A note on the words: asado is the South American way of grilling meat slowly over charcoal or wood, and also the name for the platter of grilled cuts that comes out of it. Sopa paraguaya translates literally as “Paraguayan soup,” but it is a dense baked cake of cornmeal, cheese, egg and milk. An empanada is a filled pastry turnover, and a milanesa is a thin cutlet of meat, breaded and fried. Achar is a South Asian style of spiced pickle. Meshi in this blog’s name simply means a meal.
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Restaurant Amigo on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
So, Hangover Meshi. Today I decided to try “Restaurant Amigo,” a Paraguayan place in Akasaka. It is near Akasaka Station, over on the Tameike side, in what you might call the Korean quarter — the zone packed with Korean restaurants. Almost everything around it is Korean, and there in the middle of it, on the second floor, is a Paraguayan place with AMIGO! written on it. You do not eat Paraguayan food every day, do you. I doubt there are all that many of these even in Tokyo, ha. I am looking forward to this!
The Amigo recommended course! 6,600 yen
The course is the Amigo recommended course! At 6,600 yen it comes with all-you-can-drink, so this is really great value!
First up, empanadas.
I forgot to take a photo, but imagine a big dumpling wrapped in bread dough.
Maybe the closest thing is a piroshki that has not been fried. Plenty of filling, and simply delicious!
The salad, dressing included, is not all that different from a Japanese one.
And then the milanesa, whose photo has also gone missing somewhere.
How to put it. A cutlet, I suppose. Meat pounded out thin and breaded. Something like the ancestor of tonkatsu.
And here is the main dish! This, apparently, is what Paraguay is all about.
The asado platter. Charcoal-grilled meat piled on like there is no tomorrow. There are potatoes and sausage tucked in there too, and while this is a portion for five people, the volume is something. Working through it piece by piece fills you up pretty thoroughly.
And this is the accompaniment to the meat. Eaten together with it, delicious! Something like achar, maybe.
The literal translation is apparently “Paraguayan soup,” but it is more like a corn bread.
The story goes that indigenous people were making a corn soup and drove off too much of the liquid, so it turned into a corn cake, ha.
Inside it is corn, plenty of cheese, egg and milk — a heavyweight staple that sits solidly in your stomach.
A sweet dusted with fine shredded coconut.
Quite sweet, and this too is a dense, weighty sort of sweet — wonderfully satisfying!
This time I got to try Paraguayan food, and all of it was really good! Or rather, it was almost all meat — and meat grilled boldly over charcoal is guaranteed to be delicious! I do think there ought to be more places like this around. The value is good, the experience is genuinely interesting, and I found myself thinking I would like to go again.
Restaurant Amigo (Latin American / Akasaka Station, Tameike-sanno Station, Kokkai-gijidomae Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
