- Caviar on a financier
- Firefly squid with micro cilantro
- Chawanmushi with uni and shrimp (sorry this is a horrible photo of when I was almost finished)
- Tuna tartar
- Smoked scallop, crab
- Waygu beef in a roll
- Shio ramen
Not pictured: 7 glass sake pairing, coffee basque cheesecake, hojicha roll cake
I found this meal to be extremely disappointing and am wondering if anyone else feels the same. Some of the dishes had basic misses such as dishes being under salted or unbalanced. Other dishes fell into the classic tasting menu trap of using an expensive ingredient (caviar, uni, etc) for clout and ultimately masking the flavor of the ingredient. They also didn’t consistently explain the dishes or sakes consistently before each dish or pour. Sometimes the chef would explain to one side of the restaurant and the other side wouldn’t get an explanation until they were halfway through the dish. Also for the sake pairing, they often didn’t tell us which type of sake we were being served, we were just told the name.
Overall, this felt like a restaurant that was obsessed with itself. When we first arrived we were told we were being served special water that only the finest restaurants in Japan use. This is because the pH is allegedly attuned to the human body. The chef said they use this water for their ramen because it provides a better mouthfeel. However, when we had the ramen, it was clear that there was very little collagen in the broth which is one of the most critical elements to building a soup with a good mouthfeel. We asked if the soup used chicken feet (for collagen) and the chef said no and said he prefers no chicken feet and they are too expensive. But he mentioned to the diners multiple times that evening how much money they are willing to spend on ingredients to produce the best ramen. But chicken feet are too expensive? Additionally, he claimed that very few ramen shops in Japan are able to produce ramen with as high quality ingredients as his. This felt quite arrogant and untrue. Ultimately, the ramen was thin, one dimensional in flavor, and was under seasoned. Although it was a point of pride for them that they don’t use MSG, I think the ramen would have benefitted from it or they should have doubled the amount of tare used because the tare was virtually undetectable. Also I reject the notion that using MSG is a shortcut and don’t understand the bias against it. I love delicate shio and shoyu broths but this broth was bland and lacked body. Additionally, they used thicker noodles which did not hold the soup well. This was a strange choice considering they are intentionally not making thin broth with little collagen. A thinner noodle would have held onto this type of soup much better.
For nearly $400 a person I was pretty disappointed. I respect that they care about their food and put time and effort into it but the results were really lacking, in my opinion.
Hopefully I don’t get roasted for this opinion. I’m not trying to throw shade but I just think it wasn’t worth the price or the struggle to get a reservation. I am willing to pay for an expensive bowl of ramen but in this case, you can get much better ramen than this for much much cheaper. A positive I will say is the people assisting the chef in the kitchen were great and very focused.
by nostalgists_