Shamaim — Restaurant in Tokyo

Super inconvenient place to eat, but I can forgive that if the place is nice enough. Sadly, it isn't. Leaving apart the fact that it's the only "cheap" Israeli restaurant in Tokyo, and I see many people are just commenting on how they serve Israeli food, and that's apparently nostalgic enough to give it a higher rate than it deserves, it sadly doesn't have anything special besides that. There was a very nice server probably part time college student, she was friendly and her service was good in general, no complains about her. The place is overall kind of hard to get to, the sign outside makes me wonder the design sense of the place... in general, it's dusty/not clean and maybe requiring a bit of maintenance (under those sofa-like chairs/benches at the corner for example). But I would have probably not cared if the food was good, and the service was better (good food requires skill and time, good service requires mostly just will). Sadly, that wasn't so. It's great the food is relatively cheap, especially compared to other Israeli restaurants in Tokyo. But the quality is frankly just normal, so the price kind of matches the food. The humus was kind of nice, but I guess that was about it. You can probably get most of the food at some other Turkish or Persian/Iranian restaurant in Tokyo maybe at a lower price and with better taste. One good thing it had was the environment, with an Israel decor and all. Lots of books in Hebrew too. Nice for people interested in the language, as me. But again, there are better places for that purpose too... The thing that got me the worst, was the service when I was paying the bill. The counter clearly shows Rakuten Pay as a payment form. But my payment was denied with the statement "it's a promotion". That's like having a VISA sticker but saying you don't accept credit cards, and when asked why, saying "it's a promotion". Which doesn't make sense right? The nice girl apparently had no experience using rakuten pay, so she called the cook, whom I can only guess was Israeli based on his practice-needing Japanese. I asked three times the purpose of the sticker and whether they accepted payment or not, a clear "yes/no" question. To which I got "it's a promotion" for all my questions. I ended up saying "I don't understand you", and then the guy just left. No apologies about putting a sticker saying you can pay with this, but actually can't, god knows for what reason, and overall the clerk was kind of confrontational, when I'm just trying to make sense of the payment system. I think his attitude can be considered rude by Israeli standards as well. But more than that, this is Japan, and it is certainly rude by Japanese standards. This is one place I'm not...

I've been around Japan and I believe I've tried every single place that there was to try. Though the options aren't plentiful Shamim is the best of them by far.

The food is as authentic Israeli food as it could possibly get. The restaurant itself has a call atmosphere where you can peacefully enjoy your meal.

I wanted to write this review because unfortunately when I looked up reviews here the first one that came up was from a person that never even went to the restaurant and left it a 1 star review. I know they didn't go because they mentioned shawarma was on the menu and I was honestly looking forward to it but there was never any shawarma. Hummus and pitas are highly recommended and the falafel is also great.

According to the owner if you want accurate information or updates about the restaurant/menu you should check the Instagram.

Personally, I intend to regularly come here every time I feel like having some Israeli...

SHAMAIM is an Israel cuisine restaurant that goes beyond your expectations if you are new to this type of food. It's a lot of vegetables, beans and potatoes, with which you basically make sandwiches. They offer the all-you-can-eat course at 2,100 JPY and it's just so much food that is high quality! I was pretty shocked how good Israel dishes could be and the taste felt very familiar, too.

There are only a few places available in Tokyo where you get to eat Israel dishes, but SHAMAIM should rank first. My Jewish friend is absolutely a huge fan of this place and he was the one who took me here for the first time.

The only downside is that Ekoda is not too close from central Tokyo (but not too bad - 20 minutes from Shinjuku). Other than that, this place is awesome, particularly so if you are a vegetarian. I'm not (am a gigantic meat eater), but still fully...