A note on the words: yoshoku is Japan’s distinct tradition of Western-influenced cuisine, developed since the late 19th century. Hamburg steak (hambagu) is a savory ground-meat patty served here with demi-glace and a fried egg or house sesame-and-soy sauce, while hayashi rice is beef and onions simmered in demi-glace over rice, and omurice is seasoned rice enveloped in a soft omelet. This long-established restaurant also offers small portions, so more than one dish can be had in a sitting.
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Kurofune Tei on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. For lunch this time, while wandering around Ueno wondering if there was anywhere good, there it was! A yoshoku restaurant with an old-school sounding name! That name being “Kurofune Tei”. Looking it up briefly, sure enough, it was indeed a long-established yoshoku restaurant! How exciting! So up the elevator to the fourth floor. The interior is bright while using black as a base tone. You can look out at the view from the windows too, which makes for a great atmosphere!
Beef curry — 2,300 yen
Hayashi rice — 2,500 yen
Omurice — 2,000 yen
Hamburg steak — 2,500 yen
Beef stew — 4,800 yen
Lots of appetizing yoshoku dishes on the menu. Every one of them looks good!
What is great is that they offer small sizes. When you find yourself wanting to try both this and that, having small sizes makes ordering so easy! Fantastic, isn’t it? I wish other restaurants would do something like this too! Since the beef stew seems famous I made sure to order that, and decided to pick a few other dishes here and there as well.
Now then, drinks first.
Even though it was a yoshoku restaurant, they had one! A barley spirit with soda, ha.
Here is the beef stew.
It comes served on a flat plate! The beef, stewed to absolute tenderness, is so soft it practically melts.
And the demi-glace sauce is deeply complex and delicious. I could almost drink it straight from a deep soup bowl! Truly what you expect from a long-established yoshoku house. It is wonderful having dishes like this that you could never possibly recreate at home. It is on the pricier side, though!
The crab croquette looked delicious too, and since it was 1,400 yen for a single piece, I asked for one.
Breaking it open, it looks like this.
Fried crisp, yet with a delicate crust that crumbles easily, packed to the brim with filling imbued with crab flavor — delicious. Perhaps because it is not a cream croquette, the filling does not feel overwhelmingly creamy, which might actually be what makes it so good. It pairs beautifully with the demi-glace sauce too.
And then, a truly bite-sized small hamburg steak.
It is just a little bigger than the yolk of the fried egg on top, but that is just the right size, ha.
Two kinds of sauce: demi-glace and the house sesame-and-soy sauce. Drizzling the demi-glace over it to dig in!
Mmm! Delicious!
The patty, leaning somewhat toward coarsely ground, holds just the right amount of juices, making a perfect match with the deep, rich demi-glace sauce!
The fried egg resting on top adds a mellow richness that makes it very easy to eat. I also tried a bit of the sesame-and-soy sauce, and that was delicious too. Giving it a gentle Japanese touch is lovely!
It has been a while since I enjoyed such a proper yoshoku meal! It was delicious! It is wonderful that everything comes in a small size. Usually when you visit a yoshoku restaurant you agonize over what to choose and have to make compromises, so having small sizes naturally leads you to think “I’ll take both!” Looking around at the dining room, there seemed to be many people eating omurice as well, so maybe I will try that next time.
Kurofune Tei (Yoshoku / Keisei Ueno Station, Ueno-okachimachi Station, Ueno-hirokouji Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.6
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
