tokyo food file

Dosa dinner @ Nirvanam in Kamiyacho

Does Nirvanam serve the very best Indian food in Tokyo? Well it's definitely up there, especially if you like those aromatic South Indian flavours as much as I do. The full story was in my Japan Times column yesterday, along with some excellent photos by the JT cameraman (thanks, Miura-san!). Here are a few of my rather grainier images from a light dinner there last week.

Starting with the Set Dosa, a tray with two thick fluffy rice-flour "hotcakes" with great dips to go with them.

 

Think of the parippu vada as crisper, slightly larger versions of falafels, except they're made with yellow split peas rather than chickpeas. And they come with a delicate minty-yogurt sauce (rather than tahini). A bit dry on their own, but just right with a Kingfisher beer or two.

 

The Roast Fish is one of our favourites. As described, the chunks of whitemeat fish are coated in a spicy marinade, then cooked and served with a sauce well spiced with plenty of small, fiery red chilies and other aromatics, along with fresh green kari leaf and a good sprinkling of cashew nuts.

 

The main event for us that evening was an excellent mutton curry in the Andhra Pradesh style...

…which went perfectly with the string hoppers.

 

The desserts are (apart from the "mango delight") just as authentic — this one below is the payasam. Mind you, the chai is so teeth-achingly sugared up you really don't need anything else sweet. 

  

 

The Nirvanam home page is here... Curiously though, although it has maps to both its branches, I couldn't see a phone number anywhere. It is: (03) 3433-1217.

It's definitely a good idea to phone ahead. And even if they say they're fully booked, they usually have some tables open at the beginning of the evening (say, until 8 pm).

Dinner at L'As — our first visit

Over a 6-week period ahead of my column coming out, we ate at L'As three times in close succession. Each meal was almost entirely different. Here are some of the highlights from the first of those meals — the one that convinced me that here was a restaurant that was not just great but outstanding.

Starting with the home-made mozzarella. Just two little blobs, an amuse bouche, but so so fresh and creamy and flavourful. We could tell: here's a chef who is plenty creative in his kitchen.

  

Next the asparagus, packed full of umami from the strained green tomato juice it was cooked in, and arranged with garden herbs (basil, wild cress, chickweed) and petals (heartsease).

Then a deep rich bisque, served with an aromatic sprinkle reminiscent of ras al hanout, and crisp croutons made from baguettes fine-sliced lengthways.

The fish course: salmon with fresh-season broad beans and garden peas, and scattered with shiso sprouts.

So good it deserves a close-up...

And as the meat course, a roulade of rabbit on mushrooms in a dense red wine jus.

Pre-dessert: tomatoes of three different hues, blanched and peeled and served in a basil-infused liquor. Add a few drops of extra-virgin oil and you have a delectable sweet-tart palate-priming drinkable salad...

Then the main dessert, nothing too heavy or overly-sweet...

Under the crisp nutty "brandysnap" was honeycomb encased in dark chocolate. Wicked.

To round off the meal, a lovely digestif of honey-sweet Pineau de Charentes.

Even the tea at the end was just right: instead of just dunking a teabag in hot water and hoping for the best, we noticed they timed the infusion carefully and chef Kaneko himself checked the strength and taste.

Bravo! Before we left, we booked ourselves in for another meal a week or so later.

In case you missed the previous posts, the L'As web site is here...

code kurkku: Kyoto-Italian in Yoyogi Village

Arriving at code kurkku in the evening, through the cluster of converted freight containers that constitute Yoyogi Village, is pretty memorable, with that living wall of vegetation glowing through the massive picture window.

It's very easy on the eye in the daytime too...

The lobby leads past the gleaming open kitchen, with the chefs in their well-worn white baseball caps...

The dining room has a nice simple spacious feel, the height of the ceiling moderated by the random clusters of lights hanging overhead.

As I wrote in my Japan Times column last week, we had the upper of the two set lunch menus (¥5,000), which started with this excellent "cigar" of anago wrapped in filo pastry and deep-fried till crisp. This was draped over a fragrant asari-jiru, a clear broth derived from clams, containing plenty of mitsuba herb and a soft, freshly poached egg prepared in onsen tamago style. That's sansho scattered around the rim of the bowl, lending its distinctive aromatic presence without dominating the flavors in the mouth.

The antipasto was buri yellowtail, the slices lightly seared in tataki style, just enough to whiten their exterior but still sashimi-rare inside. These were paired with thin slices of apple and a small mound of mustard leaf salad topped with a white foam (also with a faint apple perfume), and served on a delectable sauce of grated raw apple mixed with daikon oroshi (from tangy karami-daikon), further spiced up with red peppercorns.

Spaghettini tossed with spring nanohana greens and plump, pink ama-ebi shrimps so lightly cooked they were almost raw, it was scattered with bright yellow bottarga and just a hint of tōgarashi chili. Bursting with understated flavor, this more than anything else on the menu gives meaning to the term Kyoto-Italian cuisine.

The main course: fricassee of Iwate free-range jidori, rolled and pan-fried, then finally seared in the oven over sumi charcoal to give it a lovely golden skin. Carefully arranged on the plate with a colorful selection of vegetables — potato, button mushrooms, yellow squash, Brussels sprout leaves and scarlet kyō-ninjin carrots — it came with a swoosh of pureed broccoli and a creamy vegetable-based sauce that was remarkably rich and satisfying for something containing no butter or dairy.

