Robataya – Roppongi, Tokyo

Although it was quite tourist-friendly (in a not-so-great, over-the-top-theatrical way), with equally tourist-friendly high prices, the food at Robataya was in retrospect quite tasty.

Set up with two or three grill operators sitting in the middle of a large single room surrounded by diners, the restaurant showcased a market’s worth of fresh ingredients, which you ordered from a menu or could otherwise grunt and point to. We started off with a few light items, a few pieces of tuna tataki, a vinegary mozuku (seaweed) cold soup, and a salad of lettuce, cucumbers, and seaweed in a sesame oil dressing:Next, we had a grilled skewer of deliciously fatty beef, and a fried whole snapper:Our last dishes were a sashimi plate, which was my favorite item of the night (everything so remarkably fresh, especially the sweet shrimp), and a soft landing of chazuke, a soup bowl of rice & seaweed strips, with a choice of topping (I had the salmon roe, although the one pictured below was Lucas’ bowl of salmon), in tea (or dashi). Not the best value-for-money, but each dish we ordered did not disappoint, and some were impressively delicious.