Ballon — Restaurant in Tokyo

This is a tiny little falafel place in Nakameguro, a little outside the main commercial district. You order from the window on the sidewalk, and if you eat-in it's in a little tiny room off to the the side. The room is very pleasant, with vaguely Turkish aesthetic accents.

I ordered a spicy falafel sandwich and my wife ordered the regular falafel salad bowl. We were both blown away with how good this was. We've eaten falafel in so many parts of the world, so I think we've got a good foundation from which to make a judgement.

This is not classic falafel. The balls themselves are a little bit smoother and fluffier than the the coarsly ground chickpea balls I'm used to, but they were still super crispy on the outside. There also wasn't a heavy sesame tahini flavor, like most falafel. Instead, there was soft, smooth, and silky eggplant. Plus a bunch of other salad-like marinated vegetables. Also, some potato salad.

All these things worked really well together, to create an experience that is probably best characterized as scrambled falafel. It has the right combination of flavors and textures, but they are all coming from unexpected directions. That makes this sandwich an experience. I recommend you give it a try.

The only part of it that wasn't fantastic was the pita. It wasn't bad. But it was soft and chewy, with almost no toasty Maillard reaction. I wish it had just a slightly more substantial texture. So, I'll probably order the salad next time. And there will definitely be a next time, because this was a...

Ballon is a tiny vegan place located near nakameguro station and a mere 15 minute walk from Daikanyama. I tried their falafel snack and their famous soft cream, which you can get in many declensions of toppings and tastes. I tries the salted pistachio one and it was very good. Soft cream itself is not very sweet and not particularly tasting but it balance well the sweetness and deep taste of its toppings. Falafel snack was not great to be honest. A bit too small and overcooked. I think was an accident but it can be done better. This is their only shop, the owner is a master chef. The staff is very friendly and communicative, I greatly appreciated that. I would come here often if it was not so far from a station. But their soft cream...

The falafel was pretty good but it was pretty expensive. The store is small with not a lot of variety on the menu. There's not much else around the location too so only come if you're in the area. It's definitely better to do take out than stay and eat because there's not a lot of comfortable seating. The reason why I give it only two stars is that they offer free ice cream if you give a positive review on social media which I think is a bit dirty. So, I felt like I had been misled because of all the other positive reviews I saw before coming here. I don't like the idea of trying to use customers' social media as advertising for their business...