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| - Shibuya was chic and trendy and had a great atmosphere. No omakase was offered but they had a tasting menu for $130. Lil guy had udon with vegetables, agedashi tofu ($7) and an order of edamame ($5).
First course: trio of 2 slices of toro drizzled with a yuzu soy sauce; tuna tartare with yuzu and avocado; toro tartare stack with beluga caviar and gold flakes. I was impressed with how my meal started. Everything on this plate tasted great and was beautifully presented although both the tartares kind of stuck to the plate when I tried to pick it up with my chopsticks and I ended up having to scrape it off with my chopsticks.
Second course (although it should really be the 4th): duo of hamachi and kanpachi. The former consisted of a garlic soy yuzu sauce while the latter was sitting in a marinade of black truffle oil and yuzu. Again both were rather pleasing to the palate.
Third course (or is it the 6th now): beef tataki of thinly sliced Kobe beef drizzled with a soy sauce infused with garlic. Paper thin slivers of fried garlic on each slice of beef were accompanied with daikon sprouts. I didn't like the taste of the beef. It just didn't taste like how raw Kobe beef should taste - strong and rather off putting. The heavy sauce managed to mask the unpleasantness of the beef and the fried garlic helped immensely so it was still palatable in the end.
Satay lobster in uni butter sauce as this dish was present also came with one large scallop - slightly overcooked so it was a tad chewy. I didn't think the satay complemented the dish at all. In fact, it overpowered the delicate flavor of uni and ended up making this dish mediocre at best.
Beef short rib arrived very artistically presented. It included white asparagus, edamame, caramelized pearl onion and a small sliver of foie gras atop the beef. I loved the taste of the foie gras but the beef short rib was nothing special. It was no different than good galbijim and therefore didn't impress.
I have no idea why they decided to add lobster to the miso soup because it did nothing for it. The miso soup itself was watery and unflavorful and the chunks of lobster meat was bland. It's hard to believe that a high end restaurant like this couldn't present a tastier version of something as simple as miso soup.
The final portion of the meal before dessert was the sushi. I thought it was excellent that they gave you fresh wasabi because it definitely enhances the sushi experience. However, I was extremely disappointed in the sushi itself. The rice was still on the al dente side and the fish was also not of superb quality. Maguro and salmon were okay - I've had far better elsewhere. The hirame (flounder) was surprisingly gristly. It was chewy and crunchy! Not very pleasant. I enjoyed the hamachi though, it was almost buttery in texture. I liked the ume which accompanied the sushi. This course was wonderfully presented (see photo).
I was at the end of the meal portion and felt let down. It started off with a bang but slowly went downhill. How does this happen in an establishment such as this? Aren't the courses supposed to build into a crescendo until it explodes and then give the diner a sense of climax in the end?
I guess the chef did somehow make it up with dessert because it was excellent. I being not a dessert fan had nothing but great things to say about the dessert trio which arrived. The rich chocolate ganache cake infused with sake was superb. The other two (names fail me) were also good. Both had something fruity in it so it wasn't heavy at all.
If I only had the first two courses and then the final dessert, I would've given them 5 stars. I thought service could've been better. They brought me a refill of iced tea ($3) once and then forgot about it. The courses also came out a tad too quickly, often before I'd even finished the previous course.
For a high-end establishment it was lacking both in service and the quality of food it was serving especially since I was paying $130 for the tasting menu. What truly rubbed me the wrong way was the fact that I ordered udon for the lil guy and the menu had shrimp tempura udon for $16. Since lil guy didn't eat shrimp I asked if they could do it with vegetables instead. The server told me sure they could but failed to inform me that I would be charged the same price. If I had known, I would've just ordered the shrimp tempura and ate it myself. In the end, I was charged $16 for plain udon with a few vegetables in it. When I questioned the server his response was "it's not on the menu". WTF??? This type of customer service is a reflection of poor management. Just because something is not on the menu doesn't mean you can't be flexible and offer a service to a customer when they ask for it. But after you offer that service you need to tell them that they would be charged the same amount and then let them make that decision.
Ordinarily it would've been a 3 star rating but overall, they only get a 2.
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