Giraffe Bistro: different than a teishoku, bread with Japanese food

Area:  about 400m east of Marunouchi station  丸の内駅
Restaurant:  Giraffe Bistro  ジラフ ビストロ
Map and info:  http://r.gnavi.co.jp/na1t600/

Hours:  Lunch weekdays 11am-2:30pm,  Dinner 5:30pm-1am


When I asked for the recommendation, the waiter pointed out the tsukune burger (tsukune generally means ground meat formed into a ball).

This lunch (\800) came with an appetizer of sesame okra, salad with Italian dressing and bacon bits, and kinpira gobo (stir fried burdock root with a soy sauce and sugar based seasoning).  The appetizer was pretty standard.  Soup was also included and this time was a cabbage and tomato broth.  Again, nothing stood out here.

With the main, there was battered and fried sweet potato and eggplant, home fries and moyashi (bean sprouts);  all went nicely with the dish because they soaked up the sauce.   The burger was soft, peppery with a touch of nutmeg.  It went well with the sweet teriyaki sauce and the runny sunny side up egg.

The bread was warm, soft and fluffy but still had a nice chewiness.

The music playing was a bit difficult to hear but sounded like instrumental blues.  

The coffee was a let down, definitely not fresh.  The meibutsu  (a word to describe the shop's signature dish), an nin dofu (almond flavored) dessert tasted like regular almond pudding, but it did have a mochi mochi (slightly chewy) texture, different than the norm.

  

  

I came back on another occasion because I wanted to try the Hida gyu (a high quality, expensive beef from the Takayama area) lunch (\1000).

The appetizer this time included a chilled steamed cabbage salad with perhaps a miso dressing and finished with sliced pork.  The salad was the same as before, with an Italian dressing.  The gobo nimono (burdock root simmered in a dashi and soy sauce based liquid) was standard.  The soup was a cabbage and bacon bit soup.

I asked for bread instead of rice because I actually liked the bread the first time I came.  The thinkly sliced Hida meat had fat nicely marbled throughout which gave it very nice flavor and texture.  The sweet sauce might have gone better with rice since it was fairly salty.  The grated daikon helped to mellow this out, and also helped to soak up the sauce.  

Dessert (an extra\100 with a coupon), was a sweet potato cake.  If you've been to Japan before, you can probably imagine the flavour and texture just by looking at the picture.