Matchazuke from Karafuru Desserts – matcha soufflé, vanilla pudding, jasmine crème anglaise, mizu-yokan, dango, matcha langue de chat. The pound cake-esque matcha cake, intensely flavoured cat’s tongue (or long du shah if you’re all posh) and matcha sauce certainly put the matcha in this Matchazuke. However, the yogurt swirl (which…
Kaisendon (Deluxe) set from Ken Japanish Restaurant. From the urghsome half-cooked egg that straddled the texture between half-boiled egg and cooked egg for Maggi Mee, to the two octopus sashimi slices which were so unmanageable that I felt like that guy in Korean thriller Oldboy having to swallow the gooey…
Special Tendon from Ginza Tendon Itsuki – onsen egg, shrimp, chicken and mixed vegetable tempura (shiitake mushroom, pumpkin, corn and long beans) on rice drizzled with a sweet and savoury sauce. The onsen egg provided surprise and amusement and the various tempura elements were lightly battered and suitably pleasurable –…
Melon Snow Milk Bingsu from Snowman Desserts. Despite the visual distractions offered by the veiny green dress, the Marge Simpson hairdo and the admittedly entertaining juggling of orange balls, inevitable is the realisation that the so-named snow milk ice that lies beneath has as much personality as those fake accounts…
Mizu Manjyu (water dumplings) from Hashida Garo – 3 balls of white bean paste and seasonal fruit enclosed in arrowroot jelly, soaked in chilled mint syrup. The dumplings start off tasting like your usual Konnyaku jelly (our seasonal fruit was mango) but sheds its skin and reveals its inner starchy personality…
Foie Gras Macaron from Hashida Garo. Essentially like Little Red Riding Hood’s granny, looking all innocent and come-hither-to-my-(sick)bed with its soft macaron shell and insouciant red dustings before revealing its true grey form and completely taking control of your senses with its heavy-creamed, ferociously savoury fangs. 3.8/5 Hashida Garo 333A…
Mitzo special barbecued pork. The skin of this amazing piggylicious delight must have been separated at birth from crème brûlée. I doodled a diagram in my notes whilst eating this – it was a circle labelled “middle” within a box with area outside the circle shaded and labelled “melts in…
Black Truffle Edamame from Kanshoku Ramen. An experience in itself – you access the little soybeans by sucking on them pods, which are so immersed in truffle flavour that the normally tasteless soybeans themselves become unescapably tasty by virtue of your mouth becoming an intermediary truffle oiling agent. Somebody should…
Hotate Mentai from Kinsa Sushi – crabmeat and cucumber maki topped with aburi scallop mentai, garnished with wasabi-seasoned prawn roe and deep fried radish. The emerald roe may have stepped out of the machine during the infusion process thus bearing only the slightest of wasabi perfume, but the aburi scallop…