A Week of Dining in Tokyo
Fairly recently I did a week-long whistle-stop tour of Tokyo dining - from plush restaurants at the top of 5 star hotels to hole-in-the-wall shacks that only serve one thing on the menu. Here is a run down of where I went, with some opinions, should you find yourself looking for a nice place to eat in The ‘Kyo.
TY Harbor Brewery
Tucked away at an odd, corporate location in Shinagawa, TY Harbor Brewery is therefore totally rammed at lunch, but surprisingly quiet at dinner. In general I like eating here as the ambience is nice - the ceilings are high, the drinks are interesting (they also brew their own beer) and they have outside seating - with futuristic outside air conditioning. We had lunch there, opting for their attractive veranda tables but were somewhat disappointed when they sat us near a not-so-attractive and noisy electric generator that was whirring somewhere on the pier below. No matter, let us just enjoy the food, I said:
Seafood Salad - an uninspiring medley of (quite large) prawns, squid, green olives (bleh), salad leaves and - one of my all time pet hates - horrible, wrinkled-up dried herbs. Nothing makes a salad more depressing than that, I feel. Dressing made me pucker up like a cat’s rear end too. Fail.
Spicy Soft Shell Crab Jambalaya - I remarked before it was brought to the table that I predict the jambalaya will have just come out of a big jambalaya vat and the crab would be deep fried to order and awkwardly nestled on top. I was 100% right. This in itself isn’t such a bad thing, but the crab was outrageously salty. Think of the saltiest thing you’ve ever eaten. Thinking of it? SALTIER. The crabs were caked in some kind of jerk seasoning which overwhelmed any of the crab flavour I might have tasted, shocking the senses with saltiness, like a pair of testicles on the end of a baseball bat. The jambalaya was ok but was rather more runny than it should have been. Fail.
Ginger Creme Brulee - we both failed to identify any ginger flavour whatsoever in what was a very delicious and creamy brulee of the vanilla variety. 5/10.
Panacotta with Seasonal Fruit - the “seasonal fruit” had seemingly come straight out of a rather season-independent tin can, but the panacotta itself was deliciously rich and I destroyed this dessert in about 30 seconds flat. 7/10.
Aqua
Aqua is situated on the 49th floor of the Caretta building in Shiodome and positions itself as modern Asian fusion cuisine. We dropped in for lunch. I was unimpressed. Had it not been for the amazing view, the food itself wouldn’t have been out of place in any old Asian eatery down on the unwashed streets which the high-rise Aqua distances itself from. Granted, lunch menu dishes are often cut-down, “economy” versions of their dinner counterparts but they should still be representative of the quality of the restaurant. That’s how you get people back for dinner, where they will invariably spend more. Aqua’s lackluster lunch offering consisted of some stir-fried items plopped on a plate with a bowl of lotus seed rice, some pickles and a deep fried spring roll. Whoop de doo.
Nirvana
Tokyo’s new “Midtown” shopping and business complex is aimed at pretentious materialists like me, so I feel quite at home there. It houses a handful of high quality eateries including Union Square Tokyo (of Union Square Cafe fame), but we chose something a little different - Nirvana, an Indian restaurant, as it had been a while since I had a good Indian meal. And that was my first mistake. Lacking the experience in eating Indian food, my palate is not trained enough to be able to tell Nirvana’s posh curry from the roadkill curry you get from any given Mr Patak’s Random Indian Takeaway down the street. I left Nirvana with an extraordinarily full stomach, but with a sheepish look on my face as I realised I just paid $150 for curry and had therefore been PWNED to the highest order.
Chao Chao Gyoza
Chao Chao Gyoza is a cheapo gyoza chain specialising in plates of gyoza for 280-yen (about $2.40). It is an excellent place to go and chug a few beers and have a bite. They also do these pickled cucumbers that you order whilst your gyoza are frying (all gyoza are cooked to order) that taste amazing - cooling, tart and incredibly moreish. I can plough through about 3 cucumbers before any gyoza are brought to me. The gyoza themselves are unremarkable, with very thin skins and the minimum amount of filling for them to be legally called gyoza (presumably) but you can’t complain for 280-yen a plate. No, instead of complaining, you order another plate. And another.
