10/29/2012

Zuien Bekkan Shinjuku / 隨園別館 新宿店

I wanted to try some Chinese food and had a chance to go there day after Halloween night out.

This place is called Zuien Bekkan (Shinjuku branch), and there're 2 other branches in Tachikawa, Shin-Marunouchi blgd., and Odawara.

I've learned this place offers super cheap lunch set and actually an authentic Chinese plates.
One of the menu is "one coin lunch," which we call for 500 JPY lunch as we have 500 yen coin.
And the set includes half-sized sour noodle (酸辣湯 / San ra-tan /  Hot and sour soup), half-sized fried rice, and almond jelly (杏仁豆腐 / An'nin-dofu).
Some other lunch sets are 750 ~ 1,500 JPY.

To see if they have tasty Chinese foods, I really wanted to give a shot at one coin lunch.
However, as we went there on Sunday, there's no menu hanging inside or outside :(

So we actually looked through a whole menu and found some plates we'd try.

We ordered the following.
合菜戴帽 (stir-fried vegetable and pork covered with fried egg) --- I have no idea how to put the pronunciation with alphabet but with Japanese character Katakana showed like this; ホーツァーダイマウ for reference.

牛肉の辛味タンメン (spicy Chinese noodles served with vegetable and beef)

蟹炒飯 (fried rice with crab meat)

And a bottle of coke.

We first ordered one plate each; egg and noodle (合菜戴帽 and 牛肉の辛味タンメン) but I kept looking at the menu and a manager came close to me.

From the first, fried rice with crab meat got my attention really bad yet I didn't wanna order a full size since I thought the dishes we ordered would fill us up.
I asked him if there's a half size fried rice and his answer was, "We can prepare half size when we're not that busy. And as we're not busy, we can make you one."
AWESOME!

As soon as he took the extra and special order from me, he screamed at kitchen in Chinese,  "aoijqp984yt aegj!! jawpe8u iathufaoua@ty  CHA-HAN!!!" 
*Cha-han is the way Japanese people call fried rice and Chinese sounded pretty close.
So I hoped he asked cooks to make smaller fried rice for me.

First, a bottle of coke came and my egg was served right after.
合菜戴帽
Egg on the right side looks like annual ring of wood and I was really amazed by the way they cooked this. 
I still haven't figured out how they made the egg but am guessing they kept moving the pan in a circular motion while pouring beaten egg with ladle.

This egg dish (underneath the egg, there're stir fried mixed vegetables) came with fine strips of leek / naganegi onion, sweet miso (fermented soybean paste), and wraps (strong wheat based wrap).

Inside of the egg.
Sliced pork, bean sprout, cabbage, greens (leaves or spinach), and bean-starch vermicelli were inside.
The seasoning was soy sauce based and a little bit salty.
First I tried this without adding any miso paste or onion, and it was quite tasty.

This is a photo on the menu.
Clockwise from the left top, egg, miso paste, wrap, and onion.

This menu is the number 82, and in Japanese, it says that the wrap is not included.
When I ordered this dish, they didn't ask me if I wanted the wrap or not, so I thought they wouldn't serve me without asking. 
However, they brought me all of it anyway, so I tried another bite with this wrap.

The texture of the wrap was strong like mochi (sticky rice) or udon (a type of noodle).
And the wrap of this was exact the same as that of Peking duck.
Miso paste was sweet and thick, onion was fresh.

As I had to chew a lot the wrap, I became full besides the miso paste was really strong and fulfilling flavored.

To be honest, I prefer the egg itself without this wrap and miso. I'd love to have the onion though.

While eating, beef noodle was served.
The soup was brown and some sort of soy sauce based topped with chopped beef, spinach-ish leaves, and takana (a variety of brassica juncea).
Takana is a type of tsukemono ( Japanese pickle) and usually it's spicy hot.
The beef looked a little bit chewy though seemed it observed the soup well.
Noodle was slightly yellow, so I guess it's an egg noodle.
Soup had strong star anise fragrance. If you're fan of the spice, you'd enjoy it for sure.

And here comes my crab meat fried rice!!
I wasn't sure if I'd get this fried claw since this is half size.
Table next to us ordered a full size so that they had 2 claws.
This fried rice was really good and I personally highly recommend.
The rice was not sticky so that every single rice was separated and individually mixed well with other ingredients.
It wasn't too salty or too weak, just a right amount of seasoning.
(Usually it's said that to make this non-sticky fried rice is difficult and it requires strong fire to cook.)
I tried the fried claw. OOOOHHHHHH!!!!
The claw was solid and filled with crab meat!



To summarize;
Taste: Great. I'm really happy.
Variety: Sufficient. It could be hard to decide!
Portion: Pretty big. If you wanna try several plates, it'd be better to go there with a group of people.
Price: Lunch set is cheap (starting from 500 JPY), but it seems available only on weekdays.
Except weekdays lunch set, there're wide price range from inexpensive to not-reasonable dishes (like bird's-nest soup was 6,000 JPY).
Service: Ok. Even though it's not owned by a Japanese, the way they lead us to the table was as good as other restaurants, they spoke pretty good Japanese (they could even speak honorific and modest language).
Bill: UNCLEAR. I really need to stress this out. They didn't show us the bill so I couldn't tell if they deducted any price from the half size fried rice or couldn't see how much the wrap for the egg was.
Well, I'd rather pay full amount on the fried rice for half size than leaving tons of foods to be thrown away afterwards, but still it's my habit to check the list before paying the money.

総評の要約のみ日本語も追加。
味:美味しい。満足できる味。
種類:豊富。選ぶのに迷うほど。
量:多め。数種類頼むなら、大人数で行くのがお勧め。
値段:平日の500円ランチは格安。その他メニューは幅広い価格帯。つばめの巣は6,000円程度。
接客:良し。中国人ばかりだが、敬語・謙譲語もしっかり話せる。
会計:不明瞭会計。請求書を見せてもらえなかった。そのため、半サイズの炒飯がいくらだったのか、そして合菜戴帽の欄に別料金と表示されていた薄餅(ポーピン)がいくらだったのか不明。
(通常サイズを頼んで大量に残して捨てられるよりは、同じ料金で半サイズを頼み、残飯を減らせる方がいい。ただ、支払の前に確認するクセがあるので、見せてもらえないのは気持ちが悪い。)

Zuien Bekkan Shinjuku branch / 隨園別館 新宿店
2-7-4 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
東京都新宿区新宿2-7-4

Open:
Monday - Thursday: 11:00AM - 3:00PM, 5:00PM - 11:00PM
Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays: 11:00AM - 11:00PM
*open 7 days a week unless notice.

Credit card:
Only Visa and Master Card are accepted.

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