Koumei Nakamura is an Iron Chef in title only. This was the first of the Iron Chef restaurants to disappoint. Don't get me wrong, the food was good, just not Iron Chef quality. If I were walking down a random street and happened to walk into Koumei Ariake I probably would have been happy with the food but I would not go back nor would I recommend it to anyone. They spent so much time on presentation they forgot that you need more than just a pretty plate, and not to sound like an American or anything but the portion sizes were so small I was still sorta hungry after eating eight courses!
Even though the food was not great I did end up having a really good night.. Got out of work and took the Yamanote Line from Shinjuku to Osaki and caught the Rinkai Line over to Kokusai-Tenjijo station. The Rinkai Line is a monorail and the cars are very different from the normal JR trains, it was the first time I had seen a "women only" car but people at work tell me most trains have one. The problem is that during rush hour guys will grope women on the trains because everyone is so crowded in that there is no way to stop them.
Got out of the train and was on Tokyo Bay which is a beautiful area. The restaurant is about 2 blocks away from the water, unfortunately there was no view of the water from the restaurant.
Nakamura was there, I saw him in the kitchen but he didn't come out. So, what did I have you ask?
Course 1 - Scallop in a spicy duck sauce with ginko beans. This was the first course and I was very happy with it. The sauce was very nice and the mix of scallop and duck really went well together. This dish had one small scallop an two ginko beans. You can see from the picture how big the scallop based on the size of the ginko beans.
Course 2 - Abalone sushi with lime, roe flavored with orange, deep fried bean patty with hot peppers, passion fruit, and some unidentified meat (they don't have an English name for it?) wrapped in pork fat. The presentation on this dish was awesome, they put a bunch of twigs and tied them together to make sort of a screen to cover the dish. Each thing was in it's own little plate on the bigger plate. I don't think there is ever a reason to mess with roe, I don't like the fact that the roe was sitting in an orange juice like sauce. It totally killed the roe for me. The Abalone sushi was what I would call a mini-sushi. It was probably about 1/3 the size of a normal sushi roll, the piece of mint between the abalone and the rice was a surprise and totally over powered the taste of the abalone. Cup of passion fruit is just that. The deep fried bean patty was really good, certainly the best thing on this plate, it was deep fried in a corn meal batter and the peppers made it have a nice spice. The unidentified meat will continue to be so, I could not tell what it was when I ate it, because it was wrapped in pork fat it tasted like pork fat. If you're looking at the picture the meat is that thing on the toothpick and no, that's not a giant tooth pick.
Course 3 - Crab and Potato Soup. This soup was good, it had two small pieces of crab meat in it and 1 potato. The broth tasted like pea soup so that was an interesting and good combo of crab meat in pea soup. I should have put my hand next to it so you could see the size of that bowl.
Course 4 - Sashimi, 3 pieces of tuna, 2 pieces of eel, 2 pieces of mackerel and 2 pieces of apple served with a Soy stomach mixed with the stomach of an Eel. When they brought this out I said, a bowl of ice? After looking closer and past the garnish I saw the fish, see the apple slices? Now look at how big the fish pieces are next to it. It's also the first and only place I've ever seen leave the skin on tuna sashimi. The eel stomach soy sauce was very good but this is the point where I was really getting upset at the portion sizes. If you took all 3 pieces of tuna and put them together they would not be as big as 1 piece of tuna sashimi at a normal restaurant.
Course 5 - Boiled Turnip. Take a turnip, cut into 6 pieces and then boil it in sugary water. Now take 2 pieces and put it in a bowl and call it a course. It was seriously 1/3 of a turnip in some sugary water. At this point I was getting a bit upset with the food but I knew that Kobe Beef was coming up..
Course 6 - Kobe Beef with a carmelized tomato, zucchini, turnip, broccoli, potato and mushroom. The Kobe beef was awesome as expected, it was cooked in a thick tomato/soy sauce. The caramelized tomato on the top might have been the best thing in the entire dinner (aside from the kobe beef). On the side it had 1 mushroom cap, 1/6 of a small potato (the kind I use in my chili), 1 twig head of broccoli, a slice of turnip and a piece of zucchini that was just as big as the piece of potato.
Course 7 - Mushroom rice and Miso soup. The mushroom rice was nice but the miso soup in my hotel is better than their miso soup. This also came with some pickled stuffs..
Course 8 - Walnut Ice Cream and some dry yellow cake. Umm, I seriously have no idea what that cake was, it was so dry.. The Ice Cream was great.
When I got out of dinner I saw that there was also a small La Rochelle Bistro in the same building, I almost went in for a snack but decided against it. After dinner I walked along the ocean and past 'Tokyo Big View" which is a really cool looking building that you can go up into a see the Tokyo skyline and ocean, unfortunately it was closed so I just got to take cool pictures of the outside of the building. I have to tell you how odd it is to have the pacific ocean on your east. Anyway, I walked along the ocean to the big ferris wheel that is in my pictures. Next to the ferris wheel Toyota had a 2 story show room. I went in and looked around in their new hybrid section, they have 5-6 hybrids out right now in Japan. I took a picture of the Mark X which is a hatchback with three rows of seats.
Went back over to Shinjuku and met up with some co-workers for a few drinks. I ended up having some tuna sashimi and two beers. We hung out for a few hours and chatted, it was a very good time.
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Going to lunch with some of my co-workers again today and tonight is Kobe's restaurant. I am hoping that finishing off my Japan Iron Chef tour with Iron Chef Italian is a good idea. I do love Italian food and he supposed to be one of the best Italian chefs in the world so I am hopeful that tonight will be a solid rebound after yesterday.
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