one of the most incredible meals we've ever had - we met up with our old (long time, not granny) friend kana at ootoya for their lunch teishoku (set meal). we've been on cheap/janky food rotation for so long that it felt extremely luxurious and almost opulent to be in there upon arriving. 

but when the food came, each little dish blew our minds. k got a hokke teishoku, me a saba (mackerel) teishoku, and m tried a set menu of rice bowl. teishoku's came with rice, miso soup, chawanmushi, a few veggie side dishes. m's rice bowl was chicken soboro-don, which is ground chicken in seasoning with poached egg on rice - and this set also came with zaru soba (apparently house-made!!!) and all the other side dishes including the chawanmushi.

now, we've had teishokus that look similar to this in the past. but we all agreed they took it to another level here - our rice we ordered was hijiki (seaweed) with brown rice. it was seasoned with something aamzing that i could've been just happy eating a huge bowl of this as a meal. it was so good.

the chawanmushi here was super custardy and topped with a bit of umeboshi, it was just simply amazing. the fish were grilled to perfection, not having dripped out a single drop of its own natural juiciness. we were full after this huge meal but not unpleasantly so. just perfect!

then after saying goodbye to k, we walked down to our bikes in east village, and stopped for some dessert at just sweet, a very strange and stark looking bubble tea house of sorts. we have been there once last year for patbingsoo, and although i'd much rather have been eating this on 32nd street, well, this was right in front of our eyes. we ordered the large patbingsoo and a boba milk tea - neither wasn't anything to write home about but it hit the spot for us, especially worth it at 50% off price (happy hour?).