little tokyo: izakaya kikufuji

i was at a friend's house and we were watching a japanese drama entitled honey and clover. food was shown all through out that we suddenly got a jap fix craving. was supposed to try the nearby shinjuku when b said he'll join only to realize he was thinking about kikufuji. so we agreed to just go there. finally! as first timers, didn't know much about the menu and the waitress just gave us the lunch menu, after a while she gave us the ala carte menu because r was to order ebi tempura. hay naku! we already placed our orders and was set on them that browsing the ala carte menu will just be too toxic though i would have opted for the yakitori if it was available but she said only pork is available.


we only got two ala carte items which were both for r. she got the beef gyudon and tempura. the gyudon is a humongous beef bowl served with several side dishes since it's part of the lunch menu.

top (l-r): maguro and kani, cabbage and tomato with some vinaigrette
bottom (l-r): seaweed and ginger, cucumber

the ebi tempura came with one free eggplant tempura =).

the rest of us got the makonuchi which is the bento box. wanted to try a little bit of everything so opted for this one.

there are several items in the box. first one is the spicy squid with stir-fried veggies. liked the veggies especially the bacon...but didn't like the squid because it was cold. but i think that it's supposed to be cold, i am simply not a cold food fanatic.

mixed seafood furai. i wish this was just tempura. we got all types of furai such as ebi, tuna, a white fish fillet and asohos. the breading was on the heavy side for the ebi but it was beautifully prepared. if you try this one ask if it could be prepared tempura style.

the sashimi. love this one. the fish was fresh - sweet and tender. not really a fan of sashimi but i almost finished this one, b had to eat the rest still. i like the lato on top as well as the tamago which was sweet as well, just wondering why it's white and not yellow. perfect match with soy sauce heavily laden with wasabi .

grilled shake.though the grill marks show it's not overly cooked, i deem otherwise. the fish was a bit dry already. and considering that salmon is a fatty fish, this shouldn't be the case. anyway, everyone didn't seem to notice anything wrong with it. maybe it was just me.

aside from the side dishes, all the meals come with free miso soup. this one is the best. we were all raving about it. the best miso soup we have tried. b said it was because the nobu was high quality.

and to cap the meal you get a free iced coffee or fruit dessert. kikufuji has earned great reviews from foodies and with its clientele which are mostly japanese, so you'd say that they really serve authentic japanese food. next time, we're gonna opt for the ala carte items so that we can explore the japanese cuisine much further. next jap stop is probably not in little tokyo but somewhere really close. hope that's soon.

izakaya kikufuji
little tokyo
pasong tamo