This past weekend we took a day trip to Kamakura, the city about an hour outside of Tokyo that’s probably most famous for its 13-meter-tall bronze Buddha statue, the second largest in Japan. I had managed to eat a few bites at home before we left, but my boyfriend was running on a completely empty stomach when we arrived, so we picked a place to stop for food without taking vegetarian-friendliness into account. Read the rest of this entry »
In addition to being a vegetarian, I’m also a coffee addict. Well, not too bad of an addict anymore — I used to get a headache if I didn’t have my morning cup — but I do love the stuff, and I’m picky about what I drink. No Starbucks for me, unless it’s a sweet Frappuccino on a hot day … I generally stick with the independent places or make my own. I am a coffee snob, and I fully admit it.
That’s why I was so happy to discover that the big chains in Tokyo actually have good coffee! Read the rest of this entry »
Photo from Salvatore Cuomo
The Italian chain Salvatore Cuomo is everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean there were three within a mile-or-so-long stretch of the main drag near our hotel, and a quick look at their website shows there are over two dozen in the Tokyo area. It’s moderately priced: we paid ¥4,000 for lunch, that being ¥1,500 each for the pizza set and ¥500 each for a latté afterwards. The margherita pizza was very good, as was the coffee, but unfortunately the rest of the set was a salad with tuna on top and a cup of vegetable soup made with chicken stock. Still, I was able to eat around the tuna without too much trouble, and if you’re willing to eat meat-stock broths (which I’m not), I don’t think there were any actual pieces of meat in the soup. They also had one or two vegetarian pizzas besides the margherita, and they may have more during the full dinner service.
Not quite a vegetarian paradise, but good food — and while there hasn’t been a shortage of Italian restaurants in the areas I’ve been so far, Salvatore is certainly nice to have as an easy-to-find fallback.
