ULTIMATE TOKYO FOOD TOUR! w/ ‪@TabiEats‬ || [Tokyo, Japan] Local Favorite MUST TRY!

Today we are taking you along with us on an ultimate food tour of Tokyo. Joining us will be our friends, Japan food experts. You may know them here on YouTube as Tabi Eats. Welcome to Japan! We'll be trying the local fare. I can't wait for this one, sorry. This looks way too good. Eating bizarre Japanese delicacies. Oh that's a big piece! And indulging at a little hidden It's even difficult to even google map. Trust us, you don't want to miss this one. What's going on Foodie Ohana? Welcome back to our Japan travel series. Today we'll be meeting out with some familiar faces, some good friends, for some awesome food. And we are here in a very local part of Tokyo. Honestly we had no idea this place existed, but we're here to eat some ono grinds and have some good conversation with some good friends. Hey guys! Welcome to Japan! Alright Foodie Ohana, so we are here with Tabi Eats and for the first time we are on their home turf. They'll be taking us around today. And if you guys have not heard of them already, please check the links down below and check out their channel Tabi Eats. Right now we are in Nakano which is our neighborhood. It's very local and this place is famous for ramen as well as lots of delicious street food. So you guys are in for a treat. Alright let's go, let's get going. This area is called Sun Mall and it's very local. Look at all these little shops. And Shinichi did mention that this is one of the oldest malls here in Tokyo. I love the charm of this area. First stop we're going to start off with breakfast since it's early in the morning and Felix is like super super hungry. It's what I consider the best melon pan in the entire city. I hope you guys agree as well. But anyway that's where we're going to go to right now. I like that. So if you want to try that. They won an award four years in a row for the best curry bread. You guys can eat one for one. Oh this is huge. Oh yeah. It's hard not to get one of everything. I know. Everything looks so good. So the first spot that we went to, this will go so good with our coffee breath. But it was called Bonjorubong and they are known for their melon pan. Yes. And we love melon pan. Oh yeah. So pretty. This is so good. We didn't get to the maple syrup yet. Don't you think it's better than like one from the 7-Eleven? It's less dry. It's not too sweet too which is really good. Sometimes in Hawaii it's like covered with sugar. Really? I finally got to the center. I really like the subtle sweetness and I'm a big maple syrup fan. So I love anything maple syrup. So very delicious with nice crunch too. So this place is known for the maple syrup melon bread. I think it's rare that you find one with actual maple syrup inside the melon pan. Yeah. There we go. Let me see that. It tastes like a pancake. There we go. It literally tastes like a hot cake. Like a pancake. And yeah the maple syrup gives it like a more deeper flavor than just regular sugar. I might have to get my own now because you kind of finished it. Oh yeah sorry. Me and Satoshi will be doing the savory side of it. This is probably their second most popular item would you say? Yeah. This is like their curry bread but look already you can see a nice thin layer of panko batter on the outside. Their curry bread is really good. Really good. I'm so excited. I love this curry bread. Itadakimasu. Oh my god. It's so light and crispy. Curry is really savory. Very nice curry. I love this texture. And there's two options you can get. You can get one with the half boiled egg. We got the one with the tonkatsu. So you get a even more layer extra layer of crunch and porkiness. So good. Vietnamese people usually eat curry with bread like a french baguette. This kind of just reminds me of that. Very nostalgic. This bread tastes very rich because it's the hirekatsu inside. Probably get this every morning if I live there. I can understand. The melon puff for breakfast and this for lunch. This here they sell bowl style konnyaku. It's from Yamagata prefecture. It's my hometown. I'm very happy to show you this food. It's a very popular food in Yamagata. So this shop is kind of like a pop-up shop and they're called Yamagame Honten. This is a simmered in soy sauce dashi and regularly it's squid. Usually we put a little bit of mustard on it but this one is already spicy because of the chili pepper. I've never eaten like that so I'm very curious. Oh it's jiggly. This is konjac right? It's well simmered. Very nice. Oh it has a kick. Yeah a little kick to it. I like the texture too. Nice chewy texture. Kind of like the clear gel boba if you guys ever tried that. The color goes through to the center of this konjac. It's well simmered. Sometimes it's colored only the surface but this one the soy sauce goes through the center. It's really nice. Tasty. It's virtually zero calories