Ok, this is starting to get a little ridiculous. How is it that literally every place we go to eat has amazing food? This is insane.
I still haven’t been able to find the Japanese equivalent of Yelp, but so far, I haven’t needed it at all, at least when it comes to restaurants — literally every restaurant, cafe, and convenience store has great food.
How is this possible?
Since moving here, we’ve mostly stuck to Japanese food, but this weekend we decided to venture into the world of Japanese “foreign” food. Throughout my past travels, I’ve tasted Canadianized, Americanized, Brazilianized, Koreanized, Argentinized, and Britishized versions of Japanese food (all with varying results) , so I was curious to try the Japanese take on another culture’s cuisine.
This past weekend, we had lunch at Hot Dog Cafe, an American restaurant just outside Akihabara Station. I’d had Japanese-style hot dogs before, but never in Japan.
I’ll start off with the second thing that struck me about the place, which was the eclectic decor. The restaurant was lined with a mishmash of beer bottles and books and other odds and ends — it didn’t remind me of America, but it certainly looked cool.





Yes, that is a poster of Reba McEntire and a Bratz doll on the same bookshelf.

Of course, the initial thing that struck me about the place was the menu. They had a wide assortment of different kinds of hot dog creations, including a Garlic Dog, a Vietnamese Dog, and a charmingly spelled “Itarian” Dog (イタリアンドッグ). After much contemplation, I finally settled on the Akiba Dog, which seemed appropriate as we were in Akihabara, after all.

It may not look like much, but it was very tasty, although it came at a much smaller portion size than anything you would actually find in America.
Edu ordered the Hamburger Dog, which was also very yummy.

(I was actually kind of jealous of his order).
Despite the seemingly über-American combination of hamburgers and hot dogs, it was smothered with kewpie mayo and thus still managed to taste very Japanese.
For dessert, we split a Cream&Choco, which consisted of whipped cream and chocolate sauce on a hot dog bun, which was a lot better than it looked, and ten times better than how it sounds.

The verdict: yes, even hot dogs taste amazing here. However, given our track record so far with the food in this city, this is not surprising at all. Also, I should probably point out that hot dogs taste great everywhere, so really, we were just setting ourselves up for another win here.
Then again, I’m not complaining in the slightest.