A note on the words: a horigotatsu is a table set over a sunken well in the floor, so you sit as if on the floor but with your legs hanging down. Shaoxing wine is a Chinese fermented rice wine used both for drinking and for curing seafood. Jidori means free-range Japanese chicken, and yodare-dori, literally “drool chicken,” is a Sichuan dish of poached chicken under a sesame and chili sauce. Mongo cuttlefish is a large cuttlefish common in Japanese kitchens. Xiaolongbao are small steamed dumplings filled with meat and hot soup. Douchi are fermented, salted black soybeans, a Chinese seasoning. Ezo abalone is the northern Japanese abalone. Tomalley is the soft green-brown paste inside a lobster’s head, prized for its richness. Shochu is a Japanese distilled spirit, and nomihodai, translated here as all-you-can-drink, is a fixed-price option that includes unlimited drinks for a set stretch of time.
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Modern Chinese Restaurant Ryo on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. This time I went to a Chinese restaurant called “Modern Chinese Restaurant Ryo.” It is year-end party season and nowhere was free, so I searched on the conditions of a private room for ten or more people with an all-you-can-drink option that looked good — and only one or two places came up! It was my first time using this restaurant, so I was looking forward to it.
It is a fairly small place, with a private room at the back holding two tables with horigotatsu seating. At a push you might fit sixteen or eighteen.
Apart from that it is counter seating only. It is a fairly old-fashioned place.
Standard course — 5,000 yen
Special course — 13,000 yen
Two hours all-you-can-drink — plus 3,000 yen
This time I took the special course with the drinks option added, and since there was a 10 percent off early-booking coupon, I used that!
For the all-you-can-drink, the shochu and the highballs come as ice and soda and the respective bottles set out on the table, help-yourself style.
Jellyfish salad! Delicious. Everything comes on large plates for the table to share.
Meltingly soft red shrimp. Sweet and delicious.
Yodare-dori that is not all that spicy. A light sauce, and delicious!
The batter was flavored with curry and coconut. Delicious.
Shark fin soup. A good soup!
They roll it up properly for you, so it is easy to eat. The crisp skin of the Peking duck against the chewy wrapper works nicely.
Have you ever seen chili shrimp this lavish, ha? That is the sort of chili shrimp it is.
The flavor is a firmly sweet chili sauce with fluffy egg. And the springy snap of the shellfish — that really is the spiny lobster! Delicious.
There is plenty of the tomalley in there too, so you get a deep, rich note as well. Lovely!
And then the meat arrives. The number of dishes here is really something!
Last comes the Chinese-style abalone risotto. It is only a mouthful of rice, but after this many dishes that is more than enough!
I am full!
The impression it gives is more of a bar than a restaurant, ha. For all that, the cooking felt properly done, which may have been the good part. It is a little old-fashioned, so I have the feeling it suits drinking with friends more than anything. Places with a private room and an all-you-can-drink option are not that common, so I thought I would file this one away in my memory.
Modern Chinese Restaurant Ryo (Chinese Cuisine / Roppongi Station, Roppongi-itchome Station, Azabu-juban Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