and if you guys have ever tried those like those low calorie noodles it's pretty much the same ingredient or thing that it's made out of. Yeah definitely. This one already has flavor on it so you don't really have to do much but I like that it's like on the go. There'll definitely be more food on this street food tour here in Nakano so stay tuned. And guys there's even more shops down here in the basement. That's so crazy. This is the eight layer ice cream. This place is called Daily Chiko. Must try when you're in Nakano. Oh. This is the first time I'm actually afraid of eating ice cream. This scares me. Getting all the flavors all the way to the top. Up sweet. Cheers. Oh man. It kind of tastes like a Neapolitan. It tastes like I'm eating a Neapolitan. It's so rich and creamy. When you eat it all together like this you do like a upward strike to enjoy all the flavors. It kind of just tastes like when shaved ice melts and you're drinking the syrup on the bottom it's all mixed. Yeah it's like a unique flavor that you just can't experience anywhere else. Like I didn't think it would go all well together but it does. I think there's chocolate, grape, green tea, laminate, strawberries in there somewhere, maybe melon, vanilla. So basically there's eight different flavors. Eight different tiers of flavors basically. I think I'm just going to take it off the top before I... What about Satoshi and Shinichi? That's so exciting. It's very milky but not super heavy feeling. It's pretty light for like a very milky ice cream. The texture it's not icy like clumpy with ice or anything. It's very smooth. I will say I definitely feel like a kid again. This ice cream cone definitely did that for me. This soft serve is actually quite healthy. It's supposed to be low in fat. Almost no fat actually. They're using milk but no cream. So it's actually more like ice milk which is why it's pretty healthy. Very light. Yeah. Like I think I can finish this whole thing. I'm not going to but I'm gonna share. And they have seasonal flavors. The grape calpis. Lamune is a very interesting flavor that's like Japanese soda. And the green one is I think it's pistachio. The one on the top. One of the must places to visit in Nakano. And they're featured on a lot of tv shows it looks like. Get the konnyaku balls for lunch and that for dessert. Dessert. So Furiohana, when traveling always try different countries delicacies. You never know what you might like and what you might not. So what do we have today? This is a locust. It's a very popular food in my hometown. Locust simmered in sweet soy sauce. It's crispy like shrimp. Very tasty. This shop is called Bashiya located in Sun Road in front of Nakano station. Please try if you want. Thank you. I will try. I love this one. So I'm just gonna imagine shrimp and uh maybe the one with a smaller stomach or smaller abdomen. Um okay. Don't look carefully. Yeah maybe I shouldn't inspect this too much. Just take and pop into mouth. You guys Furiohana can take a closer look. I'm gonna close my eyes. Oh that's a big piece. No problem. No problem. Many people don't like legs. Yeah I think it's the legs. Oh man. I got the leggy one. This is a track and field locust. Okay. Hmm. Very crunchy. Wow. It's sweet soy sauce and a little bit dashi flavor. And it's really earthy. It's really bright tasting. It's so it's hard to explain. No strange flavor. Just don't look at it you know. Just don't look at it. Oh I got the legs hit my lips. It's really tasty though. I'm not gonna lie. It's really tasty. This food is my hometown pride. Do you eat this with uh gohan? Rice? Yes on top of rice or as it is in autumn season that we catch this locust in the field rice field and boil and simmer in the soy sauce. Give it a try. Trust me. Good protein. It's like uh we're on a healthy kind of meal plan right? Low calorie konnyaku, low calorie locust and then low calorie ice cream. So next place is called Refute and they're famous for these things called obanyaki and usually the original flavor is with the red beans inside but this one you have a variety like chocolate. Sometimes they have apple pie. They have sausage with mayo sauce which is savory. Very very delicious. Super recommended. We are at Refute. They're known for this obanyaki. It's similar to taiyaki but as you can see it's not shaped as a fish. So normally these would be filled with just azuki bean or red bean but here they have a lot of different flavors. So Felix is gonna do the savory. I'm gonna do the sweet. Soft, pillowy. Oh so this is their sausage mayo. Oh it's one piece of ham. Oh looks like a like a Canadian bacon type of situation. It's very like uh mochi mochi. Like this chocolate one it smells like um pudding like jello pudding. Oh and if you turn from the side it looks like an egg white muffin. I don't know why. No what's that the muffin? McGriddle. Yeah it looks like a McGriddle. It tastes like