Ishibekouji Mamecha: Tokyo 2017

After exploring the autumn foliage at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, we walked to the nearby Shinjuku Marui Annex for some much needed nourishment. That’s where we found Mamecha – located on the 8th floor of this department store.

The dishes here are decidedly Japanese… pretty, a bit confusing, and tasty.

The Chicken Cutlet with Soft Boiled Egg (1180円) is rather straight forward with the main part of the dish. Similar to an oyako don, the mix of crispy chicken cutlet with the creamy soft boiled egg and runny yolk on rice is something I’m familiar with. I added a bowl of tuna and sesame rice for an extra 200円 and was surprised at how good it was. I’m pretty clueless as to what all of the other small dishes were but that’s the fun part about trying new things.

The Tuna and Avocado Hitsumabushi Style Obanzi Set (1500円) was a bit more perplexing. The tuna and avocado on rice was really good but we weren’t entirely sure how we were supposed to enjoy this meal with all of the accompaniments. Now, if I had googled “Hitsumabushi” when we were eating, I probably would have figured out that it’s a style of enjoying your meal that is often associated with eel on rice from the Nagoya area of Japan.

With Hitsumabushi, you’re supposed to divide the main part of the dish (in this case, the rice topped with tuna and avocado) into 4 servings. You take the first serving into the smaller bowl and then enjoy it as-is. For your next serving, you add some of the condiments into your bowl along with the rice mixture, stir it up, and enjoy. For your third serving, you add some of the dashi/tea into the bowl along with the rice mixture. Finally, for you last serving, you enjoy it however you like.

Since we didn’t know what we were doing, we skipped right to the end and just mixed what we liked in with the tuna/avocado/rice.

Tōkyō-to, Shinjuku-ku, 3 Chome−1-26
Shinjuku Marui Annex 8F

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