TOKYO

TOKYO

FOOD RAIDER

Weekend crowds throng Harajuku (above, left) where cosplayers are out in full force (top). Trains are the fastest way to get around the bustling metropolis (above, right). ST PHOTOS: STEPHANIE YEOW

On previous visits, the stations have always been overheated, but the post-earthquake energy saving exercise has made taking trains a pleasure.

There I am, bounding up stairs in between platforms, changing from one line to another to get to places. I have not quite figured out how to find things on ground level but the Japanese are endlessly helpful to a foreigner with maps she cannot read.

On every trip, I discover something new and rarely go back to the same places. High-end, mid-price or cheap and cheerful, the Tokyo food scene fits all budgets.

Shinjuku's multifaceted food offerings: Luscious pastries at Dean & Deluca (left, top), tiny bars and izakayas packed into small alleys (right) and a traditional sweet shop tempts with its array of daifuku and wagashi. ST PHOTOS: ONG SOR FERN

Despite all that working, I cannot afford 30,000 yen (S$395) meals every day of my trip and have found some stellar places that serve great food for under 1,000 yen.

After nine days of serious eating and under duress from my editor to whittle the list down, here are seven of the best eats on this trip.

TOKYO

BUTAGUMI

Delicious is an inadequate word to describe how good this pork is. There is almost as much fat as there is meat, which sounds hideous until you taste a slice sans sauce. The pork has a mild, sweet flavour and no part of it is dried out.

Even the fat doesn’t put me off – it is a little springy. All around it is a halo of crispy panko crumbs. Every slice, some lightly pink in the middle, is a treat.

With the pork comes rice, miso soup, grated cabbage and pickles, all of which the staff will top up on request.

It all makes a complete meal but I also spring for the Smoked Mozzarella Cheese (1,200 yen, below).

The server shows me the cheese, made in Italy for the restaurant and shaped like a pig. Already it looks good and, of course, it tastes even better.

ST PHOTOS: TAN HSUEH YUN

For another 200 yen, you get eel broth to end the meal with. A bowl arrives with a section of anago bone in it. Leave some rice and eel and then signal to the wait staff when you’re ready for the broth.

Someone will come along and pour some into the bowl. Add the remaining rice and eel into it, together with whatever condiments are left. On a winter afternoon, this chazuke is the best way to end an anago meal.

The place is easy to find too. Just locate the umbrella section on the ground floor of Takashimaya at Nihonbashi and ask the staff there to point you in the right direction.

When you get there, write your name on the sign-up sheet at the entrance, pronto. You will want to eat the anago here as soon as humanly possible.

ST PHOTOS: TAN HSUEH YUN

I order the Tsumetai Niku Soba (850 yen, below), cold soba topped with beef and served with a cold dipping sauce.

The noodles are robust and chewy, and delicious dipped into the soy sauce-based dip, with hints of sesame and chilli oils. Add some crunchy panko crumbs for texture. The beef, with strips of fat, is unctuous.

Finally, when I’m done with the noodles, I pour some soba-yu, the nutritious water from boiling the buckwheat noodles, into what’s left of the dipping sauce and drink it up. I make my way out, belly warm and happy.

ST PHOTOS: TAN HSUEH YUN

The first is an old fashioned-looking locker behind the sushi counter. It turns out to be an ice box. Rectangular blocks of ice are fitted into the two top chambers, to keep the fish stored underneath cool.

Other sushi chefs might sear otoro (tuna belly) or saba (mackerel, below) with a blow torch and you may taste the fuel in the fish. At Sawada, the chef uses hot coals on a metal rack (bottom), held over the fish.

Then he urges me to eat the torched fish with mountains of wasabi. I hesitate, even though the wasabi looks creamy and inviting. When I place a dollop on the otoro, he looks at me like I am a wimp. So I add to the pile. “More.” And I obey.

I pop it in my mouth, expecting a nuclear explosion but there is no trace of heat, no cruel burn that threatens to sear the brain. The bite of the root is neutralised by the oils from the fish. Mackerel is served the same way and both play delightful tricks on the mind and palate.

There are other treats: micro tomatoes about the size of peas, cubes of yellowtail smoked like bacon and tasting remarkably like it , kohada or gizzard shad marinated in vinegar for 10 days, beautiful hamaguri or clam with yuzu zest, bafun uni in a gunkan sushi so creamy it is like ice cream.

“Haagen Dazs uni,” the chef says with a smile.

There is also shimofuri otoro, smoked bonito, all pressed into elegant, compact sushi I eat with my hands.

I will never forget what I call the “forest gunkan sushi”, seaweed wrapped around rice and baby tai with strips of myoga, shiso, baby cucumber and young leeks sticking out of it. The daikon, ginger and sesame seed handroll is something else too.

Dessert is a sweet gooseberry.

There is a strict no-photos policy unless there are no other diners. So I turn up early and ask the chef if I can just take a couple of pictures. He says to go ahead but asks that I put away the camera when the next customer arrives.

Fair enough. In a six-seat restaurant, incessant clicking can annoy other diners paying top dollar for a meal.

It turns out there is only one other diner, who used to work in Singapore. We all end up chatting and the chef tells us he enjoys Tian Tian Chicken Rice here. From the diner, I learn that most Singaporeans have poker faces. I am not one of them, he says. It is good to know.

I tell them which restaurants are on my list this visit. They teach me how to say Tamai properly.

My summer school Japanese from too long ago is inadequate but somehow, we find ways to communicate. People who love to eat always do.

They might, however, have trouble locating the restaurant, tucked away on the third floor of a nondescript building in a Ginza back street.

The trick is to look for Sonoko, a bakery which also sells beauty products, across from Mitsukoshi department store in Ginza. Walk down the narrow alley between that shop and Madras, a clothing shop. Take the first right and MC building (below) is across from Maison de Dessert.

ST PHOTOS: TAN HSUEH YUN

They are crisp at the bottom and sport the requisite “wings”, crispy little bits that stick out of the bottom. Inside, the filling is juicy and flavourful. There is no way to stop at six, so we order more. We do not order extras of the steamed dumplings because they are not half as good as the pan-fried ones.

Cucumber With Special Miso (180 yen) is crunchy and refreshing, and so is Bean Sprouts With Special Meat Sauce (180 yen, below). The sauce tastes like the topping for dan dan mian – a little spicy and full of umami.

ST PHOTOS: TAN HSUEH YUN

However, it makes sense when you consider that sushi came about as a way of preserving fish by salting it and wrapping it in rice.

Among the highlights of the meal: a slice of squid stuffed with rice, a heavenly morsel we gobble up too quickly. There is also Spanish mackerel aged in konbu for three days so the fish is melting soft and sweet.

Two slices of tako or octopus (below) vanish quickly too, although the preparation takes far longer. The octopus is massaged for two hours and then simmered in water, sake and houjicha, or roasted green tea, with daikon added to the pot.

There is also buri aged 10 days and served on red rice. It falls apart, so tender is it. The shoyu marinade has done its work.

At Sushi Sho, uni is lightly torched. It looks less pretty than fresh but the sea urchin gonads are creamier, with a hint of smokiness.

A cube of chutoro aged five days and served with a dab of wasabi in one corner is silky and beautiful, its flavour deep and nuanced. With the fresh, it is the fat that thrills. Here, it is that umami that makes me want another.

Because I take notes on a sheet of paper on my lap throughout the meal, I tell my friend we have had 32 items, excluding sake. The bill comes up to 25,000 yen a head.

Expensive, yes. But what price bliss?