Sagami, Tokyo (さがみ)

The second floor of Tokyo Station has its own personality - a bit flabby, graying at the temples, and somewhat grumpy. However it's also a solid source of big dining hall-style places with big trays of mixed food. Once in a while it's OK. Today was one of those days, and I visited with Zoner and AsSam.

To keep this short, I'll posit that there were two things going for Sagami:

• The decor is pleasingly bubbly. By which I mean there's a bit of dark wood, a bit of faux-stained glass, and some strip lighting around the edge of various decor features. Unfortunately nothing is in pastel colors, but I think it was designed for a more male clientele, lo those many years ago (as was seemingly every restaurant on that floor). It has the 'not updated very often' patina.
• The food was not really going for it. My udon was a big, tepid bowl that had a tempura'ed piece of chikuwa in it (a tubular fish cake, I kid you not) and a small sashimi bowl on the side. Zoner had 'chicken balls', which turned out to be pieces of chicken and balls of potato cooked in thick broth. AsSam had a grilled mackerel after a fun interchange with the waitress where she denied existence of said fish, who appeared outside.
• The best thing about the place, sadly, was undoubtedly the level of hatred that it raised in Zoner. I can't quite explain it for such an average place, but boy did he hate it bitterly. I guess mediocrity is the enemy of greatness, and he's looking for greatness.

Interestingly, AsSam was pretty happy with things. We ascribed this to the fact that he only recently arrived back in Japan, thus hasn't become acclimated to the standards here and started to think that the perfectly serviceable food we ate today was 'boring' or 'below average'.

New Tokyo Group strikes again.
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