mayo with mustard mix. Very tangy and it is like a Canadian bacon. Very thick cut. Oh this is a good breakfast on the go. This is like eating a pancake but a chocolate pancake. They even had a regular custard cream. I just really like the texture. It's very like a cushion like cushiony. I don't know pillowy. It's fluffy but chewy. Yeah fluffy but chewy. It's very mushy but in a good way. It's like in between a bread and a rice cake. It gives it a nice like cozy vibe. Oh yeah it does. It gives you that very like back alley feel. Is this uh would you say this is your go-to for takoyaki? One of our go-to places. Shinichi and Satoshi have taken us to one of their favorite takoyaki spots. This is Takomaru here in the Nakano area and we got some very interesting flavored takoyaki. Not the traditional ones but these look amazing. So this one is the original takoyaki with ponzu sauce and this one is the mentaiko with cheese. So this one has um aonori seaweed, katsuobushi, bonito flakes at the top. It's gonna be hot for sure. It's like This might be um controversial but I'm gonna open the takoyaki. It's too hot. Yeah have you ever burned your mouth eating takoyaki? Yes many times. Yes. It's very refreshing the ponzu sauce. It's surprisingly very light and I guess because takoyaki usually has a lot of sauces on it this is a nice little diversion, a little different. The sourness too. A lot of people, a lot of foreign people think that takoyaki has to be crispy on the outside and fully cooked on the inside like you know like almost like cake. But actually good takoyaki, Osaka style takoyaki, the inside is actually like this. It's a little runnier. Just something to remember because a lot of our viewers say you know we had an uncooked takoyaki but these are fully cooked. I feel like actually here they're they're a little cooked more than like Osaka. Osaka one is literally like you can't you can hardly pick it up with the chopsticks. Sometimes yeah that's right. But I do like how this one it does have a nice outer like shell. It's not hard or anything but it does have like a more texture I guess for the outside. And the great thing about this place is that you can choose different sauces. They have about 10 different sauces that you can choose from. If you don't like certain things of a regular takoyaki you can kind of customize it which is very cool. This shop staff is very kind. They gave us these small plates and water. And this one is takoyaki with cheese and mentaiko. Mentaiko is a cod roe. Cheese and mentaiko is a very good friend. Please try. Please try. Oh thank you. I noticed in Japan people really like cheese here. Yes with mentaiko especially. My mouth is salivating. Look how big the serving of octopus is in here. They're very generous with the serving size here. These are huge chunks. Wow. It's very good. Little kick but it's combined with cheese flavor and the creamy tako ball nicely mixed. I love the slight hits of spice on there too. To tell the truth I haven't eaten mentaiko and cheese with tako ball, takoyaki ball. This is your first time? This is my first time. Wow. And I realized this is a very good combination. And the tako is so... Oh they're inside of the soup. Yes. Soup tako ball. This is another way to eat tako ball. It's especially called akashiyaki. It's perfect on this cold rainy day. Yeah it's a different experience for you I think. Yeah it's very different. And green onion and the red ginger is optional. Put these condiments into your bowl as much as you like. Not too much. I think this is enough. Do we eat and then drink or? First I recommend to sip the soup a little bit. Sip the soup. It's a very light flavor. A little bit salty. Almost like shio. Combined with green onion flavor. I love this. It's sucked up all the dashi. It tastes almost like a seafood, very light seafood broth mixed in with the tako when you combine the two. This shop they use much egg so it's very nice with this soup. Oh it's perfect in this weather. Oh man. Another good option to eat takoyaki. Should we try with some locusts? Now we are here in the area of Koenji and this is actually a spot that Shinichi and Satoshi highly recommended us to try. So we're here. Yes so Amanda we're here at Black Mountain Cafe located in Koenji. This is our neighborhood cake shop and it's one of the most popular cake shops in the entire neighborhood. We think they make the best fruit sandwiches in the entire country. And I know you like sweets so let's start with this one. Oh my goodness it's two-sided. The strawberries top and bottom. They use only the best shokupan or white Japanese bread. Strawberries are in season right now. The cream like tastes like real strawberry cream. Not one of those like mixed like fake strawberry mix. It's like real strawberry. There's a tartness of the strawberries in the cream and it's not overly sweet. Very natural and the bread is very