Uoshin is a chain of izakayas in Tokyo owned by a seafood distributor. When in Tokyo, I usually patronize their branch in Ginza. These izakayas are open only for dinner, however one makes an exception: their branch in Nogizaka, in the fancy Roppongi district, is open also for lunch catering to the office crowd. I tried their lunch offer back in October 2019.
The visit
The izakaya occupies a peculiar narrow house, in sharp contrast with the modern multi-story buildings all around.
I was hoping to sample their full menu, but actually for lunch they only serve donburi, a rice bowl with seafood. They had two options: one bowl with mixed seafood and one with chopped tuna and grated yam. I chose the former.
The lunch set included a miso soup. It was self-service: I poured the hot soup from the boiler into a bowl with its condiments.
Then I found a spot. This is a very Spartan venue. You seat on beer crates turned into stools and the tables are made out of wooden boxes.
The set looked good.
The bowl sported tuna, salmon eggs, and some white fish. Overall it was a very satisfying dish.
After finishing, I placed my used dishware and food left-overs in the proper containers.
By the time I left it was past noon and a queue had formed.
The check
For the large bowl, I spent 980 yen (around 9 USD), a bargain price for a lunch in Rappongi. It was simple, but the food was enjoyable and good value for money.
Where in Tokyo: 9-chome-6-32 Akasaka Minato City. In Japanese: 東京都 港区 赤坂 9-6-32. Website: http://www.uoshins.com/ (with list of other branches in Tokyo).
Uoshin is a chain of izakayas owned by a seafood distributor and their seafood is what keeps me going back, especially to the branch in Ginza.
The Ginza branch is located in a basement (classic!) and the small entrance may easily pass unnoticed.
Visit 1: Quick dinner
The first time I got lucky and I was given a table without reservation (but just for one hour). That was enough to try a couple of dishes.
I had their large sashimi selection that was very good.
Then I had one of their signature dishes: some rolls snowed under premium seafood: minced tuna, tuna eggs, sea urchin and crab meat. It was a delicious avalanche of delicacies from the sea.
The check for these two big dishes was 4,333 yen (40.5 USD). Not so bad.
The visit 2: Course menu
During my first visit I noticed that they also served course menus so I decided to come back, with a reservation, to try their premium (“extra fine”) menu.
The service started with three appetizers: two fried shrimps, a piece of ankimo (the delicious monk liver sashimi), and marinated kohada fish “nanban style“.
The sashimi platter featured 9 bites (one more than announced by the menu!). I identified kue (longtooth grouper), hiramasa (yellowtail amberjack), tako (octopus), hirame (Japanese halibut or olive flounder), hamachi (yellowtail), sawara (Spanish mackerel), shime saba (cured mackerel), tai (seabream), shima ebi (grey prown). I am sure I might have gotten some wrong… all were fresh and apart from the mundane octopus they were all select pieces (only drawback: they were tiny).
The salad was cabbage with bonito flakes..
The crab dish was just that: crab meat. Well done. I hate cleaning crabs.
The grilled fish was a small kinki, a very prized fish with firm white meat.
Then there was a marinated fish.
Then I was surprised to get mullet roe, whom I do not dislike, just not expecting it in this izakaya.
Then there was some fried food. This dish was forgettable. I would have expected something more interesting.
Then there was a substantial sushi platter with quality fish such as tuna and scallops. Many izakayas do not serve sushi as they do not want to bother preparing the rice, so they settle for sashimi that is easier to serve (and less filling for their customers…). But not in this izakaya, luckily.
Last dish was a classic miso soup.
At the end I had a look at their specials (they were great!) and I ordered an extra dish.
