Anyone with an interest in food will know this restaurant. It has two Michelin stars and was ranked number one in the 2022 edition of Asia's 50 Best. It is also a regular in the World's 50 Best (ranked 2021th in the 11 edition) and has previously received the Art of Hospitality Award (2017 edition).

What can be said now about this place that has been talked about so much? It's a difficult question.

No matter how many accolades Den receives, the way Chef Hasegawa Zaiyu operates the restaurant remains unchanged. The entire staff works together to make the guests feel as comfortable as possible. The head of the restaurant is the proprietress, Hasegawa Emi (his wife), and in 2023 Michelin awarded Emi personally with a service award. This is truly a case of service that has been recognized worldwide.

Most of the customers seem to be repeat customers, and nearly half are foreigners, but every time a familiar face comes in, Hasegawa is busy greeting them with hugs and handshakes. In a way, this is a very rare restaurant. Just this before the meal begins will make customers want to come back again and again.

Mr. Hasegawa calls the food at this restaurant "home cooking." If so, it must be the best home cooking in Asia. Let me introduce some of the home cooking here.

An unforgettable "Steamed egg custard with grated whitefish milt"

First, the all-too-famous "Den Monaka" appears. When you open the bag, you'll see a monaka, but inside is foie gras marinated in miso. Of course, this isn't a dessert, so I hope you can sense the humor in it.

The French ingredient foie gras does not often come up in the context of Japanese cuisine. However, here the foie gras is transformed by being marinated in a miso paste. It is paired with kneaded dried persimmon and finely chopped smoked daikon radish. The ingredients paired with the foie gras change depending on the season, but the combination of rich liver and the sweetness of dried persimmon is excellent. The occasional crunchy dried radish is also good.

The monaka shell allows you to hold the foie gras in your hands and bite into it bit by bit. In that sense, it is a revolutionary idea. Since Den released his recipe for monaka over 10 years ago, it seems like the number of dishes imitating monaka has increased.

The next dish is chawanmushi with grated whitebait, which is something you'll want to eat again just thinking about it.

This has a two-layer structure, with the upper half being milt and the coagulated egg liquid hidden in the lower half. There are many chawanmushi that contain milt in its original form, but what's great about this dish is that the milt is simply grated. If you explain what milt is, you'll find that it's testicles, so I'm sure many foreigners will be put off by the explanation, and some Japanese people don't like it. However, by eliminating the shape in this way, more people will be able to eat it. It shows love for the ingredients and Japanese cuisine, and consideration for the guests.

First, you get to taste the rich flavor of the milt directly. It's smooth, melting away in your mouth. The solidified egg liquid hidden in the bottom half is flavored with bonito stock. It's also unusual for chawanmushi to have no solid ingredients. The two soft, jiggly layers are mixed together and eaten wonderfully. Incidentally, the bonito flakes are made from line-caught bonito and imported from Kyushu. The stock is also made using water used to make Kirinzan sake from Niigata. So there is a reason for the deep, rich aroma and flavor.

"The Scene in the Field" is a masterpiece in salad history.

The sashimi on this day was tilefish. The tilefish had been left to sit for a few days, increasing the amount of inosinic acid, giving it a rich, sticky flavor. I always pair my sashimi with nori sauce and wasabi. The key is that they use homemade nori tsukudani, which goes perfectly with sashimi. My mouth waters as soon as I eat it. Even now, a week later, the excitement of having eaten the sashimi is still in my mouth.

I think salads are the most difficult type of cuisine to make. No matter how high-quality each raw vegetable is, just combining them and adding dressing will never make an amazing salad.

The signature dish, "Field View," is a salad that makes you feel elated as you eat it. According to Hasegawa, the salad is made from vegetables sent by producers, so the vegetables used change each day. Sometimes strawberries are used.

Each vegetable is seasoned differently. The smiling carrots are pickled, the onions are tempura, the tomatoes are marinated in vanilla beans, and the burdock is deep-fried. The image is of a stewed dish. The endive and other leafy vegetables are not dressed. They are only seasoned with salted kelp and light sesame oil, but it's amazing! The texture and flavor change one after another, making it really fun. You'll find yourself smiling just like the carrots. All things considered, this is a masterpiece that will remain in the history of salads.

You can decide what to pair with the sake by talking with the proprietress.

In fact, something memorable happened around the time I was eating this salad. I won't go into details, but there was a scene where Hasegawa and a child of a regular customer's family made a mistake. Then, with a smile on his face, without a moment's hesitation, Hasegawa comforted and encouraged the child by saying, "Failure is also a part of learning."

It was just like a scene from within a home, and I felt that Hasegawa was truly sincere when he said he wanted guests to "think of this restaurant as their own home."

The final dish, "Shirasu rice," was also good. The shirasu were the biggest of the bunch, but they were deliberately cooked in an oily sauce. The red miso soup and pickled vegetables were delicious.

A notable feature of the service was the lack of a beverage menu. What you want to drink is decided through conversation with the hostess. As a result, the sparkling drink was Italian Franciacorta Monogram Dosage Zero, and in response to a request for a sake with a good balance of spiciness and sweetness, the drink was Ippakusuisen Junmai Ginjo. Both were excellent choices.

The total price for two glasses of Franciacorta, one glass of sake, one bottle of soda water, and the nine dishes ranked number one in Asia was so low that it seemed as if the prices were deliberately kept low. It was a remarkable low price among the entire list of Asia's 50 best restaurants. This was the chef's conscience.

傳

Address: 2-3-18 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo Architects' Association Hall JIA Hall
TEL: (+03)6455-5433-XNUMX
Opening hours: 18: 00 to 23: 30
Regular holiday: Sundays and public holidays