Salt
Situated in the plush Shin Marunouchi Building by Tokyo station, Salt is a restaurant by renowned Australian chef Luke Mangan. Produce used is from both Japan and Australia, and there is a heavy emphasis on seasonal ingredients. I was incredibly impressed with Salt. It was hands down one of the best restaurants I’ve been to (and I’ve been to some pretty good ones…maybe save that for another blog entry) and one of very few restaurants that has made me think immediately “I want to come back here to try other things on the menu”. In Salt, Luke Mangan has created an amazingly rich menu with flavours that jump off the page as you read the items. I can’t wait to go back - although if I have anything less than positive to say, it’s that I wasn’t overly impressed with dessert, because the main course and starter had set such a high benchmark. We had:
Grilled mackerel with roasted fig and red onion tart - (starter) two little fillets of perfectly grilled mackerel with delightfully crispy skin, resting on top of half a sweet, roasted fig, and a light puff pastry tart with caramelised red onions. Rustic, sweet and light. A near perfect start to the meal. 9/10.
Prawns with mango and vanilla salsa - (starter) 3 great big prawns drizzled with an interesting combination of cool mango and warming vanilla. Delicious, but not as accomplished as the mackerel starter, IMO. 8/10.
Cod wrapped in pancetta with caramelised shallot, fig and vanilla - this has to be one of the most dangerously delicious things I’ve tasted in a long time. We’re seeing some similar flavours in the fig and vanilla, but some of that is down to the seasonal element (figs are in around now). I’m not complaining though - this was sinfully good. Beautifully white cod wrapped tightly in thin, smoky pancetta - this alone was already delicious - finished with figs and shallots so caramelised that they fell away as your poked them with your fork, lending an amazing dimension of sweetness to the dish. The vanilla-infused sauce warmed and rounded things off well. A genius dish - one I would very much like to try recreating at home. 10/10.
Ocean trout with bouillabaisse and crab tortellini - slightly less impressive than the cod was the ocean trout. It was presented well, the trout baked in a clay pot and served from the pot to your plate at the table, but I felt that the bouillabaisse was over-seasoned and masked the flavour of the trout (which was perfectly cooked). Crab tortellini and some stray clams complimented the dish nicely flavour-wise but if I had to be objective I’d say there was perhaps a little too much going on on the plate. 8/10.
Coconut Panacotta - my dinner partner raved about this, but actually I failed to see what was so great about it. Looked nice though. 6/10.
Rhubarb fool - sweet and tart. Did what it said on the tin. 6/10.
Overall though, I really have nothing bad to say about this restaurant. I want Luke Mangan’s babies.
Dalloyau & Pierre Herme
Two of the world’s finest macaron patisseries, right here in Tokyo. Dalloyau’s are somewhat more cake-like than Pierre Herme’s crispy, chewy variety. I much prefer the latter. Jasmine tea flavour at Pierre Herme made my toes curl with uncontrollable pastry-eroticism.
Bearded Papa
Instant heart attack!! Bearded Papa makes hand-grenade-size choux pastries generously filled with lashings of fresh custard. Each one is the equivalent of eating fifteen eggs and seven bags of sugar. NOMNOMNOM. For those who dislike their unclogged arteries, you can opt for a “cookie” choux instead, which is the same thing but with bits of cookie in the pastry. Christ.
Kozue - The Park Hyatt
What is the best Japanese restaurant in the world? Difficult question. Depends what you are looking for, I guess. Traditional? Fish? Meat? Winter? Summer? The term “Japanese restaurant” can mean many things to many people. However, for one of the best experiences in Japanese food in the entire world, Kozue ranks pretty high up on the list. As the bento.com review points out - an experience in food such as this is simply impossible to get outside of Japan.
At Kozue we enjoyed a mixture of elaborate, “kaiseki” style courses where each dish was nothing more than a mouthful, painstakingly constructed out of various seasonal elements, to more involved dishes that were simmered, grilled or simply fresh and raw. All dinnerware is handmade so that your dining experience is unique - a nice touch, I thought. We ate amazingly fresh sashimi, simmered soups with rustic dumplings, flavoursome grilled fish dishes, dishes that looked like art on a plate, decorated with all sorts of inedible and superfluous freshly cut leaves and flowers - it was an impressive, and expensive, feast. I will remember it as one of the highest quality experiences in Japanese food I’ve ever had. 9/10.
*burp*
Finall bill for the week: TEN HUNDRED THOUSAND BILLION YEN.
