new bento on tock:
salmon trout bento set
grilled salmon trout in house miso, giant shiitake, edamame rice, pumpkin, pork croquette, lotus root pickled in umeboshi plum
new bento on tock:
salmon trout bento set
grilled salmon trout in house miso, giant shiitake, edamame rice, pumpkin, pork croquette, lotus root pickled in umeboshi plum
Nice! I wonder if it will be similar to their dine-in smoked salmon trout dish.
smoked karasumi ‘bottarga’ onigiri
These are very nice bites. The smoked karasumi lends just enough sweet smokiness and subtle briny umami to flavor each bite. Even the rice is cooked beautifully and are pressed together just enough to hold the rice together without the onigiri falling apart.
No sakura mochi? pass.
Chartreuse kohakuto, damn.
Crunchy dried gelatin candy?
I’m always conflicted when i come here. my brain has a hard time reconciling all the incongruous signals it’s receiving: i smell incense, i see white servers and chefs, i hear loud krautrock playing on the speakers, i feel the 400-year old cypress counter, and i taste delicious traditional japanese food. this has to be the most non-japanese japanese restaurant i’ve ever been to.
the whole sakura-mochi-gate was a fucking dick move and hopefully he can learn from it, but i can’t deny the food on the plate is delicious. the amount of aging, fermenting and flavor going on here is impressive.
fresh seaweed shot, junsai, mozuku, mountain yam
a nice cold, refreshing start.
pickled plum “umeboshi” between bamboo leaves, 2-year aged yubeshi (yuzu, walnut, miso)
the plum was like a delicious concentrated jello. the yubeshi was soft and chewy and i’m amazed how much flavor is packed into such a small bite. highlight.
3-month aged hokkaido scallop in koji, 18-month smoked karasumi
the aged hokkaido scallop was fascinating, it was soft and chewy and had a sweetness and funkiness to it with the flavor of scallop lingering in the background. karasumi–textbook. loved the six pieces of raw daikon that acts as a crunchy textural contrast and to reset your palate. it’s also great to get all the chewy bits off your teeth. highlight.
3-month aged tofuyo
this was intense and funky and had the texture of a runny epoisses. stood up well to the taragawa awamori that it was served with.
hokkaido wagyu, nori, wasabi, 3-year aged ginger
meltingly soft wagyu with crispy nori with possibly the best gari in the city. highlight.
chilled eggplant, smoked tosazu gelee, kokabu, shiso flowers
loved the texture contrast of the shredded crunchy kokabu and the soft eggplant. highlight.
sergio
wild japanese aji sashimi, 3-year aged ginger, 3-year aged shoyu koji, fresh cucumber, wakame
the aji was flawless, but paired with the 3-year aged shoyu, it was incredible. highlight.
simmered japanese octopus, wasabi stems
flavorful and tender. highlight.
original tempura circa 1615, tai, grated daikon, green onions, shoyu dashi
perfectly fried tai. i drank this entire bowl of sweet and savory shoyu dashi. highlight.
iron pot koshihikari rice, iga wagyu, grilled unagi, shiitake, shimeji mushrooms, tsukemono
this course had enough flavor for about two meals. i would be happy just eating the flavorful mushrooms and tsukemono with a bowl of austere rice. the wagyu and unagi were a delicious added bonus. the iga wagyu was intensely beefy and fatty, and the unagi was so much better than the chewy one i had for takeout. loved the sansho powder on top. highlight.
the austere rice
miso soup
not sakura mochi
aka ice cream, fresh amazake, rice cracker
not sakura mochi
aka castella cake, apricot
not sakura mochi
aka kohakuto
That alone takes this restaurant off my list. Once we were there and it was so loud we could not here each other. I politely asked them to turn the volume down - they came back and said they could not lower music volume because that is how the chef likes it!
Had the same issue, albeit with the incense (or maybe it was a Muji atomizer).
I’m on the neurotic end of the spectrum when it comes to artificial scents, but food is a sensory, olfactory experience, and I don’t want that obscured or affected by incense.
Crazy that this is part of a $300 meal. While I understand the push pull power dynamic between chef and customer, it’s frustrating when some of these chef dudes make the ‘door’ to enter the experience so small and specific.
No loud music when I was there in February a year ago, but it was a Wednesday night at 6:00. No incense either.
i wonder what the veggie menu is
The vegetarian menu surely depends on what’s good and in season that week. Maybe fresh tofu, maybe dumplings. The most memorable dish from my meal there was sweet potato with miso.
Had my first dinner here with a friend yesterday, and honestly it was a bit underwhelming. The menu(s) had a fair number of new/changed items, many of which seem like they’d be less interesting or less well-thought-out compared to those on @PorkyBelly’s menu.
Didn’t take any pictures, but:
Part of the problem, I think, was that a couple of the things that I thought were really well-executed from a technical perspective just happened to not really be things that I’m a fan of - i.e. both the corn soup and the custard. My friend liked both of those dishes a lot more than I did, because he likes corn soup and almond-based desserts! But even putting those two aside, at $155 a head before tip & tax, it felt a bit spendy for a meal that felt pretty boring half the time and had very few high notes (I’m can’t confidently say that e.g. the sizing on the tofu & the aspic were “missteps”, only the experience I had while eating them). Pretty much every changed menu item seemed like a downgrade - the sashimi, the tempura, the wagyu getting minced, possibly even the aspic (compared to the eggplant dish, which seems more interesting at a glance), and it also seems like there were just a couple items cut entirely without any replacement. I was full at the end but there was very little protein involved.
I might come back for an a la carte menu, because I don’t think I’d have ordered half of what I ended up eating, and would’ve been much happier for it, but probably not until then.
Apricot seeds (noyau) are to my knowledge inedible. You simmer them in liquid or steep them in alcohol to get the bitter-almond flavor.
Well, I don’t think I got cyanide poisoning, but I’ll certainly avoid eating them in the future… whatever the custard was topped with, it definitely wasn’t almonds; both the texture and flavor had some similarities but were still noticeably different. For one thing they had a considerably more bitter aftertaste.