Song Huong - Vietnamese
Reviewed by Tim Field

Address - Mizuno Building 2F, 3-20-2 Ueno Taito-ku Tokyo 110-0005
Opening Hours Monday to Friday 5pm – 11pm, Sat 11am – 11pm, Closed on Sundays
Telephone - 03-3836-1877
Credit Cards - No

We were lucky enough to find this restaurant in our end of Tokyo about 2 years ago, since then we have made it a regular haunt.
Song Huong won’t thrill you with its décor or flashy “art food” presentation; rather it’s more homely and authentic. The kitchen does it’s best to prepare authentic Vietnamese dishes with the goods available to them in Japan. The staff (possibly a group of sisters) is friendly and accommodating. English, to my knowledge, isn’t spoken and the menu is in Japanese and Vietnamese. It does, however, have pictures.
Some of our favourite dishes are :
GOI CUON (Fresh Spring Rolls) 600 yens
CHA GIO (Fried Spring Rolls) 700 yens
GOI DU DU (Papaya Salad) 900 yens
BAHN CUON (Dumplings) 850 yens
CANH GA CHIEN NUOC MAM (Fried Chicken Wings in Nuoc Mam) 680 yens
BAHN XEO (“Vietnamese Okonomiyaki”) 1200 yens
BUN CHA GIO (Cold Noodles served with Fried Spring Rolls & Pickles) 800 yens
333 (Vietnamese beer [pronounced “Ba Ba Ba”]) 550 yens a can

The fact that they serve “Bahn Cuon”, one of my favourite dishes I came across while in Vietnam, is reason enough to get me there. The prices aren’t “cheap”, rather more reasonable.

Access : SONG HUONG is located near JR Okachimachi station, not far from Ueno’s Ameyoko area.
January 2005

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Senriko - Korean Chinese ****
Okubo and Ueno

Ueno :
Address - Taito-ku, Ueno 6-8-19 Ueno Matsushima Bldg B1 F.
Opening hours - 12:00 pm to 5 am. Closed on Sundays
Telephone - 03-5807-1761
Menu - In Japanese, Chinese and Korean
Credit Cards - No

Okubo :
Address - Shinjuku-ku, Hyakunincho 1-7-10 Hosono Bldg 2F
Opening hours 12:00 pm to 3 am. Closed on Sundays
Telephone - 03-5338-6918
Menu - In Japanese, Chinese and Korean
Credit Cards - No

My old friend Masami is a jack of many trades.
Not being afraid of hard work, over the years he has turned himself in a sort of Renaissance man with different and diverging interests.
A computer power user at home as much with motherboards as with Adobe Illustrator, a Trados technical translator, a very expert cook, but first of all a true anarchist, to make ends meet at the moment he is cooking ramen in a shop in Ueno, where he heard from his Chinese boss about a nearby restaurant that serves dog meat.
Since I am curious by nature, I decided to go there in the instant he told me. And since going to eat dog with my only true love was out of question (she is a real lady), I had to content myself with Masami's company.
Had I known it's not a Chinese restaurant, as I had thought, but a Korean restaurant, I probably wouldn't have gone: the absence of Korean restaurants in this site is no coincidence.
But I did, and that's good, because it isn't simply a Korean restaurant, but rather a Korean-Chinese one, that is one of the Ethnic Korean minority in China.
I am pleased to say Senriko turned out to be very nice and original regardless of dog meat. I must have been the first white devil they had seen in a while, because some customers just couldn't hide their surprise. The cute waitress was nonetheless impeccably polite and helpful.
The way you eat here is unusual and deserves a couple of words: the lion's share of the menu is made of meat (beef, pork, mutton or chicken as you like).
The base order unit is the skewer, prices being around 250 - 350 yen each.
To grill the stuff, you get your own "konro", a conical terracotta oven full of hot wood coals, over which there's a two tiered thing. The lower one is to cook the skewered meat, the upper one to keep it warm while you eat something else.
You receive also two small dishes containing each a different powdery spice to dip your skewers in, one yellow and one red. Against all my expectations, they weren't hot at all. And the dog?
It was the only disappointing moment of the evening. You can have just the skin, which we were told is the part men usually like, just the meat as all good girls do, or both, as experimenters of good pedigree like me prefer. Either one looked and tasted like pork, was rather leathery and absolutely uninteresting.
The rest of the meal was good, but less of an adventure and more Chinese than Korean: we had some excellent Wan Tan soup, fried rice, kimchi and some fried vegetables. All in all, a pleasant variation on the Yakiniku theme that won't disappoint the carnivores.
It goes without saying that although people here are friendly, English is of no use whatsoever: you must know Korean, Chinese or Japanese.

Ueno - Asian food

土古里　－　Yakiniku/Korean

Address - 上野バンブーガーデン店、東京都大東区上野公園１－５２　３F
Opening Hours - 11:00 am to 11:30 pm (last order 10:30 pm)
Telephone - 03-5807-2255
Credit Cards - yes

Well, this is not really a Korean Restaurant, it is more something like a Japanese Korean yakiniku Restaurant.
The restaurant is pretty large, pleasant and very confortable. Each table is in a private separated space, so your neighbour will not be able to spy you if you get drunk.
You sit on tatami at a round table with the yakiniku grill in the center of it. I noticed the tables here are larger than the tables you usually find in other yakiniku restaurants. I really appreciated it because you don t feel the heat of the grill and your drink full of icecubes does not turn into hot water. I also noticed that the o-hashi were made of steel, it may sound stupid to say it but believe me, it is really more difficult to eat with those ones! They are very thin and heavy, so more difficult to handle. I was not expecting something like that.
Well, it was time to order something to eat! The service was a bit slow (and the restaurant was not full), and I had to push several times the service button before they decided to come.
I ordered a moriawase: 18 pieces of 9 different kinds of beef. The meat was very very good, very tender and juicy. It cannot be compared to the meat you find in yakiniku restaurant like 牛角. It is much better in this restaurant in Ueno!
There are also different kinds of sauces you can choose with you meat, including a Korean spicy one.
Obviously, there is a very large choice of meats but also a large choice of noodles (a lot of spicy noodles), vegetables, gratins, salada, desserts and drinks.
At the end of the lunch, you will receive a point card which can be full very quickly I think.
It t is a good restaurant to go to with your friends or if you have a huge appetite.
Now let s talk about the price! If you re a "normal" eater : around 5000 yen for 2. If you are a glutton : around 8000 or 9000 yen for 2. Not the cheapest, but not that expensive.

This restaurant is a small chain, there are other restaurants at Ooimachi and Asakusa (the point card can also be used there).

Ooimachi 大井町店
東京都品川区東大井5-2-7　磯辺ビル　１F

Asakusa 浅草店
東京都大東区1-23-6　浅草関根ビル　２F