Address - Kyodo-bld. B1F, 5-9-15, Minami-Aoyama Minato-ku, Tokyo Opening hours - LUNCH : 11:30 -14:30 (Mon to Sat), DINNER : 17:30 - 24:00 (Mon to Sat) Map - Yes Telephone - 35766-8995 Menu - In English and Japanese CC - OK

A friend of mine lives right next to Omotesando, a fact that, considering who he is, is at least puzzling: he is a system engineer more at home with computernetworks than with too-heavily-made-up teenage girls. When we meet we tend to eat around his house, and this time he wanted to try a new restaurant whose name had intrigued him: Immigrant Cafè.
To find it you have to descend a flight of stairs, and even then the place is completely hidden from view. You enter from a short gallery-like hole and there it is, white, fashionable (Frank's note: in my vocabulary this particular adjective has strong pejorative connotations) and very much like the countless, trendy, anonymous cafes that dot Tokyo. The first impact wasn't of the best. If you care to, take a look at their slide show to form an opinion of your own. I was afraid it would turn out to be an expensive disappointment, almost turned to leave when a very young lad in full hip-hop gear came and guided us to a table, instantly making a strategic retreat impossible.
He turned out to be a slightly eccentric, very pleasant German with, inexplicably, a very strong French accent. He himself freely admits people think he is French, but has no clue as to why this happens. Another waitress was Mexican and just as young, just as genuinely friendly. And this is in my view IC's greatest charm: it's simple, friendly and genuine. No airs and good value.
In spite of the place's name, the German-Frenchman and the already mentioned Mexican girl who brought us our drinks serve a mainly Japanese crowd predominantly Asian dishes: Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, even Malay. Labels here must be taken with more than rather the customary grain of salt, because nothing is very authentic, but it doesn't matter because everything is good and reasonably priced. If you can avoid sitting in the main room, where the volume is just a tad too high, you can also enjoy the music, mostly instrumental, often very good, always soft and pleasant. A couple of times we even asked the name of the group.

Project Gutenberg is an organization of volunteers dedicated to the electronic publication of great works of literature of the past now in public domain. Visit their site.