fluffy. They use a fresh cream from Hokkaido I think and they whip it themselves so everything's made fresh. I can't stop eating the The bread goes so well with the cream. I hope you like blueberries. I do. I'm eyeing this one now. It's so pretty. The color of the cream. You can see the blueberries throughout. Oh it's so light. You should get some of the fresh blueberries too. It's so light and fluffy. It's almost airy. And they use fresh blueberries. Very light blueberry flavored sponge cake with fresh whipped cream and fresh blueberries. Different flavor than normal like shortcake. Okay so which one would you like to try next? We have chocolate, pineapple, a banana. Okay. Is this creme brulee banana? Kind of yeah. This is also one of my favorite cakes. Oh pineapple tart's so good. It's a lot more starchier the bananas here. And there's bananas on the inside I wonder. Yeah. Yeah looks like real bananas. I'm gonna be all sweeted out after this. Look at the huge chunks of pineapple. I love the banana tart. I think I like the pineapple one a little bit more. The pineapple flavor is very fresh as well. Yeah the tartness is really great too. Oh goodness. I like how it's only subtly sweet. It's not sugary sweet. Very strong cacao flavor. Yeah. It's very deep as well. Yeah it's a much denser cake. It's almost like like a milk flour chocolate cake. If you're a chocolate lover. Which one was your favorite? The blueberry and the pineapple. The pineapple. Actually two of my favorites. I can't wait for this one. Sorry. This looks way too good. Oh my god. It's so amazing. It's so lightly whipped. The bread is so nice and chewy but still fluffy at the same time. Oh wow. I'm completely wet and I don't care. I totally forgot. I'm just lost in the flavor of the strawberry sandwich. Oh my god. I agree. This is the best strawberry cream sandwich I've ever had. So we're still here in the Koenji area. This place is called Coffee Cone Tokyo and it is super one-of-a-kind type of idea here. He literally makes his own cones and house makes his matcha. Puts it in this chocolate covered cone that he hand makes himself and then you have a little matcha drink. So now you get to enjoy your coffee and pastry at the same time. I love that he lines the inside of the cone with the chocolate. This season's flavor is sakura. Very fitting of the current season. So there's a little bit of sakura leaves. The inside is sakura chocolate lined cone and of course the whisk matcha. How gorgeous this is. Today though we got the matcha but you can do coffee here as well. Matcha is very very like ceremonial matcha. Very strong matcha flavor but it's smooth and it's not sweet. No this is probably unsweetened. To get some sweetness you think that's a really smart idea. Because you want it to be a little sweet eating it together tastes really good. Did you bite it already? Yeah I did. Wait for me. Very crispy cone. It is a bit on the bitter side so definitely if you are not a bitter person eat the cone and drink at the same time. Cone itself is actually very light. It's not dense. It's so so thin and the chocolate very rich and creamy. It's very satisfying on this cold rainy windy day. Yeah I think if it wasn't so cold and rainy we would probably get a soft serve because it looks like they do have soft serve. It looks really really good as well so if you're here on a sunny day definitely get their soft serve as well. We're at Furio Hana continuing our local food tour here in Tokyo with Tabi Eats. We are going to a secret locals only restaurant and it's literally tucked away here next to the rail station. Look at that. Very inconspicuous location. I have to give a big shout out and thank you to Will for suggesting and recommending this spot. We're about to go through the little door that leads to the pathway. Let's go. You gotta watch your head. Can I make it through here? Okay okay I made it. So we are here at a restaurant Izakaya called Shirube. It's even difficult to even google map the area so we had to do a little wandering in order to find it but guys already I feel like we're transported somewhere else. Like look at the kitchen. You get a full view of the kitchen. A chef's table seating there if you wanted to dine there but we chose the booth and right now we're ordering all the specialty menu items. If you make reservations as early as five you get access to those because they run out very fast so we ordered. Cannot wait to show you guys everything we ordered. This place is very very like Japanese style rustic izakaya bar type so a lot of the foods are more pupu style. They do have a menu in English too which is really cool. It's kind of the opposite and the English is a little funny but it's still English. The first thing they brought out is a salad. It kind of came with the drinks and it looks like maybe a carrot ginger dressing with onion chips on top. Literally it's a chip. Look at this