Kohrinbo 香林坊 - Nakano, Tokyo

I was going to try writing a review/entry about places that I go to often, but I got a bit pressured out and decided to instead, write about a place I have only been to once. 

 Located on the second floor of the Nakano Broadway shopping center at the end of Nakano Sun Plaza shopping street, Kohrinbo 香林坊 caught my eye as I was looking for places to eat located along the JR Chuo line. It's a small place run by a nice Taiwanese woman and with the exception of eggs, the food is meat-free. I'm by no means a vegetarian, but I have noticed that it seems to be pretty difficult to get vegetarian food, or even a decent salad that isn't 90% shredded cabbage in Tokyo.

Even though I was trying to be healthy, I was not sure what to get and settled on the "Adherence to a Vegetarian Diet Cutlet Set" (精進カツ定食, shoujin katsu teishoku, it really loses something in translation doesn't it?）for 1000円 and was pretty pleased with what I received.

It comes with two slices of pickled daikon, pickled eggplant, a nut (not sure what kind) omelette, a konbu soup and a bowl of rice (which you can apparently get a refill for free). The soup was light and refreshing in comparison to miso soup that tends to come with most food in Japan. The pickled eggplant was slightly tart and there was nothing particularly outstanding about the daikon (I usually don't expect much since I figure a lot of places just use the kind that comes in a jar from the supermarket). The omelette was nice, but with my terrible chopstick skills, it was a bit difficult to cut into bite-sized pieces. The imitation pork cutlet was not oily and with exception of the small pieces of carrot, didn't taste that much different than pork although it was a bit drier. It didn't really need any tonkatsu sauce as it was fine by itself, and even if it wasn't, the sauce dispenser seemed to be quite stubborn, not yielding any more than a thin ribbon of sauce despite my efforts.

Kohrinbo is open every day except Sunday 11:30am-3pm and 5-8pm. You can get there by taking either the Tokyo Metro Tozai Line (light blue) or JR Chuo/Sobu to Nakano Station and taking the North Exit. Walk across the street to Nakano Sun Plaza until you get to Nakano Broadway, turn right and take the stairs to the second floor (the escalator goes straight to the third floor), turn right at Madarake and Kohrinbo is at the end of the hallway.

Anyway, this was my first attempt at writing a food blog entry. I hope it gets better as I keep doing it. I will either edit this entry or add another when I go back to Kohrinbo and try something else.

Kohrinbo

Nakano 5-52-15, Nakano Broadway 2F. Open 11:30am-3:30, 5-8pm. Closed Sundays.  03-3385-7005

中野　5-52-15、中野ブロードウェイ　2F　11時30分ー15時30分, 17時-20時、休業日曜日