Great champagne lunch at Tango

For some years I have heard about the champagne lunch at Tango but we have never gotten around to trying it out. We have eaten at restaurant Tango before and that was a pretty good experience but not outstanding in any way. But we decided to try out the champagne lunch on a Saturday in June after it was recommended by friends and I sent an e-mail in advance to book a table – it was a good thing I did that as there were only 1 table left. After a bit of bus trouble we finally arrived at Tango about 1 hour late – I did call the restaurant to make sure they didn’t give away our table and the table was still there waiting for us ;-) The first thing I noticed when I walked into the restaurant was that I was the only guy there! I don’t mind that of course but it was a bit weird – are champagne lunches a chick thing?
The champagne lunch at Tango is very simple: the menu is a set 2 course meal with the option of dessert and you can of course get champagne. So the first question we got at the table was “Do you guys want some champagne today” and we said of course. The champagne was a Grémillet Brut Selection and it was 400 kroner per bottle (about 60 USD at the moment) or 95 per glass if I’m not mistaken (about 14 USD). This is actually not that bad taken into consideration that it cost 210 kroner at the Vinmonopolet and many restaurants actually triple the prices when they sell it. I’m not an expert on champagne but the Grémillet Brut Selection was easy to drink – or maybe I was just very thirsty as we arrived late :-) The waiter just left the bottle on the table but it was a bit strange that it was not put in a cooler.
After that the waiter came over to present the short set menu and as Nikki has a bit of lactose intolerance she asked if they could modify the dishes a bit and this was no problem at all. The first dish came to the table pretty fast and it was a small portion of pasta, mussels, shrimp, tomato, avocado paste and saffron foam maybe. Anyway, it was a delicious dish with lots of flavors to it.


The location of Tango is great on a nice summer day (like this Saturday was) – when you step outside the restaurant you are at the harbor of Stavanger. When we were there they were preparing for the annual beach volleyball tournament and there were two cruise ships docked.

But back to the food – the main dish of the day was chicken breast, with potatoes and cabbage. I know, it sounds terribly boring and chicken breast can easily turn into a dry disaster. But that was not the case at all at Tango – the chicken breast was delicious and the sauce was full of flavors – enough to compensate for the more anonymous flavors of the potatoes and cabbage.


We decided to go for the dessert as well while we were at it – I got the pannacotta that was on the menu served with strawberries and strawberry sauce and a small ball of lime sherbet on top. Due to Nikki’s allergy, the kitchen whipped up a separate dessert for her: ice cream served on a sweet cracker and sweet almonds. The total price including coffee, some Baileys etc added up to 1250 kroner (190 USD) – the lunch was 275 kroner per person and the dessert was 95 kroner per person.




Conclusion
So there you have it – if you want a lunch with your partner (or with your friends) I can easily recommend Tango and the champagne lunch. Make sure you book a table in advance as it seems to be popular and the seating is limited. You can find the contact details of the restaurant homepage http://tango-bk.no/ - but don’t expect to find much more. Thanks for a great lunch Nikki – you looked stunning in your black and yellow outfit.

You can check out the location of the restaurant in my Stavanger Google map.

Regards
Gard
gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

Visiting Uncle Toni again - Ristorante Allegro

I have been to Allegro a few times before and it has always been a great experience. The only problems have been the lack of tables and chairs and that it has been a bit cold in the restaurant as there has always been a draft when people come in the entrance door. To avoid the first problem I booked a table in advance for me and a couple of friends for a week night in May 2009.

When we got there I had to go to the bathroom and I noticed that there was a staircase leading up to the second floor and I had never seen this before. So I went upstairs and it turns out that the restaurant has expanded and the upstairs facilities looked better and warmer than the original restaurant downstairs. So I asked our waiter kindly if we could move up and that was not a problem.

Allegro is a small Italian restaurant and I associate it with Uncle Toni (or Antonio Bjelancic) and I think he has run the restaurant since 2001. My previous visits have been great as it reminds me a lot of Italy…the food is 'simple' but yet very tasty and it seems like he only uses the best ingredients. Nikki and I have gone here many times on special occasions. But this night it was time to see if Uncle Toni could also pass the test on my friends that had never eaten there.

