced me to the delights of Lad’s Dining, recommended Hanbei (funny, I assume it’s the close proximity of Lad’s Bunny Bar that led him to stumble upon Hanbei…) as it was cheap, fun and “old-style.” And so it is.

Situated behind and to the right of Mark City, not far from the Keio Inokashira line entrance and that famous yakitori place that always has smoke billowing from it, it’s fairly easy to find thanks to the old yellow backlit street sign at the top of the stairs leading down to this basement izakaya. Prices and food are basement too.

The interior is jam packed with old posters – film, TV, consumer products etc. – and nice old metal (tin?) advertising plates for soft drinks, medicines and stores. Showa era toys and robots adorn the place here and there while all the while once-famous songs (rather military sounding at times) fill the air. It’s colourful and actually rather entertaining.

Clientele-wise, there’s a good mix of young couples, students, giggly semi-legal girls and chain smoking salarymen. Thus, it’s also pretty lively most of the time, but in a fun, “don’t need to care about those around you” way. The service can be good if you get the floor staff, and a little slow and surly if you request anything from the kitchen staff populating the semi-open kitchen that dominates the room.

As I said, it’s cheap. Very cheap. Certainly not as expensive as this place. While this is great as far as beer, kaku-highball and Hoppi goes, it has a decidedly negative impact on the food.

Put simply, the “cuisine” on offer is miniscule, and of a lesser quality than that served up at holes such as Watami. The o-shinko moriawase usually provides a limp selection of cucumber, red cabbage, takuan and/or daikon, three pieces of each if you are a party of three, and four if you’re a party of… The octopus tempura wasn’t that bad, sure it’s oily and limp, but also strangely compelling after a dozen drinks or so. The chicken karaage come with a sparkler and tiny cocktail Hinomaru Japanese flag thrust in them. Need I say more?

The okonomiyaki, which cost around ¥300 is resoundingly poor. I regret to announce that this sorry affair turned out to be my esteemed colleague’s introduction to the dish. Same goes for the yakisoba too. Really, really bad. The kushi and yakitori are also very small, but then they cost no more than a ¥100 a stick. Probably the best I’ve had over several visits (I’m glutton for punishment, okay) were the onigiri. But then, how easy can it be to utterly ruin those?

Okay, the food is rough, and it’s Showa-land, but the drinks are cheap and on both visits I’ve laughed until I cried, thanks to my dining partners. For a cheap drink, with some gut-lining nibbles it’ll do. Just.

Tel: 03-3464-0775

American, Shibuya アメリカン、渋谷

I’m not going to recommend the American – I feel a little embarrassed just admitting to visiting the place – but will admit that, at times, it has its uses. What they are I’ll not go into here.

It’s convenient, situated just across the road from Shibuya station’s Hachiko exit, on the 8^th floor of the Daigi Building (next to Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ bank). It’s cheap, with draft beer weighing in at ¥250 (yes, that cheap) and most of the food costing just a few hundred yen at most, and considerably less during the daily happy hour (5pm – 7pm) when the price of food is heavily discounted. It’s entertaining, in the way staring at a fatal car wreck is.

The place is faded; I’d guess it was pretty cool in the 80s or early 90s. Now the décor is tacky, dirty and almost charmingly “retro.” Hey, they even play 80s Genesis! Spacious, the American can – and usually does – accommodate somewhere in the region of a hundred or so low-price revellers. The clientele are an eclectic mix of under-age drinkers, students, fledgling salarymen and balding oyaji.

The service floats somewhere between rude and disinterested, being provided by a motley crew of young Shibuya types with spiky blonde hair, piercings and bad manners.

Visit there regularly enough and you’ll have the chance to watch groups of young men try to impress their female companions (and perhaps each other) by drinking themselves into oblivion, before vomiting all over the place and spending the rest of the evening on the toilet floor. The staff certainly do nothing to dissuade such behaviour, no matter how obvious to all around what the eventual outcome will be. Invariably, once the vomit has been sprayed around, one of the poor young females in the group ends up cleaning up the mess and apologising to surrounding patrons for the “meiwaku” her charming gentleman friend has caused.

The food is uniformly awful. Or at least it’s no better, and probably more often than not a lot worse, than convenience store food. That said, it is ridiculously cheap… After a certain amount of beer (can be a lot at these prices) the fries, eda mame, vegetable sticks with miso, and grilled squid with mayo seem a feast.

To make the whole package even more “enticing” each time you visit you’ll be provided with a sheet of coupons providing your first drink free on your next visit. Thus it is they come back for more…

So, what’s it good for? If you’re in the area, short of time, broke, or just bored of visiting the thousands of better establishments Tokyo has to offer, the American is an easy option for cheap drinking when the imagination fails.

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that they on occasion like to pad out the bill with a few extra items. Be vigilant.

Tel: 03-3464-1177

Kichinto, Soshigaya-Okura きちんと、祖師ケ谷大蔵

Situated but a few minutes walk from Soshigaya-Okura station, on the Odakyu-Line, Kichinto provides standard izakaya fare at economy prices.

 Recently 'refurbished', although I was unable to detect any real change since my last visit several years ago, my dining partners and I, needing ample supply of alcohol and food as ballast and little more, entered Kichinto to be greeted by an enthusiastic 'irasshai', 'welcome', from the young waiter who promptly fell off the slightly raised wooden floor above the entrance. Free entertainment surely, and an initial indicator of things to come. 

Initially rather quiet, the main room and adjoining koshitsu, private rooms, soon became lively. Patrons of Kichinto seem to cover various age groups, from early twenties through late fifties, with the former being abundant. 

The interior is the usual budget-izakaya style, wood-work and hanging blinds surrounding an open kitchen of wood and stainless-steel. The atmosphere is lively, with the bubble of conversation being complimented by thoroughly awful, and unrecognizable, Euro-pop anthems more suited to a small-town gay bar than an izakaya.

Prices are reasonable. A daijoki of draught beer, which is near frozen, comes in at 800 yen. Quotidian dishes, such as chicken karaage at 500 yen, abound. The service is relaxed, friendly, vaguely uninterested and certainly prone to mistakes. Our meal comprised of an appetizer of greasy prawn crackers, eda-mame, the aforementioned karaage, unusually elongated gyoza and a tuna-sashimi, avocado and wasabi-mayonnaise salad. The selection of drinks on offer is rather limited, especially in terms of nihonshu (sake). As a result I resorted to whisky once the taste of beer became tiresome. 

In all, Kichinto offers little in the way of surprises. Although nothing about it excites, it should not be expected to do so. It is, along with thousands like it, no more than it presumes to be. As such there is certainly no reason to make a journey to visit. If stranded in Soshigaya-Okura, the town has better to offer although at somewhat higher prices. 

Tel: 03-5948-5652.