Ryugin , Roppongi

Was expecting my last michelin dinner to be quite molecular, since i heard much about Seiji Yamamoto..2 stars michelin for this place. Service is ok.

Overall, all the dishes were very good.. no bad or normal dishes.. but all were more towards the traditional cooking side..  I will describe some dishes..

- Amuse bouche, Karasumi + Daikon &  Ankimo + Potato (1st pic) ( Best amuse in tokyo )

- Uni chawanmushi ( Best chawanmushi ever tasted)

- Sashimi Course ( Quite good, most of the sauces matches quite well with the sushi, also i think the squid was better than the rest i had at both sushi mizutani and saito.. )

- Wasanbon Icecream with some ancient curlded milk + matcha dusting. ( very good, im not really a fan of icecreams.. but this was good, tasted better than Henri LeRoux caramel icecream & Quintessense Salt water meringue ice cream.. )

- Sakura Ebi Gohan (  Comfort food and satisfying )

- Fish course ( Toasted rice on top of fish with silkscreened fish picture which is actually a sauce( abit weak in flavour) , Quintessense fish was better..

- Roasted Pigeon, overall was good, had apple and a pigeon hamburg.. , but didnt like the black truffle with mashed soybeans remainant..( taste abit like toilet leh)

 

Tokyo Eats : Firehouse Burger (Hongo Sanchome), Usagiya Ueno , Ponta Honke

Started my day by visiting akihabara to get to some IDORU event..Hehehe.. those kinda events that danny choo attends..

Walked to Hongo Sanchome to Firehouse to taste their Apple Burger..

geeky not bad looking waitress in the background serving the orders..

The apple burger is not bad, but the beef still lacks the really beefy taste.. but overall a good burger, american style.. clean and fresh!

Then proceeded to Ueno by foot, passing by University of Tokyo while walking there.. Hunted my next target which was Usagiya.. Asked for 1 dorayaki, shop attendant was suprised that i only asked for one..

I was a little bit underwhelmed on the first bite, but soon i discovered the subtleties in this dorayaki when i started to think abt other dorayaki i had before.. This dorayaki was indeed different, the filling(tsubu-an, non filtered red bean paste) and the cake(kasutera) binds together like one entity, a complete being instead of 2 seperate entities which is common in non artisanal dorayakis… So to say i began to like this very much and went back to the shop 5mins later if they had any more to offer.  Realised all the dorayakis were sold out! %#@! ..

So i got the Monaka..

Very good too… crisp light soft wafer with koshian(filtered red bean paste) ..I duno why japanese red bean tastes so nice, i dont really like those chinese red bean soup or dau sar pia… I think its because japanese use much more sugar than the chinese…

Had dinner at Ponta Honke, quite a famous tonkatsu restaurant. They fry their tonkatsu in pork lard in low temperatures.

Overall, quite a decent but not a life changing tonkatsu to me..Also quite expensive for tonkatsu (3000+ yen), their korokke is quite good thou.. very soft potatoes…

 

Napule, Omotesando

This place took me 2 trips to find it. AT first i thought they had closed down this and moved to some other place, and given the small lanes that the buildings had, i kept circling round and roun that freaking place, juz as i was about to give up to go to the train station(very near), i saw the landmark building that this restaurant was beside. So i found this small lane, which i wondered why i did not notice when i was walking pass like some freaking at least 10 times.

Before i went it , i said to myself, how good can a pizza get? thou i had some knowledge of neapolitan pizza, i figured it would be different from ur normal pizzas from spizza, valentino , or what else “pizzas” this places in singapore were creating.

Took a few pics before i started eating..Ordered the Magherita with bufala di mozzarella extra.. lunch set salad and coffee ( less than 2k yen, the salads are limpid thou)

Took my first bite, WTF! This is really nothing i had eaten before. This totally brought me to a new level that all the “pizzas” in Singapore are literally shit.  Thou the ingredients were good, but it did had some place for improvement, what really wowed me was the crust. This is NOTHING like the pizza u tasted anywhere, it was more remiscent of naan but much less greasy and it had a more crisp charred feel that could only be acheived by a very very hot oven.