We decided to go for a 5 course menu each and we started by having a 2006 Monsanto Chianti Classico. I started with the scallops in a sauce - you can’t go wrong with scallops and there were even 4 of them in this dish. The soup that came along with the scallops was thick and rich…excellent. After a while it was time for starter number 2 and it was a big prawn. I have never actually seen big prawns like this in a restaurant in Stavanger so I was a bit surprised. Once again it was a very tasty little dish.

From there we moved over to a fish on a bed of noodles. I’m not a big fan of noodles but this was not a bad dish at all. For main course I decided to have the monk fish on a bed of risotto. The risotto was a bit different than what I’m used to but it contained lots of chunks of vegetable and the fish on top was excellent.

In the middle of the meal we did go for bottle of wine number 2 and in order to compare the Chianti Classico we decided to go for a Rosso del Montalcino (Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona). For dessert I had a difficult choice…chocolate fondant or tiramisu. Life is difficult sometime. I did end up with the chocolate fondant and it was just like the one that I make at home…which means that Toni used good butter, good chocolate and lots of eggs :-)

We rounded of the meal with some limoncello and coffee and before we knew it we had spent the entire evening there. In the end we even got to meet the Godfather himself…uncle Toni and he even gave us a limoncello on the house.

Once again I had a great evening at Allegro and the food is excellent at this place. I’m pretty sure that their web site http://www.allegromat.no/no/index.html.htm won’t win any prizes but don’t let that fool you: Allegro is one of the best Italian restaurants in Stavanger. I will certainly be going there again in the future :-)

You can check out the location of the restaurant in my Stavanger Google map.

Regards

Gard

http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

Maisen Tonkatsu Aoyama (まい泉 とんかつ 青山本店）

We've passed by Maisen dozens of times while shopping in Omotesando, but never once went inside. We've had their sandwiches before, but mainly at the train station during long distance trips on the Shinkansen. Why today? Because we needed a parking space. Maisen has a parking lot! This is rarer than RARE in central Tokyo.
Here's the obligatory fake food display outside. Tonkatsu all kind of looks the same though.
There it is, a full 10 or so spaces of parking. What a concept - letting customers park their cars. Tokyo's almost as bad as San Francisco when it comes to parking. At least here, they won't tow you if you park illegally...
You get two choices at Maisen with regards to seating: Japanese-style or Western-style. DO NOT PICK WESTERN style. You'll see why if you try it. The Western room looks like a 1950's DMV cafe. In other words, unimagineably lame.
The Japanese seating isn't the best, but it's spacious.
Here's a custom painting on their wall - it showcases all of their side dishes and their signature tonkatsu teishoku.
Here's this month's recommended menu.
Once you sit down, you're given the shredded raddish sauce. You're supposed to use this with your tonkatsu sauce when your main dish gets here. Don't eat this as an appetizer. It would be like shaking some pepper into your mouth at Ruth's Chris while you're waiting for your drinks.
We each ordered the Mizuki Teishoku for 1575 yen. It looked like the best value by far - and I think it was.
You get three pieces of fried food - one shrimp (500 separately), an oyster (200 yen), and a fried fish (300 yen)
You also get some sashimi, two egg slices, two sweet shrimp, and a ball of FAKE wasabi. Too bad it's not real wasabi.
The tartar sauce is an EXTRA order... 105 yen. At least it's really big... HUGE.
Total for two came to 3255, with the added tartar sauce. Not bad for Omotesando and a famous place with FREE PARKING!
Total w/o tartar above. We would come back, but probably not soon. Too many other places to try. Also, we didn't know that they give FREE REFILLS on the cabbage - until we saw the next table asking for it. Next time, we're going to get lots of cabbage.