Dessert (hers): matcha tiramisu, with hojicha ice cream.

Dessert (his): panna cotta packed with espresso, sozzled with a dark, boozy caramel sauce and topped with a simple milk gelato.

The verdict: excellent. and a beautiful example of the evolving genre that has come to be called Kyoto-Italian. Just as we had expected, given the involvement (as executive chef) of Yasuhiro Sasajima of Il Ghiottone fame. Not quite up there on the same level as at his main Kyoto restaurant, but certainly as fine and inventive (and beautiful) as when we ate at Il Ghiottone Cucineria, Sasajima's more casual second restaurant.

OK, the view from the dining room is not as spectacular — Cucineria sits on the bank of the Kamogawa river in Kyoto. But screen out the looming Docomo high-rise and that exotic garden is still quite something for Tokyo.

In fact, illuminated at night, it's quite atmospheric.

I wrote up the original kurkku kitchen restaurant when it first opened. I haven't been back for a couple of years now, but I still hear great reports, especially of the café.

The web site for Yoyogi VIllage/code kurkku is here...

obento and tai-chazuke, refinement and satisfaction – a long, leisurely kaiseki lunch at Uchiyama in Ginza

Uchiyama in Ginza, as introduced in my Japan Times column on Friday, looks inscrutably nondescript at street level. The only signs advertising its presence are a simple nameplate hidden on the inside of the doorway, a small andon lantern at ankle level, and a steep flight of stairs to the basement. Don't be deterred.

  

Once you get down those stairs, it looks a whole lot more interesting. A strange altar — part Buddhist, part something else — stands just inside the front door. And right in front of you there's a simple whitewashed wall sliced through by a narrow horizontal slit, offering a glimpse of the interior.

  

The massive timber counter has room for 11 comfortable armchairs with plenty of elbowroom. It's a nice relaxed space with beautiful panels of wood burnished with Wajima urushi lacquer. And set into the opposite wall a long low alcove acts like a tokonoma, displaying a simple flower arrangement that changes with the seasons and the kitchen deities (which don't).

These photos date back to a lunch I had there back in early summer last year, when the weather was already more than warm. I settled in with a beer and watched the chefs at work while waiting for my bento lunch to arrive...

I ordered the ¥3,500 menu. Besides the bento-bako itself — a beautiful lacquered box with a lid of plain kiri wood — and the accompanying suimono soup, there were two small starters: a small serving of madai (snapper) and salmon prepared as nanbanzuke; and another of the house specialities, yaki-goma-dofu.

Although goma-dofu is a standard both in shojin temple cuisine and cha-kaiseki (as espoused by Uchiyama), this is the only place I have ever come across where it is prepared this way, grilled on the outside to create a skin that's firm, almost leathery, enclosing the delicate smooth sesame custard inside.

The bento-bako contained a lovely array of tidbits. Cooked morsels of seafood, meat, vegetables, egg; "a chef's tasting menu in an elegant lacquerware box."

The suimono soup was a wonderful fragrant deeply translucent clear broth, containing a slice of togan (winter melon) and a couple of little yuba pouches.

Once the bento-bako was finished — a most pleasurable half an hour or more of nibbling, enhanced by a flask of reishu (chilled sake) — it was time for Uchiyama's signature dish, the tai-chazuke.

The fillets of the fresh madai are sliced to order, and served in a shallow bowl filled with goma-dare, a thick sauce of creamed sesame seasoned with dashi fish stock and soy sauce. First you try the raw fish as sashimi, the richness of the dark-brown sesame sauce cut by the wasabi and the sweet neutrality of the rice. 

Next you place the remaining cuts of fish on top of the rice and drench it all with piping-hot rokucha tea. Blanched this way, the fish turns soft and white, crumbling into the now-soupy rice. Delectable.

To wrap up the meal, a small dessert is served with tea. On this occasion, a soymilk gelato prepared in-house...

I lingered a while, watching the chefs at work some more, then made my way back up those stairs and out onto the street. A very fine 90 minutes at table. No surprise here that Uchiyama has won a Michelin star for the last couple of years.

Here's a link to Uchiyama's web site...

And here's a map lnk...

beef pie for lunch

Lunch today at the Margaret Howell Cafe, in Shibuya.

To be precise: that's a small bowl of pumpkin soup, garnished with grated cheddar and chopped negi scallions...

... and a very tasty beef pie...

Nice chunks of lean beef with cubes of spud and carrot, in just enough gravy to keep it all moist and topped with an excellent light pastry. Crisped in the oven just before being served piping hot, it came with a handful of salad greens and a good dressing of finely chopped parsley.

The tea (Yorkshire Breakfast) was included in the set meal — and bonus points for serving the milk cold; the dessert, a slice of ginger cake with fresh cream, was an extra ¥200.

I've mentioned this place before as one of my favourite oases in Shibuya, up behind the Tobacco and Salt Museum, off Koen-dori.

At this time of year it's way too chilly to sit at the outdoors tables — even with the spiffy red blankets provided. But indoors is always nice too, especially if the young ladies in the kitchen are perfuming the premises with the aroma of spicy ginger cake, as they were today...

Here's a map link…