I wanted to book “Kikunoi Honten” however I did not managed to get a single-person seat there.
The booking agent suggested me “Roan Kikunoi”.
Roan Kikunoi locates in a very narrow road next to the river and a bridge.
The restaurant was half-full when I joined.
I got a counter seat.
The wall has an interesting writing of “風花雪月”.
There were many chefs working behind the counter and the back kitchen, all supervised by, I think, Yoshiharu Murata himself.
I requested the most experience set when booking, and the menu looked fun and nice.
Both the English and Japanese menus were printed in a very nice Japanese-style paper, which were a nice touch.
The first canapé “tea tofu” was a very Japanese start; in contrast to strong sour or sweet flavours, it a very fresh and tone-down flavours mixing of tea and bean.
It was of paste texture, which melted and spread in my mouth, rather than tofu-jelly texture.
The drizzle of flowers were fun, though did not added much to the taste.
Then it came to my absolutely favourite of the evening, “Sashimi of blue fin tuna with egg yolk sauce”.
The blue fin tuna itself tasted like butter with lovely fresh tuna taste of a good balance between the muscle and fat.
The light mustard interestingly served the some functionality as wasabi; I was surprised the use of mustard here.
The egg yolk sauce was amazing !
It mixed very well with creamy tuna and added a layer of saltiness over the relative plain-flavour tuna.
When I finished the tuna, the chef provided a small spoon for me to also finish all the sauce.
The first hot dish after the soup was “Grilled abalone with sea urchin”.
As a Chinese, Abolone (鮑) has a special place in the dinning table, because it is considered one of the expensive ingredient.
However, Abolone has a unique umami-based taste and a very solid yet chewy texture.
It is more like a plain but a very posh canvas.
The chef simply grilled it and paired with cooked sea urchin.
It was packed with umami yet nothing was really surprised.
The main dish of the night was “Shabu Shabu”, that is, a single person hotpot where you need to cook the food yourself in a hot soup.
The ingredients were slides wagyu beef (not a surprise), some leaves and mushrooms.
I was told do the leaves and mushrooms first then beef and then drink some soup.
It was entertaining, i.e., I had to cook myself, and the sesame and ponzu (citrus-based) sauces were nice, however, I was not impressed at all.
I should have mentioned the restaurant served dishes in a very fast pace, and I found it is a bit too rush. It was an interesting set of kaiseki where all the dishes had a great presentation, yet I think (1) it lacked of connection to the chefs when I seated in the counter, and more importantly (2) some dishes was a bit programmatic, exactly stereotype kaiseki. If I looked back, I would highly recommend the blue fin tuna with egg yolk sauce, which, I suspected, is a dish that has been kept in the menu for long time.
