Azabu Kadowaki - Tokyo
Water and sake = ready for dinner
Rating: 17/20
Where: Tokyo, Japan
When: Dinner for 2 on 25 February 2023
Cost: Tasting menu 37510-121000 Yen
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, Tabelog Bronze Award (2023)
Why: Japanese cuisine that is inventive, but not showingly so
Azabu Kadowaki is a Michelin three-starred restaurant serving Japanese cuisine in Tokyo. Only a ten minute walk from bustling Roppongi Hills, it is located in Azabu, a quaint neighborhood full of little stores and restaurants. That's the charm of Tokyo - going from loud to serene within a couple of blocks. The outside of the restaurant is unassuming, bearing just its name in Japanese. Only once one approaches the entryway does a Michelin-star plate confirm that one has indeed come to the right place.
The best seats in the house are at the six-person counter, where one can watch the chef working and plating all the dishes, but there is also a small private dining room further away from the action. We arrived on time for our 5:30pm dinner reservation, but our counter seats were not quite ready yet. Instead of asking us to wait outside, we were ushered into a small private dining room and offered hot towels and a cup of tea. The wait was barely two minutes - what an amazing customer service!
As with most Japanese fine-dining restaurants, we had to select our menu during the reservation process, choosing among tasting menus ranging from about 30000 to over 120000 yen. Contrary to similar restaurants, Azabu Kadowaki thankfully provides descriptions of what the differences between the menus are. We went for the second cheapest option, which added an uni and caviar course to our dinner (and about 10000 yen to its cost). Higher-priced menu choices included more premium ingredients such as fugu, Matsuba crab and shark fin. None of these appealed to us that much, so we settled on a “cheaper” menu.
There was no formal beverage pairing, but the chef was happy to suggest sake or wine to match the food. I had two different carafes of sake during our meal, and was quite happy with the result. The white wine was a Kenzo Asatsuyu, also not a bad choice.
Our dinner started with a cold dish of sesame tofu, mushrooms, roasted pine nuts and green onions over a sancho pepper / white miso sauce. That sauce was very flavorful and delicious, as were the seasoned mushrooms. The sesame tofu was comparatively lighter, but went great with the sauce. Pine nuts added a hint of sweetness and some crunchy texture. A lovely first course 19.
Next, a course of tempura, consisting of three pieces to be exact: a mountain vegetable, red snapper and a bamboo shoot. Fish eggs were drizzled over the fried items, and a mixture of salt and pepper was provided for seasoning. The batter was quite thin, and the fish and bamboo both perfectly cooked and delicious. The mountain vegetable was another story - it was a step or two down taste-wise. Still, with the slightly numbing pepper, this was a delightful dish 18.
If I had any question about whether Azabu Kadowaki was serving only traditional Japanese food, then the next course would answer that with a resounding “no”. A traditional Japanese meal might have featured sashimi at this point. Instead, we received a dish that included raw fish, but that was where the similarities ended. Thin slices of (raw) flatfish were wrapped around Chinese cabbage, onions and a shiso leaf. This was meant to be dipped into a paste of seasoned ankimo (monkfish liver) and then wrapped with sheets of nori (seaweed). Kind of like a complicated (and rice-free) sushi hand roll. The result was quite fresh tasting and light, and I loved the slightly spicy ankimo paste: unlike the usual, heavy foie gras-like dish, this was actually “light” - amazing! The fish was less exciting unfortunately: it pretty much disappeared among the other ingredients, since everything else was so much more flavorful. In addition, it was quite chewy, not quite as "inedible" as my wife called it, but definitely the weakest part of an otherwise quite interesting dish 17.
Chawanmushi (Japanese egg custard) was served with crab roe and the meat of a female winter crab. “Female” here implied even more roe among the meat. I did not particularly like the bitterness contributed by the crab and its roe; it overwhelmed an otherwise very good egg dish. Faint praise: if one had to cook a dish containing these crab and roe ingredients, then this was probably as good as it gets. But that doesn't mean that it was something I'd order again 16.
Next came the dish that increased the cost of our dinner by 10000 yen - an amount that one might pay for an entire dinner elsewhere. Was it worth it? That depends on your relationship to food and money, I suppose. But I'm glad to report that it was the best course of the night. The dish was based on Japanese somen noodles (a very thin kind of pasta) that were mixed with Hokkaido uni (sea urchin), and topped with a dollop of caviar and shaved truffles. An amazing dish: salty, buttery (but not too much), and truffley - what more could one want? Maybe for it to be served warm rather than cold. Then it would be stiff competition for Anthony Bourdain's favorite dish at Le Bernadin, the uni pasta (or n/naka's amazing signature dish, for that matter) 19.
A soup course arrived next: a light broth containing (I think) leeks was served in two rounds. First, with Japanese clams and a soft-cooked daikon, and then with a roll of yuba (tofu skin). On the positive side, this was a very nice broth with some peppery notes, and the daikon was great soaked with liquid. But the clam was just ok, and the yuba was not very distinctive in either taste or texture. And unfortunately, even though the soup was heated table-side, it was merely lukewarm - warmer would probably have been better 17.
Our next course was served to us while I was still eating the previous one, the soup. There is being rushed by receiving courses right after another, but having courses overlap with each other? That was news even to me, and not a great feeling. Why the unusual speed? No idea, given that there was still over an hour to go before the second seating.
Anyway, back to the dish itself. This was the traditional last savory dish in Japanese cuisine, the rice pot, and also the restaurant’s signature dish. The twist here was that the rice pot was topped with shaved truffles. Served with dried seaweed and pickles, this dish ought to have been a winner. Unfortunately, the truffle flavor in the dish was pretty weak, lighter even than in the uni pasta dish earlier. Maybe it's a seasonality problem - different kinds of truffles are used throughout the year. But whatever the reason, this was “only” a decent rice pot. The pickles very pretty good, albeit a bit sweet 17.
Our single dessert had some more truffles (mixed with honey), Japanese winter oranges, ricotta, pomegranate seeds, strawberries and apples. A very nice balance of sweet honey, juicy fruit and creamy cheese 18.
Overall: This was a Japanese meal where only a few dishes could be considered traditional, such as the chawanmushi. For the most part the menu was pretty inventive and unusual. Some courses were better than others, but what left us a bit disappointed at the end was the relative shortness of the menu, and then being rushed out on top of it (adding insult to injury, it seemed) 17.