One of my favorite lunch spots. Perfect place to go when you are hungry and on a budget.

Located a little way back from Sanei-dori street. It's in a cheap-looking spot you could easily walk right past. It feels like there are a lot of regulars, but the proprietress briskly shows you to a seat, so you can walk in without feeling awkward. It's a Sichuan restaurant, but the chuka soba also has a nostalgic flavor and is good in its own right. Lunch combos are very flexible, with large and small sizes, so if you make what you most want to eat the main, you're guaranteed to be satisfied.

This area also has a famous Western-style restaurant🍤, and everywhere gets crowded at lunchtime, so I dropped by here at an off-peak hour🍜 A popular, reasonably priced place with noodle-and-rice sets under 1,000 yen🐾 I picked the daily special (mildly spicy tantanmen) and bang bang chicken🥗, a combo to avoid overeating (890 yen)🍜 The tantanmen has crushed walnuts on top of the noodles, and the texture and aroma are delicious. The ground meat, walnuts, and noodles mix together, with the chili oil accenting the texture and umami, which made me regret not choosing the rice option for the B menu. There are lots of male customers, but it's a rare place you can walk into solo. Apparently the chilled black sesame tantanmen is popular in summer too, so I'll be back.

It's a bit tucked away, a spot you wouldn't notice unless you knew about it. It's not big inside, but it was full. It's just the owner and one female staff member, so food takes a little while to arrive, but it's within the acceptable range. Prices are a bit on the high side. The mapo tofu comes in red and white, with 5 spice levels, so working your way up as a challenge is an option. The white one is spicier. The almond tofu is a slightly different type from other places and seems popular; some people were getting it to go. The gyoza seems popular too! The gyoza has changed from before; it's more like deep-fried than pan-fried? Lunch is hearty too.

A Chinese restaurant on Sanei-dori near Yotsuya Station. It's on the ground floor of a building set back from the street, and you can't see inside, so you start worrying, “Is there really a restaurant here?” The lunch menu is mainly noodle and rice bowl sets (one of the two in a small size). I ordered the daily noodle and small fried rice set for 890 yen. That day's noodle was vegetable tanmen. The vegetable tanmen broth had a gentle salty flavor. The fried rice was a little mushy. It felt like maybe it was made ahead and kept warm?