Yamada Chikara (was Awesome)

In the planning stages of our friends' visit to Japan, we decided that we would like to have one cost-is-no-object world-class culinary experience at some point in the trip.  It's a lot easier to find such things in Tokyo than Kanazawa, so I began to identify candidate restaurants there.  I spent a lot of time on the internet poking around various Best-Of lists, considering which cuisine was of greatest interest to us, reading reviews, and discussing my findings with the potential diners.  The result was the selection of a restaurant called Yamada Chikara. 

A short summary: Yamada Chikara was F------ Amazing. 

 OK, now with slightly more detail, and pictures. 

Yamada Chikara is a tiny restaurant operated by a veteran chef of El Bulli, which is a restaurant in Spain that won a mountain of "Best Restaurant in the World" type awards.  That place is noted for being in the vanguard of molecular gastronomy (Wikipedia entry) and for being completely impossible to get a seat at.  However, Yamada-san worked there for a number of years, and then decided he wanted to return to Japan and start a restaurant in Tokyo.  Yamada Chikara focuses on Japanese cuisine and tones down the molecular gastronomy a bit.  It is fairly obscure, and I get the feeling they like it that way as I've read that they turned down the opportunity to be reviewed by Michelin and their restaurant is very well-hidden.  Their deliberate obscurity probably contributed to being able to get reservations for half their available seating, otherwise known as "party of four".

After the museum we dressed up, grabbed our zoomed-in printed out maps of how to reach the restaurant, and headed across Tokyo.  We were a little tight for time, and as we got close it became obvious that the traffic lights shown on the map as landmarks were in fact not all of the traffic lights existing on that street.  We walked up and down a number of streets, looking intently for our destination, before being rescued by a passing foreigner who happened to know where it was.  We had to joke that the restaurant hired him to come find us, because we could easily have walked past it a half-dozen times and not noticed it.  The front of the restaurant is a blank white wall with an unmarked metal door, and a tiny (maybe 6") window with the name of the restaurant etched in small letters on the glass.  As I said, they're not big on publicity.  From here on, I'll mostly narrate the pictures.

One room, jet black bar that seats eight, very little by way of decoration.  Simple and severe, low lighting.  One chef, one server, both highly skilled.

 We were issued the course menus in English and Japanese.  I think it is safe to assume they don't bother with the English menu for everybody, but it was noted that we reserved in a combination of Japanese and English and the English menus were ready when we arrived.  The menu was more for our edification than selection - whatever he cooks is what you eat.  We ordered the accompanying wine course, putting our choices completely in their hands.  This was not a mistake, and they started us off with an uncommonly interesting champagne.

 The top is a crab and seaweed salad, which was notable primarily for the excellence of the crab.  The soup is a miso soup with melt-in-your-mouth tofu, but the twist was they added horseradish to it, which you would never expect but worked extremely well with the sweet miso and creamy tofu.  I was surprised and delighted, a combination which will arise consistently throughout the evening.

 Our server had a lot more English than the chef (who answered the phone when I made reservations) and was cheerful, funny, and exceptionally diligent throughout the evening.  My friend was very impressed that she noticed he was left-handed before the first course even started, and set up his tray accordingly to be the reverse of ours.  Here she is preparing the rose martinis, which tasted exactly like roses smell, even though they were mostly made of olives.

 The sashimi tray clearly relied more on the excellence of the ingredients than funny business, except for the soy sauce, which they rendered somehow into a soft foam, which was fun.  By this time we'd finished the champagne and they'd poured us a chardonnay.  Chardonnay is not normally my favorite, but this one was quite different than you'd normally expect and was interesting in its own right in addition to being an expert pairing with the food.

 This one is a fairly traditional egg custard / soup, a style served often in Japan.  They just served it better.  Ana does not normally like these, but probably would have licked the bowl here if we hadn't been in polite company.  I concur completely.

 This one was so good that it was in fact proposed in some seriousness that we end the evening after consuming it, and simply meditate on the experience.  Either that, or kidnap the chef and make him prepare more.  What it is, however, is less easy to describe.  It says "Spanish Omelet" on the menu, and it had layers of egg and potato and cheese foam and caramelized onion and it all blended together and went absolutely bonkers when you had some of the bread with it. 

 This dish is probably their most famous, and also quite showy.  First they bring you a bowl with frozen foie gras powder in it.

Note the condensation on the underside of the bowl.

 Then they pour hot broth into the bowl, and you scoop up some frozen foie gras and some hot broth in each spoonful.  If timed correctly, you get both temperatures in your mouth at the same time, and the foie gras melts, in luscious buttery extravagance, into the already rich broth.  We basically went one at a time for the first spoonful so that we could watch each person's face in turn as they tried it.  It was surprising, delicious, and extravagant.  The Spanish red wine they'd poured for us cut the richness between bites.

 Roasted smoke-infused sea eel.  When the top was removed, smoke billowed out of the container and then dissipated, making for a showy presentation.  Simple and richly flavored.  The eel part of it managed to make a few members of the group a bit less than pleased at the beginning, but by the end they'd come around.  At this point they'd poured for us a powerful cabernet, so we were equipped for the heavier dishes.

 Braised beef smothered in truffle sauce, with an enormous quantity of actual truffle on top.  Tender, rich, unctuous...I'm pretty much salivating here at the keyboard.  I don't think I've ever seen that much truffle in person, let alone on one person's plate.  Rice and some vegetables were there to combine into the experience as desired.  Once again, we were slain by food.

 And most happy that it was so.  Also note that tiny window over Ana's head - that's their sign.

 Coming into the end of our visit, they served caramel ice cream made with caramel taken just past caramelized, to give a bitter flavor designed to offset the sweetness of ice cream.  They also served various teas in handmade Japanese tea mugs that may have been worth more than our entire dinner.

All this prepared by one man in a kitchen roughly the size of our shoe closet.  The kitchen seems to have one half where he cooks, and one half where she can go in and pick up the things that are ready. Three people could not work in that space at the same time, for sure.

So, to summarize, this was unequivocally one of the greatest food experiences we've ever had, and we'll remember it with great fondness for a very long time.

Not quite willing to let the evening end there, we took a taxi to Helmsdale (one of the greatest whiskey bars in the world, located in a random suburb of Tokyo) in search of a whiskey good enough to be a worthy finish to the evening.  The whiskey drinkers in the group had a 43-year-old Speyside single malt taken down off the shelf, which I think proved suitably world-class.

Finally and utterly sated, we retired to the apartment.  We'll pick up the narrative the next morning in a blog entry to follow soon.