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| Pizza |
Yesterday I had dinner with a magician friend of mine. We went to a place called "Cheese Cheese", which has won awards in Italian pizza competitions. We ordered pizza, which was of course very good.
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| One of the many "Happy Birthday"-plates served |
Around us all tables were full, all the other customers were in their early twenties, and all were girls. And apparently, almost all were born on the July 2. The lights in the restaurant dimmed five times, and every time the staff came up to some table, sang "Happy Birthday", gave cakes to the people at the table, and took Polaroid pictures. We were waiting excitedly for our turn, since the kept coming closer and closer to our table, one table at a time. They sadly stopped at the table next to ours, though.
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| The "dorce" menu |
Since no one came and gave us cake (my friend is born in May, and I in October), my friend suggested we order desserts ourselves instead. They had a "dorce menu" that they gave us when we finished our pizzas. I am fairly sure it should be spelled "dolce", but I am not Italian. In this restaurant they encourage you to draw on the table with crayons, so I wrote a message for them there.
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| Custard creme dessert with raspberry instead of custard |
The "dorce menu" had "seasonal katarana: raspberries". In Japan, "katarana" comes from "creme Catalana", which if I understand correctly is more or less the same as "creme brulee". In Japan, katarana is always frozen, though. So it is a frozen creme brulee (creme brulee is creme brulee in Japanese too). As far as I know, creme brulee is based on custard, so raspberry katarana should be burned frozen custard cream without custard but with raspberries instead. And it was.
After eating way too much for dinner, we went to try a place that is open 24 hours per day and has "all you can drink, plus some snacks" for 390 yen. They have two bars in this chain, that are placed in buildings right next to each other. We went to one of them by random selection, but it was not that much fun. So we moved on to the second one, which had much funnier staff when we were there.
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| Tea, made in a somewhat original way |
The all you can drink menu included many types of tea, and my friend who apparently thinks the 21℃ summer heat is "cold", wanted some hot tea. The girl who was making tea for him was ... not so good at that. It was instant tea, i.e. you put some powder in a cup and pour boiling water on it. You would imagine it is difficult to fail when using that, especially if it is your job to do this kind of stuff. But she managed. She tried to prepare the tea in a pot but put way way way too much tea in it, and when she poured in water everything overflowed and the result in the pot was a mixture of tea paste and slightly wet tea powder...
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| Today's soup, "made by the staff" |
We also noticed that they had "today's soup" on the all you can drink menu. So I tried to order that, but she told me that they were out of soup. But if I did not mind instant soup, she could make instant corn soup. Which took 10 minutes (so it was not so instant), and the instant powder in the bottom of the cup was still in powder for even after I stirred it a bit for myself after receiving the soup. She also served something that was more or less melon soda mixed with coffee creamer to the buy sitting next to my friend. The guy on my left tried to order some food (also 390 yen), but she said that they were "out of rice... or not out of rice really, but she did not feel like making any food", haha.
All in all, it was a very funny place to visit, though you should not have too high hopes for sophisticated drinks.
