Tokyo Express

I've been having a lot of fun using LevelUp credits to get random free sides for my meals.  Many businesses seed it with ~$2 to lure you in, since most of the time, you can't actually get anything for the initial free money.  But ... I've been enjoying the challenge of using just the free money - I'm now an expert on where you can get chips, cookies, or drinks for <$2!  It is actually amusing to see how much variety there is in pricing (if you care, Kettle Chips seem to have the most variance, from $1.25 - $2.25!).

Anyway.  I also had a little extra credit just to spend at SOMA establishments, and I also decided that I'll spend real money on tax, so I will buy items up to the $2 limit, and then pay the 16 cents tax.  I did both of these tactics at Tokyo Express.

There are a bunch to sushi places on LevelUp, but I can't say it is a good thing for anything at a sushi place to be <$2.  That is most likely fish I want NOTHING to do with.  I did find some ok tamago at Sushi Fantastic (although it was $3, even though the menu said $2 .... grumble). And I was pleasantly surprised to see that Tokyo Express had a happy hour at one of their locations, with radically reduced prices.  Score!

I visited two different Tokyo Express locations, one has the happy hour and is located right near the Westfield mall, and the other closes earlier in the day and is located closer to my office.  They are both order at a counter and then sit casual places, but I got my food to go at both locations.  Service was friendly at both.

Happy Hour Seaweed Salad.  $2.50 (normally $4.25).

This was a standard seaweed salad, with a variety of different seaweeds, all decently crisp.  Not the most flavorful dressing, but there was some seasoning.  Perhaps too many sesame seeds.

This was a happy hour special, normally $4.25, but only $2.50 at happy hour.  The happy hour price seemed good, I wouldn't have wanted to pay $4.25 for this.  I probably wouldn't get again.

Green Tea Ice Cream, Red Bean Ice Cream.  $2 each.

At the other location, I saw they had ice cream!  I've been on a serious ice cream kick lately, so I eagerly snatched these up.

I foolishly expected house made ice cream, or locally made at least, and was rather surprised to find the Maeda-en pre-packaged ice creams in my bag.  Whoops.  I'm forgetting the calibre of places I'm visiting!

Both ice creams were pretty generic.  The green tea had a nice flavor, but was a little bit icy and not creamy.  It seemed like it had been thawed and re-frozen or something.  The red bean had chunks of azuki beans in it, and wasn't too sweet.  On its own, a little too savory for my liking, but I liked mixing the two ice creams.  This one was a better consistency.

If I was really craving these flavors of ice cream I'd consider getting again, but they certainly weren't anything special.  $2 was reasonable for a little container of ice cream.

Amusingly, my togo bag, both times I got the ice cream, contained the ice cream and ... chopsticks.  I'm guessing that is the only togo cutlery they have?  It was rather fun to try to eat some ice cream with chopsticks.  Thank you Tokyo Express for helping me to develop new skills!