Eating Our Way Through Tokyo: Our Best Food Day Ever

It’s over.  Tokyo has ruined us.  The food was already amazing in other parts of Asia…and then we had our best food day ever.

We knew we wanted to eat sushi in Tokyo, so our friend Adam told us to check out Kyubei in the Ginza district.  It wasn’t going to be cheap, but we didn’t care.  Incidentally, he had mentioned another sushi restaurant that cost $350/head!  Can you believe that?  Sushi for $350 per person?  And apparently you’re out of there in 30 minutes.  Fortunately, Kyubei was not that.

Anyway, Kyubei is located in a narrow side street in a non-descript building…

Inside, it’s tiny – at most, it seats 15 people.  It’s a very traditional sushi bar filled with locals.  We had to wait upstairs for about 20 minutes before we were called to our seats at the counter.

When the waiter asks what we wanted, we both said one word in unison: “omakase.”  For those not familiar with the term, it literally means “it’s up to you” but is a phrase used in restaurants to signify “chef’s choice”.

We embarked on what we later counted to be a 14-course meal of sushi, sashimi, rolls, soup, and dessert.   You could really taste the difference in the quality of the fish!  The shrimps pictured below are still breathing – one even flicked itself off the plate!

But that wasn’t the only difference.  The service here was really great.  In addition to asking what you didn’t eat, they also asked how much rice you wanted on each sushi piece, whether you wanted salt or soy sauce, or whether you wanted a certain fish raw or cooked. And the green tea was always replaced regularly to make sure it was hot.

Back to the meal…

Uni (sea urchin).   The quality varies a lot and I think that’s why some people won’t go near it.    You’ll see in a future post on our visit to the Tsukiji market, that there are several different grades of uni with a huge price differential.  The lower quality stuff, we feel, has a strong chemical aftertaste and it’s really quite off-putting – you know it as soon as you put it in your mouth.  The high quality uni has no aftertaste at all.  It has a soft slightly salty creaminess to it… really really good!  Our sushi chef makes our uni…

Ark shell clam – quite nice and not something we’ve had in the states.

And by the time we reached our second to last course, we were already full, but out came more – rolls and Japanese sweet egg omelette.

And then you had a choice of homemade mochi or sweet pear.  We opted for the mochi and it was delicious as well.

We left Kyubei thinking we had just had one of the best sushi experiences in our lives and decided to just spend the rest of the day wandering and shopping in the Harajuku area.

But then dinner time rolled around.  Tony had read about a place called “Agaru Sagaru Nishi-Iru Higashi-Iru” – it’s a mouthful isn’t it?  The restaurant served “kaiseki” which is supposed to be a formal multi-course Kyoto cuisine, but the style of this place was more casual and modern.  The restaurant was actually below ground – and looked like a cave.

Like many other restaurants in Tokyo, the chef and staff prepare the food right in front of the patrons, so we made sure to sit at the counter so we could have the best view.  We had never had a kaiseki-style meal before but knew we were in for a treat when we found out what it is…  Kaiseki is a multi-course menu that follows a traditional sequence of preparation styles.  As each dish arrives the waiter provides detailed explanations of the many seasonal ingredients incorporated therein, right down to the origins of the miso paste and seasonings.  Alas in our case, we were foiled by language issues, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying what is probably our best dinner ever!   Both the presentation and the flavor were beautiful!

Because it was so perfect from the first drink to the last bite of dessert, we present you, our best dinner ever.  First up, the sake.  As is common in Japan, we got to choose our own sake glasses.  Note how each glass is unique. Love it!

Course #1: Steamed Egg with a spinach puree, topped with salmon roe and served in a hollowed out lemon.  Note that each course is presented in a different plate.  The array of plates and bowls used was beautiful!

Course #2: 4 yummy goodies – one is tuna, one is a daikon radish, one we are not sure about… but our favorite was a tuna casserole covered in small seeds.

Course 3:  Lotus root with fried sardine, minced carrots and a sauteed green veggie served in a broth

Course 4:  Sashimi with tempura crumbs.

Course 5:  Grilled mushroom sushi with seared fish.

Course 6:  Fried potato with fried fish skin.  We don’t know what the rest was, but it was yummy!

Course 7:  Palate cleanser.  Vanilla sorbet with a sour plum sauce topped with pomegranates

Course 8:  Fish and seaweed rice with miso soup.

Course 9:  Dessert!  Four kinds.

Last drink:  A glass of Yamazaki 12 year old single-malt whiskey.  They served it using a perfectly square ice cube.  What a perfect way to end the perfect meal!

And so folks, this is why we are ruined!   This is a day that we will remember always  as our best food day ever (at least until the next time we are in Tokyo!).