Operation H.B. - Stage One

While we were still moving in to the new place but before we had moved everything there were a number of nights when we stayed at the new place but had no fridge or any real kitchen supplies. In the evening we'd climb into the car and head out - pick a direction and drive a round until we found somewhere interesting... or at least that was the idea. Most of the time U would keep driving, turning down restaurant after restaurant for some imagined flaw. I'd get hungrier and hungrier and more and more annoyed, finally snapping at him to stop somewhere ANYWHERE! SOON! GRRRRR!!

One such night, after not finding anything that was up to U's standards, he pulled into the parking lot of a three-story Itoyokado shopping mall (attached to a similar three-story Aeon across the street). Dinner, he announced, would be eaten in the food court. I wasn't terribly impressed that we had driven past loads of restaurants to end up at the food court, but by that point I just wanted dinner. We walked into the mall and the first thing we saw was a Chinese restaurant - with a display case of bowls of plastic ramen and... MAPO TOFU! I walked into the restaurant without looking back at U to see if he was following me.

After ordering I finally looked about the restaurant and noticed that out of the 8 tables occupied five had couples or families, and all but one (us included, of course) were racially mixed couples. I pointed this fact out to U, and smooth character that he is, he immediately craned his neck to look around and stare at all the other customers... Nice...

We ordered hoikoro (my Japanese dictionary is telling me it is "twice cooked pork (Szechuan dish) (chi: hui guo rou)) and mapo tofu. For food that was only a step up from fast food, it was surprisingly good. Although the hoikoro was rather oily, the mapo was flavourful and spicy.

The menu is rather limited, however, so although it offers a good quick hit of mapo, the restaurant is far from becoming our favourite Chinese eatery... Our search would have to continue...