Sarabeth's first opened their doors in 1981 in New York. It makes perfect sense that they are now in Japan if you understand how the restaurant culture is now. There are 5 locations now: Tokyo, Lumine Shinjuku, Nagoya, Shinagawa, and Osaka. People love cafes in Japan. There are so many French and German inspired ones more so now than I remembered 5 years ago when I visited Tokyo. Maybe 10 years ago, we can agree that Japanese food is better in Japan. Even though I'm sure in some cases, that is still true, we can certainly agree to those that have explored Southern California enough to confidently say our Japanese cuisines (sushi, izakaya, yakiniku, etc) is comparable.
This time around, I wanted to check out more cafes and unique spots. Honestly, it's inspiring to be at these restaurants than to hit up all the sushi joints. That's not what Tokyo is about. You will soon realize that your journey begins once you start exploring without the restriction of places you should be eating at. To me, that defeats the purpose of finding little gems that gets outshined by word of mouth publicity. I'm not about that.
And even though Sarabeth's is a chain, my experience was by accident. This restaurant was stumbled upon as we were headed to Tokyo Station. This experience however, is still my first.
We were probably the 3rd group to arrive at around 10. By 11, the cafe was pretty much 75% full.
Cappuccino
Lemon pancakes. Slightly dense, but the lemon flavor was nice. It's one of my favorite flavored pancakes so I wanted to see how this was done.
Classic eggs benedict. I would say this is one of the best if not the best, eggs benedict I've ever had. Simple, but the execution is always important. The hollandaise sauce was rich and lusciously wrapped over the shall I say, perfectly poached egg. They used British muffins instead of English which changed my whole view on making these. So much better as the egg yolk seeps in. Yeah try and picture that. The ham is slightly charred to bring out a slight smokiness from the ham.
1-8-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo TEKKO BUILDING. 2,3F