tokyo food file

asparagus and seasonal vegetables

Somewhere at the confluence of nikogori and aspic lies this vegetable kanten creation.

 

The full name was "asparagus and colourful vegetables set in jelly". 

An excellent cooling summer appetizer. 

Chef Thierry Marx: fine modernist cuisine @ K'shiki

Thierry Marx is in town. And he's brought his chopsticks with him.

This week — through Sunday (the 23rd)  — the Parisian chef is preparing a selection of the dishes that have propelled his double-Michelin-starred restaurant, Sur Mesure inside the Mandarin Oriental Paris, to the centre of the gastronomic map of the French capital.

Despite his long connection with Japan — first through his life-long practice of judo, then through his deep passion for Japanese cuisine — Marx is not a well known name here. That deserves to change. He is one of the new generation of chefs who have brought modernist techniques and an acceptance of other countries' cuisines into the Michelin mainstream. Not without attracting criticism from the old guard, but effectively silencing the naysayers through the quality of his cooking.

Since I'm not planning to be in Paris for the foreseeable future — though actually, these days the foreseeable is never too distant — this was far too good an opportunity to miss. So I made my way up to Restaurant K'shiki, on the 38th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Nihonbashi, intrigued to see how dinner was.

The answer: very good indeed. This was how it unfolded…

 

• the setting: K'shiki is nice, serious but not too plush, with a great view out of those floor-to-ceiling windows towards the evening light over the western hills.

 

• the appetizer: a light mousse of nishin (herring) blended with fine-diced apple and onion and lightly crunchy pink tobiko roe, topped with a sorbet of smoked herring (kunsei), served with a "crouton" wafer.

This was a great way to open dinner, with just enough umami and saltiness to prime the taste buds. Really good.

 

• the starter: "tube pizza" w/ stalk caper 

 A crisp roll of pie crust filled with diced fresh tomato and parmesan-infused cream, with a sprinkle of tapenade powder. Simple and yet complex, with all the flavors combining beautifully. The caper with its long tail made a nice sharp closing counterpoint.

 

• the 2nd starter: yari-ika (squid) and asparagus. The centerpiece was the croustillant, a  battered/deep-fried cube of creamy squid mousse, served with white asparagus coated with squid ink; a line of yari-ika powder reminiscent (in flavour) of the cuttlefish snacks served with beer at Japanese seaside resorts; with yari-ika emulsion; foam of the same squid with lemon zest; and a dainty blob of red chili sauce providing a counterpoint of both colour and flavour.

 

• the fish course: hirame (turbot / flounder); caramelized onion; cauliflower puree; and citron sauce.

The fish, shipped down from Aomori, was perfectly tender but firm, with none of the flabbiness I associate with sous-vide cooking. The sheet of caramelized onion had a vinegar tartness to balance the sweetness; the cauliflower also had a tartness, but from citrus; and the sauce was introduced as being made with natsu-mikan, but I'd go with the French description, citron cédrat.

Unfortunately, the light was fading badly by now. And while the semi-darkness of the K'shiki dining room makes for intimacy, it does not favour photography. My photo just doesn't do the dish justice, so underneath I've added one of the press release pictures.

 

• boeuf charbon; chickpea; aubergine gnocchi; chard emulsion; chickpea purée; aka-miso sauce.

The centerpiece of the final main dish was Kagoshima wagyu, cooked (again sous vide; again with expertise) to a perfect texture and coated with a black "char" of eggplant and squid ink. Inside the crisp exterior of the chickpea croquettes there was a delectable puree that was aromatic with cumin and coriander. The gnocchi were prepared from pureed aubergine/eggplant encased in a skin of membrane thinness. And the red-miso sauce had a depth of umami richness, with just the slightest hint of fermentation, that was outstanding.

 

• the first dessert: Saint-Honoré with caramelized profiteroles so sweet they could not be balanced by the citrus ice cream. (another "official" photo as mine were too washed out)…

 

• the 2nd dessert: Miroir cassis.

This one really hit the spot and left all the right lingering notes in the mouth: dark rich cassis on a bed of pannacotta; a blackcurrant milk chocolate ball; spheroids of liquid cassis; lemongrass foam. 