It was a faboulus combo with shirako and ankimo sashimi. Great way to end. Shirako is the male cod sperm sac…
Final check was 7,980 yen (75 USD); the course menu was 7,000 yen. Considering the quality of the seafood, the price was not unreasable. I did not make full use of the drink menu. During the course meal you can order as many drinks as you wish from a list that includes draft beer and other alcoholics. If you are just interested in the food, probably the course meal is not worth it. What I would do if I am to go back (and I hope one day to go back) would be to ask for the list of the daily specials and deep dive into them; there were some amazing seafood dishes in that list on the night when I had my course meal. I guess that the owner – a seafood distributor – has no problem procuring the best seasonal fish for their izakayas and this is a massive advantage.
Where in Tokyo: 4-chome-8-12 Ginza Chuo City. In Japanese: 東京都 中央区 銀座 4-8-12 コチワビル B1F. Website: http://www.uoshins.com/index.html (in Japanese, with list of other locations).
Paak Dang is a riverside restaurant on the Ping river in Chiang Mai, just outside the top right hand corner of the Old City. The two owners claim that their aim is to give back to society by providing employment to the less privileged. Honestly, this social angle initially put me off… I would say that most restaurants do that… you need to give me more evidence before I will regard you as a social enterprise as most businesses perform a social role by providing employment opportunities. Eventually I won my reluctance and I had a very good dinner.
The visit
My driver left me in front of the entrance where a big sign celebrated the “table” status gained in the Thailand 2020 Michelin Guide. The Chinese script is a good indication that they are catering to visitors, but I heard positive comments also from locals.
At the entrance they had some tanks and displays for fresh seafood. At the time of my visit, after the peak season, there was really little on display.
I was offered a table in the terrace directly facing the river.
Appropriately, they also provided some mosquito repellent. Mosquito bites are the downside of riverside dining in Chiang Mai.
Chips were complimentary.
I had an iced tea.
Their specialty is big river prawns. One prawn can be 400-500 grams. I was not in the mood for a prawn on the night of my visit.
Instead, I opted for a grilled squid. They had a big one that was shown to me along with a note with weight and final price. That was very nice; the only glitch was that the note was shown to me for less than a second… they should have left it on the table.
The result was a massive squid, well grilled and absolutely tender.
Then I had been looking for a while for a tom yum (spicy and sour soup) and I had their seafood one. They have a large selection of classic Thai dishes besides the fresh seafood. The tom yum was excellent with a good amount of seafood. They also used straw mushrooms. The lemongrass, lime, and galangal flavors were not killed by the spicy side of the soup.
Finally I had a roti that worked well as a side dish for the soup.
The check
The three dishes and the tea cost me 780 THB (24 USD). Probably two people could have shared the my dishes. The fresh seafood can lift the bill quickly, but overall not too overpriced in my opinion.
in the end, I was very satisfied with the dinner; the dishes I had were very tasty and the service was good. I might go back in the future.
After reviewing Ning Hai and Ji Mao Dui Tang, this review is about a third remarkable seafood restaurant in Ningbo. The main location of Shipu Restaurant is in the central district of Haishu (60 Yanyue St.). For this review I visited the branch in Wanda Plaza (Yinzhou district) along with other six people.
The visit
The restaurant is articulated into three levels (2nd, 3th, 4th floor). We headed to the 4th floor for a private room.
As usual for this kind of restaurants, we went to the “seafood room” where we placed our orders picking the fish and shellfish from what was on display.
We ordered a combination of appetizers and seafood dishes. One appetizer was these hot buns with sweet and sour pork for the filling.
A fried fish.
A type of pancakes.
An interesting dish: squid filled with pork meat.
Some rice pancakes with soy sauce.
More cuttlefish.
Scallops with cheese. Too much cheese.
A delicious local dish served braised.
Vegetables.
The check
The total check with a little discount was 880 RMB (125 USD, or less than 18 USD per person). The quality of the food was excellent and the final check made this meal a great value for money.
Where in Ningbo: 999 Middle Siming Road (inside Wanda Plaza, with the entrance from the street side, not inside the mall).
Ning Hai Shi Fu is another of the big names of seafood in Ningbo. Originally from another city called Ning Hai, it has several locations in Ningbo that are usually very busy. I visited their Yinzhou branch with two friends on a weekday and it was jam-packed.
