Friday, July 24, 2015

Kazahana, Conrad Hotel, Shiodome, Tokyo

While we were staying at the Conrad Hotel, we made a return visit to Kazahana for lunch. This year we were a little earlier in the summer season which meant there should be something different on the menu than our visit last year.


We decided to have the lunch course “MAI”, one of the 6 set course options available for lunch. Lunch set “MAI” consists of: Appetizer, Soup, Seasonal Delicacies, Main Dish, Rice, Miso soup and Japanese pickles, Dessert. We love the mystery aspect of the sets and the fact they ask if you have intolerances or things you don’t like.


We have tended to avoid uni (sea urchin) this trip, the appetizer had uni but they were happy to swap it out and it was replaced with abalone (my first time to try it). Braised white Taro stems with abalone was our appetizer.


Second course was soup with tofu, a very interesting seaweed and fish cake. The seaweed was a new one to us and very slippery. It reminded Vikki of the stamens in a lily but with a gelatinous bubble around the ‘stamen’ part.


Our third course was the seasonal delicacies. A selection of cold and hot dishes. Left to right tempura conger eel with braised eggplant, braised octopus and daikon radish, sashimi of squid and seabass, chilled soba noodles with accompanying sauce.


For mains we were able to choose which meal we wanted I chose grilled scallops and salmon which was accompanied by roasted vegetables with a Japanese pepper sauce. The sauce was quite mild but went really well with the seafood. The scallop was huuuge!


Vikki opted for the pork stew dish (kakuni) which included a softly poached egg topped with truffles, rice with perilla seasoning, Japanese pickles and Miso soup.


For dessert I had the brown sugar cake with caramelized banana served with ice cream.


Vikki ordered a pumpkin pudding with ice cream and a white cherry. Not a cakey pudding, this was more of a custard style. Vikki said it was quite dense and creamy.


Got to love a view while you are dining and in our case the view for lunch was Hama-rikyu Onshi Tien and Tokyo Bay. 


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