Tokyo Shiba Tofuya Ukai – dining under the Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower may not be exactly the Eiffel Tower, but at night it is pretty damn close.

Sitting near the base of this enormous TV tower is an amazing restaurant that offers fine tofu cuisine in a traditional Japanese garden setting and dojo-style dining.

Three of my old colleagues and friends hosted a reunion dinner here. It is a popular location for groups and parties – a beautiful setting for an extraordinary meal.

We were led through the restaurant where we were given a lecture on the various histories of different sections, including an old sake-making area. The building is impressive but once we were escorted out to walk to our individual dojo we found ourselves in a gorgeous interior garden with Japanese maples I can only dream of growing at my house!

Once settled in, there is a choice of three menus. The only difference is in one of the courses where you must decided between 2 types of fish or beef. Our group went with one of the fish and the meal was as follows.

Peanut tofu and Alaskan king crab salad with mackerel sushi and mullet roe:

Deep-fried tofu with sweet miso sauce and omelet roll:

Hot soup with fish meat and oyster dumpling (sorry the photo is blurry!):

Snapper and tuna sashimi:

Abalone and fried yam potato:

Tofu in seasoned soy milk:

Grilled fish (don't remember what kind!) with ginkgo berry:

Boiled rice with chopped chicken:

At this point I was ready to throw in the towel and cry “Uncle!” but luckily only the dessert remained!

Persimmon and crispy sweet potato:

I know this is getting repetitive but everything was amazing. Every single course tasted better than the next. I could have eaten a meal of just the tofu in seasoned soy milk, I had never tasted tofu that yummy!

As we were leaving, or rather rolling out the restaurant, the Tokyo Tower had changed color schemes and was now red and blue. It really did remind me of the Eiffel Tower.

After a couple of hours of laughing and eating and telling old work stories, I was ready to head back to the hotel to prepare for my departure for China the next day. It was the perfect ending for the week and I pretended that the blinking of the tower was a farewell sign as I watched it from the back of my taxi.