The Restaurant District

Today's outing was to the Kappabashi Dogu-gai Dori, the city's main district for the wholesale restaurant business. There were stores of every possible restaurant supply: to-go containers, big and small appliances, printing (for menus, chopstick covers, flyers), dishes and chopsticks, and so on; one store might specialize in wooden materials, the next in ceramic, the next in metal... But the real attraction was the food:





If you're wondering why it's all wrapped, it's so people won't touch it and break it. Like the pictures below, it's all fake, used for displays to draw in customers.

After a while, we went to get a cup of coffee, and realized that for blocks and blocks, we could find no food. And twice, when we thought we'd found a restaurant or cafe, we weren't sure if it was a real eatery or someplace that just looked like one....that's how confused we'd become. Finally we found a great little coffee shop specializing in just Cuban coffee.