2 Chinese meals

The first is at 香巷菜 松楽 in the Joyful Minowa shopping arcade. The restaurant is filled with Japanese customers at lunchtime.

I order the vegetable tan-men, a noodle soup I learned about on the Netflix show "Midnight Diner," and a black (century) duck egg. When the food came with a chilled egg-white sweet custard, I knew this was a Hong Kong-style Cantonese place.

The tan-men has cabbage, carrot, spinach, spring onions, wood-ear mushrooms. The broth is a 10 out of 10. Is sesame paste the secret? Just shut up and eat. I could no sooner make this than I could build a Mercedes-Benz.

In the "Tan-Men" episode of "Midnight Diner," a taxi driver asks that her tan-men be served without noodles because she is trying to watch her weight. This thought does not occur to me, however.

The second Chinese meal takes place at 安老爷炭火蛙锅 上野店 on the third floor of a zakkyo building outside Ueno Station. At 4:30 p.m. I am the only customer. This restaurant specializes in bullfrog hot pots. Frog dishes are highly uncommon in Japan.

But the hakka-style steamed chicken calls to me. I became familiar with this salt-steaming in Malaysia and thought it was kind of boring. Then I went home and found it impossible to duplicate. My attempts turned out dry and chewy, and I couldn't figure out what aromatic spices to use. 

Here it's moist and tender, with sweet notes of ginseng, maybe galangal. I wish I could go to the kitchen and ask the chef about it. No idea where these folks are from. Maybe Sichuan.

No English menus can be found at either of these restaurants, but there are pictures and you have a phone. In the video above, the sounds are of a large Japanese family sitting next to me at the crowded Cantonese place. 

As in Paris, bad restaurants don't last long in Tokyo. Japanese diners are notoriously particular, and their online reviews are merciless.

Prices are remarkably consistent in non-touristy areas. The tan-men and chicken dishes were 800 to 900 yen each, or $5 to $6 USD.