Regular readers of this column will know it doesn't take much to lure us to the Shonan Coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, especially when there's good eating to be done at the end of the journey. And since the spring, there's been very good reason for making that trip: the stylish new restaurant/cafe known simply as Bills.
As previewed in these pages last October, Bills (always written in hip lowercase script) is the first operation by chef Bill Granger outside of his native Australia. Among globe-trotting gourmets, Granger is known as Sydney's breakfast king. But there's plenty more to his cooking than his superlative scrambled eggs and fluffy ricotta pancakes.
The location, right on the coast road halfway between Kamakura and Enoshima, is certainly worth the train ride down from Tokyo. The surf here may not be up to the standard of Bondi, but this is as close as the metropolitan area gets to the upwardly mobile beachfront culture of New South Wales.