The Shimokitazawa food diaries: Tom's Kitchen (Chinese), Shimokitazawa

Once again, and like a lot of other places in Shimokitazawa, this restaurant is probably one of the best of its genre in Tokyo in the price/quality range. "Tom's Kitchen" doesn't focus on any local cuisine in particular and its super friendly chinese staff will serve you anything from the Beijing Duck to the Sichuan-style Mah Paw Dau Fu (or Mabo Dofu in Japanese) but whatever you order, you're guaranteed it'll be good. And they're open until 01:30am so what can you ask for more?

The restaurant is managed by Jackpot, a company that owns about 15 restaurants in Tokyo, half of them in Shimokitazawa. They do anything from chinese to sushi to izakaya to italian and it's usually cheap, good and with always great service. You will know the restaurant is one of theirs as they have a wooden board outside that says "やってます” (we're open)

My favorites are the "Cold Mabo Dofu" (that I have never encountered anywhere other than this place) which is cold Tofu with some chili sauce on it, the hot "Dry Dan Dan Mian" (noodles sauteed with minced meet, sprout, chili and Chinese Pepper) and the "Suan La Tang Mian" (noodles in Hot and Sour Soup) which might be a Japanese only recipe as I've never seen this outside Japan. Japanese love to transform anything into a ramen dish, same with the Dan Dan Mian that you'll find anywhere in Japan in a soup, instead of the dry version which is the authentic way of serving it in China.
You should also try their Lamb sauteed with cumin and garlic. It will remind you how big China is and how much some of their western province cuisine tastes like food from the Middle East.