Modernist Kaiseki

When my friend Thierry was in town last weekend, we stopped into Belgo, a nice Belgian beer bar in Shibuya, and met Larry and Keiko, who we chatted with for some time. Among other things, they recommended we meet for dinner later that week at a favorite restaurant of theirs between Shibuya and Harajuku. Keiko's work intervened and although they couldn't join us, Thierry and I took up their recommendation.

Located almost exactly halfway between Harajuku and Shibuya, Setsugekka is a small-plates restaurant, which in traditional set-menu form is called kaiseki / 懐石. Setsugekka does have chef's choice set menus / omakase / お任せ which are traditional for kaiseki, but we chose to order individually. We did, however, heavily favor some of the seasonal choices on the daily menu in omakase style.

Initially, I was a bit worried since Setsugekka has a relentlessly modernist interior. Not the Japanese-influenced modernist, straight out I-could-be-in-Denmark modernist, which is emphasized by the cool 1950s jazz playing. It's also quite cleverly laid out for private dining; it wasn't a particularly busy night, but in fact we saw zero other diners other than a few coming and going. The room is just arranged such that you don't see anyone else.

When it got to the food though, Setsugekka held up the Japanese end quite well. They rearranged our orders nicely into a more traditional form, meaning that we started with a seasonal vegatable dish and then moved to the Sashimi course of a delicious tataki. A couple of the standouts were the tempura course, which had besides the more traditional options a Japanese-specifc leafy spring vegetable done as tempura. Like truly good tempura in Japan (and unlike all tempura I had ever tried in the US), this was barely greasy at all; when you're done eating, you look at the paper that came under the food and there's only a tiny discolored area from oil.

Kaiseki can be very hard on the wallet, but by the standards of that sort of Japanese restaurant Setsgekka's not bad; dinner, including a couple drinks per person (they have a reasonable selection of sake / nihonshu / 日本酒) was around Y7000. I still prefer Kan overall -- but it's good to have another option for that sort of meal.