A Toast in daytime at “Showa Roman”, Shinkoiwa

Good evening.
Thank you very much for your visiting this blog.
Today I introduce you “Showa Roman” in Shinkoiwa.

“Showa Roman” is the name of the restaurant.
It doesn’t sound like a restaurant’s name for Japanese people.

It locates west of the shopping street in front of Shinkoiwa Station’s south exit.
The inside was like this below.

I could see bottles of Nihonshu “Kubota Senju”, “Hakkaisan”, “Dewazakura”, “Secchubai”, and “Urakasumi”.
There were many decorations of movie posters and sign boards which are of around 1950s to 1970s (Showa 30s to 40s in Japanese calendar. I’m not sure though because I wasn’t born at that time yet.) everywhere in the restaurant.
This place was an izakaya restaurant which existed for decades until some months ago, and they recently changed their style at renewal. That explains why the outward appearance, tables, chairs, and the wall looked new and the room was bright even though the decorations were old style.
If they wanted to express the old days in Showa period more, the wall, tables, chairs, and lights could be older. But if they did it, it wouldn’t be “Romantic”, so this balance of old and new should be the best.

The time we entered was a little passed 3 in the afternoon on Saturday.
On the day before, I had a party to celebrate my ex-senior colleague’s having a child in Kayaba-cho, and I went to his home in Shinkoiwa to drink more on the night (His wife was at her parents’ home). We enjoyed the drinks until morning, and after that, I slept in until half passed 2 in the afternoon because of my chronic lack of sleep. He and I decided to go out for a late lunch and a glass of drink, and reached this restaurant.
My ex-colleague ordered a beer, and I, because I was afraid of gout, ordered a whisky and soda.
The time was late, and we were planning to go to a popular Yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant after, so we ordered light dishes.

The first was salad.

To see the photo, it seems a normal tuna salad, but the taste was good with lemon flavor which sharpened my appetite.
The next was half-cooked mackerel’s sashimi (If my memory is correct).

I must say that I was surprised because I didn’t expect that such old style izakaya restaurant could serve brilliant mackerel sashimi like we had then (sorry for my rudeness).
The fish was fresh and nicely chewy.

And the next, Gyusuji Nikomi (stewed cow line meat).

It was sweet, and also deep flavor of soy sauce. The meat was very soft and contained much delicious juice.

The next was the famous menu of this restaurant.

“Nikomi”.
It was a stew of pig’s entails with miso-based soup. The fat of the entails were sweet and rich taste, and went great with the miso taste. I heard that this menu was so famous that it was featured on TV.

By the way, they had a TV on the edge of the counter, and it showed a baseball match of Hanshin (one of the most popular pro-baseball teams) at the request of my ex-colleague while we were there. Such scene of watching baseball on TV in Izakaya makes Showa-atmosphere, don’t you think?

This restaurant is originally an old izakaya restaurant, so the foods were not too simple and delicious. The staffs were doing good job and they served us drinks without making us wait. The price was easy on the pocketbook. It was a good place which made me feel that I would come some times per a month if I lived in Shinkoiwa.
It still remained a little unbalanced feeling in the decorations when we visited, but I think that it will be a real good old style restaurant after years.

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