The visit
The restaurant in Yinzhou district I visited boasted a cabinet full of prized Moutai wine, with a lot of bottles from rare years selling for over 1,000 USD each.
My party was given a table in a room with other two small groups.
As usual we went to the room where all kind of seafood and dishes were on display and we placed our orders. All labels were translated into English and prices were clearly indicated. Having a Chinese speaking friend helped a lot, but I think one could manage an order even with no Chinese (if you are not picky about the details of the preparations).
Some watermelon was offered free of charge.
And so were some hot bread filled with sesame paste.
One of the appetizers we chose was preserved cold meat sprinkled with Moutai. I promise you that there was no trace of the prized wine.
Seasonal vegetables.
One of our mains was a tail of a large fish called “rhubarb” that came with purple potato noodles. It looked like a large seabass.
The result was a braised fish in a delicious sauce with noodles. Luckily there was a lot of meat and not many bones.
I insisted on ordering the geoduck (the clam with an overgrown body pictured above on the right).
It came as a sashimi. A large part of the clam was its stomach, which we did not eat.
The stomach was used to give flavor to a soup with rice that we got at the end of the meal.
A very nice dish was rice cakes with squid ink. The rice cakes were soft, like mochi.
We had the restaurant’s home made shrimp cakes that were excellent, with pieces of shrimps discernible in the paste.
We also tried their local abalone (a bit chewy but affordable) in two styles: braised and steamed with a garlic sauce.
The check
The final check was 738 RMB (105 USD or 35 USD per person). We did not pick any super expensive seafood such as king crabs or yellow croaker, but we had more than enough for three people and the final bill was incredibly reasonable. It is another winner if you wish to feast on seafood in Ningbo.
Where in Ningbo: 613 Siming Zhong, Yinzhou. (There are several locations with slightly different menus, this is where we went.) Tip: write “Ninghai Restsaurant” in Didi and double check the resulting address.
Ningbo, a port city in Zheijang province, boasts its own breed of Chinese cuisine and is famous for fresh seafood. There are many great seafood restaurants and the most the famous ones have several branches.
Ji Mao Dui Tang has only two locations and boasts some of the highest quality seafood I have seen in Ningbo and in China generally.
The visit
We were a group of six people and we got a private room without any extra charge. It is pretty normal in Chinese restaurants. I believe there was a minimum spending, but it was so low that it was not even a remote problem.
Like in similar restaurants, in a room there was all the seafood and sample dishes on display. All were clearly priced and an assistant would input our order in a device as I and my friends walked through this room.
There was a lot of prized seafood, including the famous yellow croaker and pomfrets, two of the most sought-after types of fish from the East Chinese Sea.
Peanuts with peppers were complimentary (in Chinese restaurants it is pretty common to be offered a snack free of charge).
We had several appetizers. One was a plate of marinated bamboo shoots.
The restaurant also had a few meat dishes like these sweet and sour spare ribs.
The cuttlefish, soaked in its own ink, was certainly a highlight.
On the vegetables sides, we also had a plate with dried bean curd with black fungus.
Another appetizer was a dish with asparagus and small prawns.
The braised beef was another highlight. It was extremely tender. I believe it was cheek.
Garlic chives with eel was another interesting dish.
The most anticipated main was a pomfret grilled (this kind of fish is caught wild and has a very distinct flavor and the meat is firm).
The tiger prawns with garlic came nicely arranged.
Since it was hairy crab season we had three crabs. I must say that it was a disappointing choice, there is really so little to eat from these crabs.
A type of razor clams came in a nice casserole.
There was a nice roll with read bean paste.
Another revelation was the battered tofu fish. It was extremely soft and delicate and the frying did not kill the flavor.
The mussels were just spectacular, super meaty!
We got some fruit at the end of the meal that was also complimentary.
