Note from Editor
Good morning - it’s officially chilly! To provide some warmth, this morning, I bring you a delightful essay from Megumi, about her favorite restaurant in Tokyo. Yes I know I’ve been saying delightful a lot. But what can you do—all of these pieces I’m so lucky to read and publish are delightful.
Megumi invokes in us the joys of finding a favorite restaurant, a cuisine you want to learn more about, and the many renditions food can find itself in. Megumi finding Nihao in Tokyo and relishing the gyoza reminds me of discovering my favorite dumpling place in my hometown of Dhaka, Bangladesh—Yum Cha District. My mother and I share a strong enthusiasm for their wonton in chili oil, har gow, and corn and cream cheese dumplings.
Megumi also brings about that universal feeling about finding words in a language that aren’t translatable. The sentence, “Koro-koro is one of those fun Japanese words to describe a sound or an object: When it's humid we say jime-jime, when it’s raining a little bit, we say para-para.” is one of my favorite things I’ve read. I hope We Have Food At Home continues to inspire writers to keep bringing in different worlds together through a shared love for food.
How are you staying warm this fall? And more importantly, what’s your favorite restaurant?
Enjoy!
Best,
Padya
Megumi Koiwai
Megumi is a new freelance writer based in Tokyo writing all things culture and about her relationships. She used to work in sales in big tech corporate companies and trying out a life that she was always curious to see for herself. She also works at a bilingual agency, doing copy writing while working at an independent web magazine producing video content as well. Her favorite things consist of recommending things to friends she recently watched, read, or ate, and she loves to travel a lot.
My favorite restaurant in Tokyo, Nihao
Let's go eat some korokoro gyoza
My best friend took me to what I now call my all time favorite restaurant. It was September 1st, still very hot in Japan but the air is sort of enticing with some fall-ness, but we can still dress cute and summery. Looking back, It was a memorable day in particular. It was right before I was about to embark on my two months solo Europe trip after I quit my full time job and had no plans on what to do next. My friend said, “There’s this Chinese place I want to take you. Their gyoza (fried dumplings) are the best I have ever had.” My heart squishes into a curled up ball when my friends say “I want to take you here.” It’s such a sentimental feeling I get, it means they think about you without you being there - I find that romantic. This place now to me has become my ‘Chinese with the girls’ place, à la Sex And The City.
Chinese food is in one of my favorite cuisines. I love it and I crave it often. It’s also maybe one of the most interesting foods in the world because they have influenced so many cultures and countries through their food for immigrating to all sorts of places. I’m no expert in Chinese food but I know Chinese food has different variations to it: The Chinatown in Bangkok where the Chinese people influenced Thai food to give it it’s twist, the road in Paris called Rue de Belleville where all the authentic Chinese food restaurants are that Parisians can’t get enough of, and the Japanese interpretation of dumplings, my favorite gyoza also known as fried dumpling. Although I am not an expert, as I have had Chinese food all around the globe (sadly, besides where it’s actually from), there’s a difference to the rest of the world when Japanese people think of dumplings or in our case, gyoza. Gyoza is fried, while in most of the world, including China, the dumplings are mostly steamed or boiled, insert Din Tai Fung images. The dumplings Japanese people are familiar with are made with minced pork, nira (a type of allium), garlic and cabbage. Carefully curled up in the thin dumpling wrap, waiting to be cooked. The magic happens at Nihao when you are served their gyoza.
Nihao is located in Hatagaya, which is close by to either Shinjuku and Yoyogi-Uehara area in the heart of Tokyo. It’s an underrated area for tourists still, but it’s definitely been under the radar for many foreigners who live in Japan for a while. It’s a ‘IFKYK’ type of place. If I had to describe what is Hatagaya to someone who’s never been, it’s a neighborhood-y and full of character and strangers becoming friends type of place. There’s that old-age thing going on. Restaurants that are open for generations while new and upcoming bistros are opening up all over the town. There’s a charm to it, where you see old ladies coming out of sento’s (public bath houses) for their evening bath, while young people are going out to drink some natural wine. Perhaps I could be a little biased about the area, my big first love I had in 2019 with a French guy used to live in the area. At the time, he thought he discovered somewhere no one else had yet spotted and he was very proud of that. Whenever I go there, every corner and every street reminds me of him, sentimental is the only word I can describe it as. We both haven’t yet discovered Nihao at the time but I can only imagine that he will dramatically throw his chopsticks on the table and look at me and say, “Megumi, try this.” I was always having the same thing as him, but the way he always wanted to share the same experience he was having through food was…tenderness and it’s a feeling I will never forget.
The restaurant is on the second floor of a building with a bar below it. The bar is also a neighborhood favorite called Sanita. You go in and there’s those round tables and the counter seating. It’s an open kitchen so if you sit at the counter, the show is all yours. If sitting at the round table, which I highly recommend, you share a table with other customers depending on the group of people you go with. If going with 4 or more, you’ll have your own table to devour. Round tables to me are special, eating amongst people at one round table where you can see each other’s faces and what they’ve ordered feels homely, nostalgic and most importantly exciting. We ordered our drinks, and I realized that I was sharing a table with someone I knew. It was a group of people who work at the local coffee shop nearby that’s been around for 10 years called Paddlers, another local favorite if you live in the area. It was for sure a neighborhood hang kind of night.
The gyoza at Nihao is beloved by many as it should be. It has won the ‘best gyoza in Japan’ in 2007 and has been listed in the Michelin guide from 2016 for four years in a row, but the allure to this place is not the titles it holds- of course you go there for the gyoza but you also go there for a good hang, a catch up, a date, an after work dinner, and you know you are assured to have the best time.
The gyoza here is crispy, small, and has a different look to it than others - it’s as we say it, ‘korroto-shitateru’. Koro-koro is one of those fun Japanese words to describe a sound or an object: When it's humid we say jime-jime, when it’s raining a little bit, we say para-para. There are so many ways of describing a thing or a sound in Japanese. Koro-koro means something that is round shaped, and it’s an endearing way of saying a rounded cute thing. I haven’t coined this term to describe Nihao’s gyoza, because I’ve heard of other people describe it as such as well, but it is true- I now just want to say “Let’s go eat that korokoro gyoza.”
It’s the combination of the nostalgic neighborhood and the long running first choice Chinese spot to the locals that makes it one of my favorite places in Tokyo. It also has a special place in my heart because I went there with my best friend when my life was about to dramatically change in ways I couldn’t have imagined at the time. Sometimes, I wish just a little bit that I could have taken that French guy with me here to share the goodness of it all. A hopeless romantic cannot help but think to take someone you love to a place you adore- to share that special experience together. I don’t have a special man in my life but I do have my friends, my fairytale of friends who bring me so much love in my life. I’m going there in a couple weeks for my friend's birthday dinner. They also do BYOB, so you can buy some natural wine from a nearby natural wine bar, another local favorite called wineshop flow. You can’t order at 3am like Samantha did after some good sex, but what you can do is open up your own bottle of wine and order a bunch of food that’s too much for the table, and have the best neighborhood hang with someone you love.