I first heard the name Restaurant Narisawa a long time ago, but I never felt a strong urge to go. It’s not bad value for the price, but if you only tried to hit the must-visit special restaurants (Quintessence and so on), you’d have to go out every day for a whole month. Still, thanks to all the diligent back-and-forth trips to Tokyo to eat at restaurants, I’ve finally reached the level of thinking “well, maybe I’ll give Narisawa a try -_-“. In a way this is a curious place. It was famous from the day it opened because of the chef’s reputation, but its popularity has only kept climbing as time went on. It must have some trick up its sleeve. A place like Koji Shimomura is another one I should watch for a few years and go to if it seems to be doing well. There are just way too many restaurants to try in Tokyo.
The entrance
It’s a short walk from Aoyama-itchome Station. The sign isn’t flashy, so you might get lost. I went straight there using the Tabelog app, though.
Once we sat down, they showed us a simple menu. The sommelier explained that this season’s food theme was “living together with the forest.”
And so, the first dish to come out was…
Freshly dug radish
A dish staging a just-pulled carrot or radish. I couldn’t help being blown away by how creative it was. The stuff that looks like soil is apparently ground black olives. It just tastes like a turnip, and you eat it whole. But compared with the near-perfect presentation, the flavour was fairly ordinary.
Britto with onion
It looks like songpyeon (Korean rice cake), with a single piece of onion inside. The onion is really sweet. It genuinely felt like eating something picked up in the forest.
Green asparagus from Furano, Hokkaido, fruit tomato from Tokutani, Kochi Prefecture, and cured ham
The flowers are edible, so you can just eat them. It’s hidden and hard to see, but the cooking of the giant asparagus was a work of art. Overall, though, the presentation felt excessive compared with the flavour. This time it was just us guys, so it wasn’t that much fun -_- but if you came here on a date with a woman, it would go down extremely well…
Butter
The butter comes in a flowerpot that looks straight out of Plants vs. Zombies. Look closely and there’s even a sprout, so it was a 100% match… Scoop in with the butter knife and there’s butter under olive “soil.”
Bread
The bread comes on a wooden log board too. The forest theme is over the top. I really love it. The bread was of a very high standard as well.
Today’s white wine
Looks like Errázuriz has a single-vineyard wine too. Summer really calls for white.
A nice cold toast~
I was surprised at how good the quality was.
Suzuki (Japanese sea bass) and junsai
Suzuki and junsai are the signature dishes of the Japanese summer. Maybe that’s why I ate so much of them on this trip (that’s actually the problem with doing a run of fine-dining restaurants… though the ingredients may be the same, every place cooks them differently, so there’s some fun in enjoying that too). The cooking wasn’t up to Quintessence -_-, but it was still excellent.
Free-range Kagoshima pork steak
The pork itself tasted just so-so. The quality was good, it was well seasoned and nicely cooked, but it didn’t feel special. The vegetables, on the other hand, were really good. And so the main course wrapped up on a light note.
A dessert from Okinawa, where it’s always summer
Coconut-based, with a variety of ingredients from Okinawa. I can’t give it a very high score, but I’d have to say it was pretty decent.
After the dessert of the day, the dessert cart comes round.
If it had stopped at what came out so far, it wouldn’t have strayed far from the category of a very ordinary restaurant, but once the dessert cart arrives, my satisfaction and goodwill shoot right up.
Ah… which of these am I supposed to pick…
It’s genuinely hard. Of course you can eat them all if you want, but you get full and there’s a limit to how much you can taste, so you have to choose just a few. If you want to conquer the whole menu, the only way is to come to this restaurant often.
This is my selection.
The rest were good too, but the port wine jelly dessert in the glass was the tastiest.
Herbal tea
Macarons
I spent ages agonising over which of all these macarons to eat, and they just left a whole row for us… I couldn’t eat them all, so I picked just three. I really got to eat as much dessert as I wanted… Leaving aside the absolute flavour, I think there are very few restaurants that serve this much at this price. I felt I understood the secret of its popularity. Women in particular would love it. By my standards I’m definitely never coming back with a guy, and the next time I have a date, I’ll probably come here. It would be especially fun around events like Christmas or Valentine’s Day.
A Tesla I snapped on the street
It’s Aoyama, so they have cars like this on display. It’s my dream car. Someday, if I make a lot of money in this industry, I’d love to buy one of these… For now I’ll have to keep taking the bus…