The check
We spent 2,713 RMB (386 USD or around 64 USD per person). It was a big check, but there was a lot of quality seafood. The two big ticket items were the pomfret (around 100 USD) and the prawns (83 USD per six big prawns). The three crabs cost around 50 USD. The other dishes were quite inexpensive.
I have been back also other times. The place seems to be always busy, even at lunch time. For two people it is possible to dine, for a single diner it may be more challenging to find the right dishes, as they are mostly designed for sharing.
Where in Ningbo: Bai Zhang Dong Lu 909, Nong 1-3 Hao.
Ministry of Crab, the famous Colombo’s restaurant, has started an international expansion and opened a branch in Shanghai in 2019. I visited it twice.
The visit(s)
Ministry of Crab set shop in the ground floor of Barbarossa, a Middle-Eastern themed lounge/restaurant located inside People’s Park. Getting to the restaurant may be a small adventure. Tip: enter the park from the entrance near the Shanghai History Museum to maximize your chances to find it quickly.
The restaurant is finely appointed and seating is comfortable. The menu, called “Amendments” to their “Constitution” showcases crabs and prawns imported from Sri Lanka (shipped live twice a week).
In my first visit my main dish was one of their large prawns (the largest available at the time of my visit, around 400 grams). You can choose the sauce: pepper (my choice), chili, curry, garlic chili.
I also had their clams.
And a prawn skewer (the prawns came already de-shelled, which was nice).
In my second visit I went for one of their famous crabs. I opted for the “large” one (around 900 grams). They have bigger ones. They showed me the crab that was really not happy about the situation and tried to escape…
I was provided (and I used) the branded apron.
The crab came in its garlic chili sauce and was already cut in six parts. There was a substantial amount of meat, I think two people could have shared it. The sauce, that is a special creation of one of the founders of the restaurant, was really delicious.
Appropriately, I had a reserve of “cube” bread that was very useful to scoop up the sauce.
My second dish was the pot with prawns and curry. The great thing about this dish was that the prawns were already cleaned from the shell. The curry was perhaps too sweet, but still a great dish.
The check(s)
The first check was 563 RMB (80 USD). The big prawn accounted for around 50 USD.
The second check was 994 RMB (140 USD), the large crab was around 90 USD. I believe that this second menu could have been split by two (not excessively hungry) diners.
The seafood was expensive, but it was also really good. I think the checks were proportioned to the quality and it makes a great experiences for a seafood lover.
Where in Shanghai: Inside People’s Park, 1/F, 231 Nanjing Xi Lu. In Chinese: 南京西路231号1楼. Website: https://www.ministryofcrab.com/
There are a lot of izakayas in Nagasaki. And they serve fresh sashimi. Of course. Unfortunately I did not find the good deals that I found in Hakodate, but I had at least a good sashimi platter in an izakaya called Ichiba-Kaisen Nagasakirou with English menu (there are not many in Nagaski).
The visit
The izakaya is located in the downtown wharf (Dejima).
It is a large izakaya with an essential decor.
Their sashimi platter had sakae (turban shell) and various types of seafood including fatty tuna. The big fish was hiramasa (yellowtail amberjack), a local catch. On the top of the platter, you can see a silver-striped fish: it is silver-stripe round herring, another local catch.
Miso soup.
And finally the silver-stripe round herrings tempura style.
The check
The big sashimi platter was 3030 yen. The total check was 4,210 yen (39 USD). Not a bad value for this kind of fresh sashimi.
I will also mention that I tried to get a seat at Dejima dining that to me seemed an even better izakaya, but on a Saturday evening it was full.
Where in Nagasaki: 1-1 Dejimamachi | Dejima Wharf 1F. In Japanese: 長崎市出島町1-1 長崎出島ワーフ 1F. Website: nagasakikou.com (they also have other two locations with the same menu).
Nagahama Fish Market is a major wholesale market in central Fukuoka. It is a 10 minute walk from Akasaka station. The real market is only opened to the general public on the second Saturday of every month (from 9am to noon) and there are reports of long lines.
