The most incredible culinary experience of my life has been a dinner at Narisawa in Tokyo in December 2010 (thanks to my buddy H., I still owe you one!), who happens to be still be the Best Restaurant in Asia. Sure, I’m a Japanese food nerd, nevertheless this experience has been as much intellectual as culinary, and might be one of the seeds of this blog… My memory is still vivid from that experience and it’s time I share it.
Let me drive you through some of the wonders we had.
The entrance!
Simple, but so effective. A fresh root, with edible earth. Excellent to set the tone of what will happen next!
Fried Oysters. Looked kinda ugly, but sooo good. The dough had the texture of the best doughnut you ever had, smooth, soft, chevy, and bit sweet.
That was chestnut bread dough. It wasn’t clear until it got cooked on a hot stone 15 minutes later. Interesting.
“Kawahagi from Odawara.” Flowerful sashimi. Great, fresh, impeccable.
“Ash 2009 Wind of Basque.” Grilled squid with its ink. The squid was incredible, and the “ink” was in fact a sauce made of burned bellpeppers cryogenised. Gray when powedered, it turned slowly black as it melted. Smart. The most high-tech dish of all, but also one of the best.
“Langoustine from Odawara” Pretty good, langoustine was great but not insane.
“Fish of the day.” Who knows what it was, all I remember was that the fish had a perfect, crunchy texture, and intese and sweet bite, and the highlight – the fried thing next to the fish – was sesame tofu. Exceptional!
“Forest 2010 Evolve with the Forêt”. That was so intense, so many tiny elements, slow roasted pig skin, crunchy, just incredible. The waiter suggested us to eat with hands, which would remind us of being in a forest and picking things on the floor. Wow.
Daily bread and butter. Narisawa really likes to play with edible earth!
“Sumi 2009 Hida beef.” Steak was covered with ash powder, incredibly graphic and strong contrast. I guess no need to tell how good it was.
“125% Cacao” – If I recall correctly, the reason it’s 125% cacao is that they extracted the fat normally present in any chocolate and just left the flavor in it. Served with pear jelly I think. Excellent, but not as good as the name suggested.
“Matcha.” Green tea soufflé with milk ice cream melting inside. The best desert I ever had. Period.
And the classic mignardises…
