So I know you'll find this hard to believe, but I didn’t end up eating any dinner last night - I got so caught up in a work crisis back in Sydney that I spent the night on the phone and email with nary a break to have even a wee dram of sake..so woke up this morning ravenous, and took myself straight to Shinjuku; target – Shinjuku Isetan’s food hall.
Japanese food halls are NOTHING like we conceive of them in the West. I tell people about them and they say things like, “The West has those! There’s Selfridges, Harrods and Fortnum and Mason in England, Macy’s used to have a foodhall in NYC, and now there’s places like Eataly.” And I say, “I have been to literally ALL those places and they having nothing on even the most pedestrian Japanese department store food hall.”
They’re wonderlands (horror shows) of abundance (excess) and consumerism. Just mind-boggling. And Shinjuku Isetan is the most mind-boggling. Not the biggest, but the most astounding quality. Every kind of food you can imagine – Japanese, Chinese, Iberico hams, cheese rooms the size of swimming pools – and patisserie. Many Parisian patisseries have their only other outlets in Tokyo.
And they have the most beautiful luxe Japanese kitchenware department, and such a gorgeous range of indigo clothes and fabrics (another of my many weaknesses):
Anyway, I needed strength to face all that, so first, some fortifying sushi:
And then I stopped to buy my friend a gift of a silk/cotton blend men’s kimono, which is the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought and come to think of it I think I might be subconsciously in love with him to have spent that much – I’d show you, but it’s so beautifully wrapped.
Including an outer plastic wrapping they cocooned it in (within the three carry bags they then put THAT into) because “it might rain today.” (And it did.)
And then I bought ME yet another cup, this time a heavy Japanese tin sake cup that is intentionally malleable and meant to shape-shift slightly with every use:
And then braved the foodhall for Henri Le Roux caramels beurre sale:
A kouign amann filled with caramel beurre sale:
A sakura (cherry blossom) éclair from Sadaharu Aoki:
And six macarons, which you can see tomorrow, because if I open them tonight, I’ll eat them.
And lo, dinner is pastries and sake, which is totally fine and everything, because I'm a full-grown adult. Yeah.