The crust was very light, soft but had a very light crisp surface(just the surface not the entire crust) and easily digestable, almost every other seats could finish 1 whole pizza by themself .  You have to wait a while to get ur seats, this place is very packed.. u can see junichiro koizumi and some other pictures taken with the Head Pizzaiolo(Hisanori) .. Some more pics.. look its the man himself!

Please take a look at the videos and notice how he makes the pizza. Incredible speed and technique, not to mention the specially handmade neapolitan oven..

Note, they also have a branch at Midtown Tokyo, but of course not made by Hisanori, thou they still use the same equipments..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxwHDybbZi4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNiDsgb78T4

 

Hidemi Sugino, Toraya , Mizutani , Continued Part 2

Then headed to Hidemi Sugino for cakes. Again, u could go all the way there in the early morning to queue to get ur fix, but i went in the afternoon like 2 plus or 3, and they were still replenishing cakes. I saw the famed ambrosie that day but didnt get that coz im not a really big fan of chocolate, so i got this since im a sucker for strawberries, and framboise based patisserie..600+ yen for each cake.

Mervee

Upon tasting, u are transported to an astral plane, his cakes are something that you have never tasted before..They are not like the usual french gateaux or cakes which are mostly flour based, instead Hidemi Sugino cakes are mousse based and they are god damn light mousses with very sublime yet intense strawberry flavour(if i nv remember wrongly, this is a strawberry based mousse cake, with framboises and blueberries on top)! I suspect there might be a huge amount of gelatin in his mousses since they seemed to wobble and had a light bouncy effect, i may be wrong thou.. his cakes do stay in shape despite of the wobby and light structure..

Photography is also not allowed in there, so i secretly took pictures and thats how u get his cakes pictures floating around the net..

http://r.tabelog.com/tokyo/A1302/A130202/13002285/

Also had some seasonal namagashi and matcha at Toraya that day.. Around 1000 yen for the set.

霜紅梅, made with 求肥, 白飴(dont know what is it), some kind of pasty sweet filling inside.. very nice, the namagashi is also made perfectly.. u cant compare this with minamoto kitchoan( takashimya branch, some chains in other parts of the world). As the name suggests, this namagashi is molded in the likeness of snow falling on a japanese red apricot(紅梅).  Japanese sweets are much more sweeter than your usual ang ku kueh and chinese snacks which kinda dispels the fact(at least for me) that wagashi are usually very bland in tasting..

Dinner was Sushi Mizutani.. service was stern,  thou i did not really enjoy the whole dining environment( might be because of the beer and the very stress sort of feeling, since i was alone) . But that aside, i felt it was the technically the best sushi one could have..

His rice is something very different, u can feel each grain of rice in ur mouth with his sushi, he sort of also specialises in shellfishes( alot of shellfish sushi), but im not a shellfish expert to remember what each one tastes like, might be due to the beer or unwellness on my part..

His tamagoyaki is also the best, very moist, something between a custard and a cake( the exterior is very much like the exterior of a kueh lapis).. The fish are also very good, no hint of sinews in his ootoro, his uni very firm and buttery(best among all i had in my life) his anago tasting very much different from others(had a hint of unagi like taste and absolutely boneless), his prawn very sweet, thou i will add they are not Extremly extremly better or different from those u have from those top end sushi restaurants in singapore(nogawa, shiraishi, tatsuya etc)(maybe my tongue is not that subtle)  ..

i would say the top end singapore sushi shops might be 3 – 4 notches down.. they lose out on the rice( singapore sushi rice is too loose and not firm),  anago has soft bones in it, the white fishes(esp the sayori), the shellfishes maybe, the tuna may not be as good as those in japan( but i think this takes a real expert to tell),  and the tamagoyaki being the atsuyaki tamagoyaki type.. and the kuruma ebi( i dont think anyone in singapore is serving this, but im not really a big fan of prawn)

Damage 18k yen for dinner.. if i were to return i will go at lunch, maybe my tongue is better in picking up more subtle flavours at that time and i can have an excuse to skip the beer at lunch time, since Mizutani does not compromise on his quality of his fishes whether its lunch or dinner..