 

And that — apart from the coffee and petit fours (which were not from Paris) — was it. Not a major tasting menu of complexity, but skillfully woven classic yet modernist gastronomy accented with subtle surprises.  

As I said before, very good indeed. In fact, highly recommended.

Full details of the menu are on the K'shiki website here…

 

Sayonara to Le Dessin. Many thanks, Chef Masuda.

It's always sad to say goodbye to a favourite restaurant — even one that I never got to visit as often as I'd have liked.

But that was always one of the things about Le Dessin that made it so special: Chef Toshiaki Masuda always followed his own muse — including his choice of location, far away from the mainstream, in Ushigome-Yanagicho.

There's little to add to my review some three years ago. We had one last excellent meal there last weekend. And now Le Dessin is closed and Masuda-san is off, back to his home town of Shimada in Shizuoka-ken. Where he's going to be opening another little restaurant — not French this time, but ramen. And why not? You just know it's going to be good.

So… many thanks to Chef and Mrs. Masuda: goodbye, good luck, and all the best in the future!

The Japan Times seems to have lost all the photos that went with my column. I'll have to dig them out from the vaults, if only to remind myself of how well we ate there. Stay tuned…

Katsuzen: gourmet delicacy, not gourmand grub

A few more images of the excellent Katsuzen in Ginza, home to some of the most refined tonkatsu and ebi-fry in the land. Starting with the inscrutable entrance, with its noren of coarse-woven cotton...

 

Sure you are there for the breaded/deep-fried pork cutlets or the wonderfully deluxe ebi-fry (as previewed yesterday). But as soon as you're seated you'll find there's plenty more besides.  

Starting with the selection of delicate zensai appetizers...

 

 

And the vegetable dishes. There can't be any tonkatsu joint in town to rival Katsuzen in this department. In winter they will feature a variety of roots, tubers and squashes — there were a score of more different types in this dish...

 

Now the weather is warming up, there are lighter items on the menu — including three different preparations of eggplant — and other summer vegetables.

And some great salads, like this fruit tomato which was diced and put back together again on a bed of cucumber, radish and onion, then crowned with kuzukiri cellophane noodles with shredded shiso leaf.

 

The cooked side dishes are every bit as good. Don't miss the jumbo-sized deep-fried spring rolls stuffed full with crab meat.

 

Or the that ebi-fry, which comes with an excellent home-made tartar sauce. 

 

But even with all this sideshow, really it's all about the tonkatsu. It's as good as it looks, cooked so well it barely needs any extra seasoning apart from the wedge of lemon.

As usual, you choose between rosu and hire (fatty or lean) meat. I've had both and they're both great. This one (below) is the rosu. Yes it's plenty rich: that's the name of the game with tonkatsu. But the flavour balances so well with the fat that it goes down really easily.

 

Try it on its own first; then with the lemon; and then with the sauce. There are two of them:the Worcestershire-style tonkatsu sauce, and the home-made miso-garlic sauce, they're so umami-savoury you're tempted to ladle them on regardless.

And here's the hire…

This is what the lean hire looks like… The meat is juicy and flavourful. The breadcrumbs are thin, crisp and hardly greasy at all. And the cabbage (organically grown when possible) is shredded finely, and garnished with a little red cabbage and carrot to give it some extra colour tones.

 

And what goes best with it in terms of drink, if you're settling in for the duration? There are several good junmai sake to choose from. There's wine, too. And cocktails.

But it's the shochu selection that really seems to suit this food best. The ceramic kame in the middle is really just for show: Although it's always nice to see if being ladled out, actually it's filled from the same isshobin magnums that adorn the counter. 

 

Here are a couple I can vouchsafe:

  

That's the Hama-chidori in the tumbler at the back, and the Dabada in the ornate little cup at the front...

 

Kampai! And thank-you to Nagai-san and all the family.

 

The full story can be found on The Japan Times website here…

 

ebi-fry with upmarket aspirations

Sashimi-fresh kuruma-ebi tiger prawn… Green asparagus wrapped in premium ham… A flask of crisp junmai sake…

Michelin-quality ebi-fry? You better believe it.

All will be revealed — in my Japan Times column tomorrow.

And now there it is, up online here…