A note on the words: a family restaurant, or famiresu, is Japan’s version of the all-purpose sit-down chain diner — cheap, open long hours, and found on roadsides everywhere. Yurinchi is fried chicken dressed with a tangy soy-and-vinegar sauce and shredded scallion. Chinjao rosu is shredded beef or pork stir-fried with green peppers and bamboo shoots in soy sauce. Mapo tofu is tofu simmered in a spicy bean-paste sauce with ground meat, and Sichuan pepper is the spice that gives it its numbing tingle. Shoronpo are small steamed dumplings filled with soup along with the meat. Ponzu is a citrus-and-soy dipping sauce. Yoshoku is Japanese-style Western food. Meshi in this blog’s name simply means a meal.
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Bamiyan Yotsuya on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, Hangover Meshi here. So, lunch this time was Bamiyan in Yotsuya! There is a Bamiyan in Yotsuya, you know. I had used it once through one of those delivery services, but this was my first time actually walking into the restaurant! It is a short walk from Yotsuya Station, and once you go up, Shabu-an is to the right and Bamiyan to the left. They are part of the same group, so both signs are out front.
Anyway, it has been a while since my last Bamiyan.
I went with the approach of just firing off orders for whatever I felt like eating.
A pretty oily yurinchi!
The tangy, ponzu-like sauce adds some freshness, but the coating was fairly heavy.
Still, it is delicious, is it not.
Well, this is the kind of dish you order too, is it not! An orthodox gyoza with a reassuring familiarity. Delicious.
Another standard, chinjao rosu.
That soy-sauce flavor goes so well with a drink, but this time it was water.
The proper Sichuan mapo tofu — this one was really good! Though my impression is that the heat has been dialed back quite a bit.
The Sichuan mapo character is definitely there, but the seasoning also leans fairly strongly on the sweetness of the meat-and-miso base.
There is S&B chili oil on the table and GABAN Sichuan pepper that comes with the dish, and dumping in a whole lot of both gave the seasoning real definition and made it better.
Shoronpo!
Somehow I found myself thinking that filling up on dim sum like this while picking at side dishes,
rather than ordering something ramen-ish, is a pretty good way to eat.
So, Bamiyan this time. Ordering all of this still came to so little! Places where you can reliably eat at a consistent quality for a genuinely low price are really something to be thankful for! When I want Chinese now and then it is Bamiyan, and when I want yoshoku now and then it is Gusto and the like. Family restaurants really have evolved. It is easy to drop into, so I think I will be back.
Bamiyan Yotsuya (Family Restaurant / Yotsuya Station, Yotsuya-sanchome Station, Akebonobashi Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.3
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
