Haramasa is a 1 michelin starred modern kaiseki restaurant located in the basement of a building in the Yotsu Sanchome area in Tokyo, somewhat near Shinjuku. While many of Japan's top restaurants pride themselves on their traditional dishes and the preservation of their culture through these dishes, there are always a small hand full of chefs who want to be different and are willing to explore the use of non-traditional ingredients in their food. Chef Shotaro Hara of Haramasa is one such chef who incorporates ingredients like black truffles and extensively uses high calorie items in his dishes. I believe he is someone who loves his food having a strong taste to it, in fact sometimes a tad bit on the overpowering side. I am not sure if I have described it correctly, but if you look at the pictures below, you'd sense there's something quite different about the food served in this kaiseki restaurant compared to the norm.
Shall we have a look at pictures of my meal:
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| Dish 1 - Abalone with its own liver turned into a sauce, served with steamed wild rice |
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| Dish 2 - Mini shark's fin and soft shell turtle soup |
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| Dish 3 - Fried belt fish topped with truffle cream sauce and edible flowers |
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| Dish 4 - Chawanmushi with hairy crab, foie gras and topped with truffles |
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| Dish 5 - DIY style hand roll. 4 slices of fish (flounder and alfonsino) to be eaten with vegetable condiments and monk fish liver paste |
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| Dish 6 - I can't exactly remember what that lump of meat is called but it was a combination of prawns and crab, served with wakame seaweed in clam soup |
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| Dish 7 - One of the signature dishes - The Gout somen noodles. It's noodles mixed with cod milt (shirako) and topped with bottarga, caviar and salmon roe. |
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| Dish 8 - A large piece of grilled black trout (nodoguro) with bamboo shoot |
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| When you see pickles and miso soup, you know the rice this is here! |
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| Another signature dish - his truffle infused rice |
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| Dish 9 - First bowl is served with cod milt, cooked eggs and topped with more black truffles |
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| Dish 10 - second bowl is served with a hand full of high quality sea urchin, wagyu sukiyaki beef, egg yolk and topped with black truffles |
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| Dish 11 - If there's still rice left in the pot, it's best to eat the remainder plain and simple. I reckon there are at least 3 servings of rice per person in his pot so you should be able to have a third bowl (provided you're still hungry of course). |
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| Dish 12 - Dessert! I chose black sesame ice cream! |
So...am I right to say that this kaiseki restaurant is quite different from the others? It pretty much is right? The food was fabulous, I especially liked the Chawanmushi, DIY style sashimi maki and the gout somen noodles. While his ending rice dish was fantastic, my favourite bowl was actually the third bowl because I could simply indulge in the taste of the truffle infused rice. Don't get me wrong, he was extremely generous with his cod milt, sea urchin and beef for the first two rice bowls, but I felt that such ingredients overpowered the fragrance of the truffle rice. Regardless, still a damn good way to end an already eye opening and superb dinner course.
Now on to price performance, would you pay 20,000 Yen for all this? There's also a 15,000 Yen dinner course but I don't know what's the difference because from what I read, almost everyone orders the 20,000 Yen course. In my opinion, seeing how Chef Hara is very generous with the portions of his food and the overall quality, I'd say it's a good deal. It's definitely one which I can't even get close to finding in Singapore in the first place.I hope I can come back here in the future. Even he serves me the exact same thing, I'm sure I'll still leave in a very satisfied and happy state.
Tabelog website: https://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1309/A130903/13151542/
Address: 4 Chome-8 Yotsuya Shinjuku-ku Tokyo-to
Budget (Dinner): 15000+ or 20000+ yen
My rating: 4.5 / 5
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