Birthday stuff...

Having already taken me on a bead shopping-spree in Asakusa Bashi [浅草橋] last saturday, Greg took me to a very nice French restaurant in Hiroo [広尾] called Chez Tomo.

We entered past the open kitchen and the signatures of the Troigros Brothers (two very famous French Chefs whose restaurant Tomo used to work in when he was in France) and then turned the corner to a very peaceful, white-dressed dining area. Tomo apparently cooks for the love of food and only just covers costs on lunches, and as the majority of his customers are regulars, he changes the menu often.

I had a very nice foie gras fish terrine (very nice foie gras!) and Greg went for a form of black pudding (which looked more like a chocolate brownie. I have to say I prefered the look of mine, the idea of a slab of blood didn't really appeal. on the other hand the slab of blood didn't look or taste anything like what I expected and it had a surprisingly soft texture. Moving on, we both took the hot and cold veges which arrived on a square plate neatly laid out in a grid. There each of the 30 or so little veges were all different, and we spent most of the time working out what they were before eliminating them one by one. For the main course I took white fish in a tomato soup which came with a prawn sitting on a bed of finely diced vegetables. Dessert, which is usually the most difficult to avoid dairy products, they offered me several non-cow related options involving fruit and sugar. I took the cherries, which then reappeared in a very tasty red wine sauce. In addition to the tastiness, the sauce also tried to make me more drunk.

The food at Chez Tomo was excellent, and I was particularly impressed with their ease at dealing with my anti-cow product allergys. The atmosphere was more cosy, and the service more personal than L'Atelier, and we hope to go again...

The second-half of the afternoon involved heading to Shibuya and buying tickets for Indiana Jones, which was out on general release the very same day.

After the movie, we went to Tight to wait for people joining us for dinner...which was at ISM (our favourite hard-to-find restaurant)...a lovely lunch and a great night with friends all arranged by my Greg. Merci Buckets.

The Special Birthday Krispy Kreme Tower

It's the 15th of August, and it's Annalisa's birthday. Needless to say we've gone out to eat.

We are in Ebisu looking for the Monsoon Cafe...
It has lovely Moroccan looking lights and a dark wooden decor. Unfortunately, however, the entire restaurant is open out on the the street. This wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't so sticky and humid. But it's actually not too bad inside, their A/C must be on on full blast...stinks of inefficiency if you ask me...

Anyway, we get down to the important business of ordering the 1st round of food and beverages...then the second and third...and some more drinks please...

We then try and ask for a large plate from the waitress, who comes back with a small dish...errrr, we asked for a BIG plate...She heads back to 'have another look' then after a while she comes back and says they doesn't have one. We explain that anything flat and reasonably large will do, then try and point out that we want to build a tower out of the 2 dozen Krispy Kremes that Greg had to queue in the blazing sun for half an hour for at Shinjuku. The waitress looks a bit shifty and tells us that we can't eat things that we brought from a different shop in the restaurant. We're a bit deflated. But we persist, and eventually wrangle it out of her that if we pay a 'cakeage' fee (like corkage but for cake) we are allowed to have the KKs and eat them.

A CAKEAGE FEE?!?!?!? yeah...well...I thought it was a bit mean of them. It was a birthday for god's sake... Anyhoo, suspiciously, after we agree to pay the cakeage fee, they miraculously manage to produce an absolutely Ma-huuusive plate...dusty though it maybe, Greg immediately works on making it eat-off-able... we then start the construction of the KK tower...

Don't look! You'll spoil the 'surprise'...


ok... so Krispy Kremes are rather compressible...

...take a deep breath...


...hmm... I think we start eating them... it looks like it's going to fall over...even with the cunning chopstick reinforcement column in the center...


A very pleased looking birthday girl avec Krispy Kreme...

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