you guys. It's a potato chip. It's an actual potato chip on top. Mmm. Citrusy onion flavored dressing. Nori. Oh it is nori chips. Oh I saw the green. I assumed it was the sour cream. That really works. I'm gonna start putting potato chips on my salad from now on and you can't judge me. The first thing that came out is this Japanese Spanish mackerel. It is nicely grilled. Comes with lemon and daikon. The skin is nice and crispy. Wow. Wow wow wow. It's not like the smell of mackerel. It's not super strong. It's very very faint. It's very meaty. Very like delicate crisp though. Crackling skin of the mackerel. The flesh too is so nice and flaky and soft. So this is salmon harasu yaki. It's a salmon belly. It's very fatty. They call it the toro of the salmon. It's so smooth. Not creamy but light cream. Smooth. Yeah but at the same time it's grilled really perfectly because the skin is crispy. Simply seasoned with salt. It's like butter. It's so delicious. Okay so this one is one of their specialties. It's the flaming mackerel. Shimesaba. Shimesaba. Buri yaki. I haven't seen the show that they grilled in front of us. That's amazing. Yeah and shimesaba is a marinated. The mackerel is marinated in like a vinegar and then of course we squeeze the lemon. They tell you get ready with the lemon so that's what we did. Actually the fish is cold and only the surface is grilled and it's crispy. The skin part is crispy but inside the vanilla taste is really much with the flesh. Yes it's very refreshing and flavorful. So we got two orders of different types of toast. This is a tofu cheese toast. I think it's encased in honey and then you spread it on this garlic toast. And I got what they call nikujaga. It's basically Japanese beef stew that's simmered down. The one here is a twist on nikujaga so it's not the traditional one. It's kind of more like an innovative nikujaga. Also with the soft boiled egg to make it to add extra creaminess on a nice rustic piece of toast. Wow. Beef is very tender. Braised so slowly to the point where it's like just falling apart in my mouth. That stew it's in. It's very savory. Surprisingly this even though it looks like it'll be really really sweet it's actually pretty savory. Is this a garlic toast? I thought it said garlic toast. With that stew man I can just sop it all up with bread. Next thing we ordered is their take on the chicken karaage but here they call it karaage jang. It's like a their take on like sweet and sour chicken and it smells like there's gochujang so I believe in I guess that's why it's karaage jang. Gochujang is that Korean chili paste. Very light crisp. Let's go in that sweet sour sauce. I believe they use some yuzu in here to give it that acidity. You definitely do taste the gochujang. It has a little bit of heat. A little bit. So this next thing we ordered the literal translation is manly fried rice. Is that what it is? And I'm not sure why it got us so curious that we had to order it. Even where it says the price it just says ask. So we went ahead and asked and we ordered and honestly it just looks like fried rice. I don't know how to explain it. And in Japanese it even said that whoever is wielding the fry pan we will fall in love with them so we shall see. Cheers. So at the end of this either I go home single or Amanda still goes home with me. Tastes like wakame fried rice. It tastes kind of sweet. The rice is really good though. The consistency of the rice. If you're thinking of like Chinese style fried rice it's not that. It's more like Japanese style rice. More moist. Very soft. Mushy. I personally probably wouldn't order it again. I didn't fall in love. It's good but I didn't fall in love with anyone. So she's coming home with me. All right Foodie Ohana that about wraps up our episode today with Tabi E. Thank you guys again so much for taking us around. Enjoying all the local food here in Tokyo. We had so much fun going to Nakano Koenji and this hidden spot here in Tokyo. Thank you guys so much for having us and taking us around. It was our pleasure. We had such a good time with you guys. Definitely check out their channel. We will be doing a collab with them and we will see you guys on the next video. All right Foodie Ohana until the next one. Check out Tabi Eats' channel. Explore your inner Foodie. Peace out. Bye guys. Bye. It's a review with Amanda Sama. Check this out. I just feel like it's gonna start crawling any minute. Don't. Stop saying. Should we eat that too? Oh I can't unhold it now. You didn't have enough sauce earlier. You can never have enough sauce. Exactly. I don't want to. I don't want to say what it looks like because I don't want to gross myself out but you at home know what this looks like. Spicy cod roe. I'm broken. My hand went down. I'm sorry. What do you think Amanda? I can't get to the inside. Yeah. I think I got the one with the small pocket. Probably yeah. Was that too fast?