However, the market office complex (pictured above) hosts a number of seafood restaurants (the cluster is called ichiba kaikan,市場会館, market hall, in Japanese). These are spartan eateries, very affordable, where workers of the market and the nearby offices eagerly go for lunch. Some open very early to cater to the fish market’s workers schedule. It was a discovery in Fukuoka. I loved it. The seafood was very fresh and lunch menus were changing daily. I had lunch several times to try as many of the restaurants as I could.
The directory is pictured above. All the action is on the ground floor. Upstairs there is a small seafood museum (but all in Japanese).
Ichibazushi Uotatsu (魚辰)
First restaurant I will mention is located near the entrance and it a conveyor-belt sushi joint called Ichibazushi Uotatsu. The seafood was really fresh. But it was not easy to understand the price of the seafood on the conveyor-belt; this coupled with all of their “rules” made the visit unpleasant and I just had a few dishes. You can also order a la carte.
Okiyo (おきよ)
Okiyo is located in the back of the building and it is easy to recognize from the blue curtain (noren). They had an English menu. Most lunch menu were prized 700-800 yen and come with rice, miso soup, tofu, and pickles. I had deep-fried amadai. Impossible to find a better value in Fukuoka for a seafood lunch set.
Ichigyo Ichie (一魚一栄)
I went to Ichigyo Ichie for their fresh sashimi (1,400 yen), but they also had tempura and classic Fukuoka dishes like sesame mackerel. The sashimi set had over a dozen slices of sashimi: tuna, seabream, octopus, squid, salmon, greater amberjack. It came with miso soup, rice, pickles, and a salad as it is customary for these lunch sets.
Fukuuo Shokudo (福魚食堂)
Fukuuo Shokudo will get my award for the the nicest owner. He was very friendly and wanted to know where I was from. I ordered a tuna bowl with various cuts of tuna. The set had a large bowl of clam miso soup, tofu, and pickles. For 1000 yen (less than 10 USD) it was a great value. I also added a grilled mackerel for just 400 yen. Many dishes were on display on the counter inside the restaurant and could be picked juts by pointing my finger.
Of the most interesting eateries, I think I only missed Hakata Uogashi (博多魚がし). There is also a Chinese restaurant if you crave for it and a shop (see picture below).
This cluster of seafood restaurants was a great discovery and I would gladly have lunch in such a place every day of the week!
Where in Fukuoka: 3-11-3, Nagahama, Chuo-ku. In Japanese: 中央区長浜3-11-3. Tip: go a bit early, like 11.30am, to beat the lunch crowd.
Koko is the Japanese restaurant on the 5th floor of the Sofitel Wanda in Ningbo. The menu is available both a la carte and as a buffet (unlimited orders from the menu). See the review of the weekend buffet at Le Bistrot for another Sofitel restaurant in Ningbo.
The visit
I went to this restaurant a few times choosing the buffet option (it is just much more convenient).
My first order is usually a sashimi platter with salmon, swordfish, shrimps, ark-clams, mackerel, tuna, seabream.
Grilled oysters with cheese.
More tuna sashimi.
Miso soup.
Abalone.
Sushi set. The sushi is quite bland. I guess it is the rice.
Sushi with scallops.
Scallops grilled with cheese. A lot of cheese.
Grilled fish.
Some tempura.
Pan-seared goose liver.
Grilled salmon.
Some final dessert.
The check
The buffet has several costs depending whether you include or not a few high-end dishes. The cheapest is around 320 RMB for lunch (47 USD). After a 15% discount, I spent 261.8 RMB (39 USD). I wish the dishes were more tasty and probably I would be there on a regular basis. Also, on a couple of occasions I had some stomach problems afterwards… so I stopped going.
Where in Ningbo: Sofitel Wanda Hotel Ningbo, 5F 899 Si Ming Zhong Road Yinzhou District In Chinese: 四明中路899号 Information for booking (advisable on weekends and evenings).