Here's the restaurant's official home page
Click here for a link to a Japanese review

Address:
4-8-5 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo-to
東京都渋谷区神宮前4-8-5
Click here for Google Maps

TEL: 03-3470-0071

Hours:
Everyday: 11:00～22:00(L.O)

PG Cafe Paris at Shin Marunouchi Building (新丸のうちビル）

Had a late lunch today with a friend at PG Cafe in Shin Marunouchi Building near Tokyo station. The cafe is ultra-modern and looks great from the outside. A great place for a relatively quiet place to talk.
I ordered the 1200 yen special chicken curry set of the day, shown above. The red ring around the left dish is a fruit jello. They don't give you enough rice, but the two curry sauces are VERY good. The chicken is OK, and the rice is like Uncle Ben's.

This is a fun little cafe, but the food is too little for the price. The food quality is high though, and the dishes are unique.

Click here for the official web site of the restaurant
Click here for a review page in Japanese

Address:
1-5-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo-to Shin Maru Biru
〒100-6501 東京都千代田区丸の内1-5-1 新丸の内ビルディング1F
Click here for a Google Map

TEL: 03-5224-3455

Hours:
Mon-Thurs　11:00～21:00(L.O.20:30)　
Fri/Sat　11:00～23:00(L.O.22:00)　
Sun/Holidays　09:30～21:00(L.O.20:30)　

The Moon Cafe Roppongi HIlls （ザ・ムーン・カフェ 六本木ヒルズ）

There's a special limited time "The Moon Cafe" this week in Roppongi Hills. We've always wanted to try one of these limited-engagement cafes. They have these when big movies are coming out, or if a company pays to create a special theme - like Panasonic just did over the winter, or VW did in the fall. There's a special "MOON Menu" above - ridiculously, each of the special items are only limited to TEN servings per DAY.
They had a full-size space suit on display.
The waiters and waitresses are dressed up in JAXA uniforms - Japan's equivalent of NASA.
The space used was pretty big, and there were "The Moon" videos, flyers, decorations, everywhere.
Here's the cafe's menu. I think this stays the same regardless of the theme.
They were playing clips from the movie on the wall - which was pretty cool.
More decoration on the wall... sad thing is, I don't even remember this movie coming out in the US.
Here's the tuna sandwiches. THEY WERE HORRIBLE. Hard, dry bread, tuna that seemed to have freezer burn, etc. The fries are OK.
This is supposed to be a half-chicken dish. You may be wondering where the chicken is - I wondered the same too. Its hidden under the small green twig. If this is a chicken, then a turkey is the size of Godzilla... the chicken, once we found it, was relatively decent.
Here's the special... a dessert parfait shaped like a rocket. Apparently we got the last one for the day... should it bother us that throughout the entire day they were not able to sell even 10 of these?
Here's a closeup of the fins - cookies and chocolate.
Here's the spaceship without the capsule on.
Way too expensive for this place. The food is horrible. Conbini food - DAY OLD even - is better. Avoid at all costs. Only good if you really love the Moon movie.
There's also apparently some tie-in with Snoopy... though I couldn't figure it out.
Here's the business card above. The space changes themes weekly or monthly.

Click here for a Japanese article

Address:
6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo-to
106-6108 東京都港区六本木６－１０－１　六本木ヒルズ　ヒルサイド２F
Click here for Google Maps

Phone: 03-6406-6833

Hours: 11:00-23:00 every day

Zoka Coffee Akasaka 〔ZOKA コーヒー 赤坂）

After lunch we decided to go Zoka Coffee, which is on the right side of this busy street in Akasaka.
The Zoka coffee logo on the door - apparently this chain has been around for a while. It's a US transplant to Japan.
Here are the three Zoka sizes.
The interior is nice, airy, modern. Pretty empty though, lots of people coming and going.
Here is the coffee machine they use - I have no idea if it's any good!

Here's the full lunch menu. Not many choices...
They specialize in coffee art - like this one.
Here's the real cup of coffee - looks BETTER than the pictures!

Here's my kuromitsu latte - 500 yen - over ice. Very good, but not as good as Starbucks in terms of quality I think.

Here is a link to the official Zoka site

Address:
3-2-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo-to
東京都港区赤坂3-2-2 アマンド赤坂ビル1F・2F
Click here for Google Maps

Phone：03-3560-7251

Hours：
Monday - Friday　7:00～22:30
Sundays - Holidays 8:00～18:00