Rakeru in Tokyo

Ever heard of Rakeru in Tokyo? One of the things I really like to eat in Japan is hamburger steak. It might look counter intuitive to go and eat western food while it Japan but it’s not odd. Westernized Japanese food is called yoshoku and it is very popular. You will find many different Italian places or hamburger steak shops in Tokyo. Personally, one of the greatest appeals of eating yoshoku is that I get to eat all the things I love (meat, pizza, pasta) without feeling bloated after. Although I’m eating fairly calorie heavy foods, find yoshoku is a bit lighter on the oil and salt.

Rakeru in Tokyo is one of the more famous hamburger steak and omurice places. They have several locations and even a Peter Rabbit themed cafe. Sadly, it was too far for us to trek out to but we went to one of their non-themed locations in Shinjuku. In case it matters to you, there’s a huge SEGA game centre around the corner!

THE INSIDE

The interior of the restaurant looks like a cute little farmhouse! Where they found all these decorations and lamps, I have no idea. But it gave the restaurant a little charm especially with the checked tablecloths.

HOWIE’S FOOD

Howie’s order came with a soup and drink for an extra 400 yen. After being pleasantly surprised at the quality of ANA corn soup we were excited to try this. Oddly enough this soup also had no pulp? We can’t tell if this is a Japanese thing where the pulp is removed or completely blended down in corn soup. Regardless, this was a creamy corn soup that we both enjoyed. It was not overly salty.

Howie absolutely loves Hokkaido milk and ice cream so I wasn’t shocked when he chose the omurice and hamburger steak coated with Hokkaido cheese. As you can see, they didn’t skimp on the cheese. You can’t even see his hamburger steak under all the cheese and sauce.

I was worried that Howie wouldn’t enjoy the meal and that he was only here because he wanted to make me happy since I loved these foods so much. However, he had good things to say about how fluffy the egg over the rice was. He also noted that they must have used good quality beef for the hamburger steak as it was very tender.

MY FOOD

I took a “go big or go home” approach with my order. As you can see, my plate is loaded with food! Not only do I have hamburger steak and omurice, I got a potato, salad and a bread roll. I really wanted to try the bread roll because Rakeru is pretty famous for them. In fact, if you like them, you can buy some to take home with you from the front counter. We weren’t sure how well they’d hold up in the luggage so we took a pass.

That would be one of the biggest mistakes I made because these rolls are delightfully soft and fluffy. It’s like biting into a cloud. The staff heat them up before they serve it to you and they are heavenly when you add butter to them. Do not miss an opportunity to try this!

When we arrived at the restaurant, we didn’t ask for an English menu. But since this Rakeru in Tokyo must see a lot of tourists, they were used to English speakers coming in. Their Japanese menu has English to describe the name of the dish. The detailed descriptions of the menu items are in Japanese. So I completely missed the fact that my rice was curried rice versus Howie who got plain rice with his omurice. No matter because I loved how flavorful it made my omurice.

I didn’t eat much of the potatoes and salad because they weren’t the stars of the show. The bread, meat and omurice were absolutely fantastic and settled my cravings for westernized Japanese food. We were heading to another dessert place after this so we didn’t order dessert. Do note that there’s two full pages of delicious looking desserts like parfaits and cakes so try them if you can!