A note on the words: yodare-dori (literally “mouth-watering chicken”) is a Sichuan-style dish of poached chicken sliced thin and served under a savory, lightly spicy sauce. Mapo tofu is a Sichuan braise of tofu and ground meat in a spicy, numbing chili-bean sauce. Kakuni is pork belly simmered for hours until meltingly tender, usually in a sweet soy glaze. Chawanmushi is a savory steamed egg custard, typically studded with small pieces of seafood or mushroom. Annin tofu is a chilled, jelly-like almond milk dessert — despite the name, it has nothing to do with soybean tofu. Shaoxing wine is a Chinese rice wine used both for drinking and for cooking.
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Akasaka Shien on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. The place I dropped in on for lunch this time is a new Chinese restaurant in Akasaka, “Akasaka Shien.” As I understand it, this is a place where one of China’s leading chefs makes creative Chinese food out of Japanese ingredients. Careful cooking that is lovely to look at, apparently. With upscale Chinese places like this, the lunch prices tend to go up once they get famous, so going early seemed like the smart move — I booked straight away and off I went. The location is quite deep into Akasaka. It is actually near Maison de Yulong (in Japanese).
Looking at it like this, it hardly seems to be Japan at all.
Shien Set, 1,800 yen
Shien Omakase Course, 3,000 yen
Lunch Course, Kohaku, 10,800 yen
There are three lunches, and at 1,800 yen there is a fairly reasonable one too. This time I took on the 3,000 yen Shien Omakase Course!
They showed me to a seat on the second floor, and with the big windows it is a very bright room. Bright, and a nice atmosphere.
Drinks ordered, and the course begins.
First the welcome soup. A very gentle soup. Lightly seasoned, but with real depth to it, so it is good!
Pickles. Faintly sweet-vinegared and very good. This would go beautifully with the Shaoxing wine, I imagine — (I was on oolong tea…)
Yodare-dori that has a kick to it but stays gentle. Soft, fluffy chicken under a lightly spicy sauce. Refreshing!
Jiaoma, it turns out, is a paste of Sichuan pepper and scallion. That tingling Sichuan pepper aroma and heat is wonderfully refreshing.
And a spring roll!! An extremely beautiful spring roll.
A really beautiful, handsome spring roll. Inside a crisp wrapper, filling seasoned just as gently as everything else. It is seriously crunchy, so the texture is lovely as well. Crunching away is fun! Can a thing really be this crunchy? lol
Golden soup! This too is exceeeedingly plain in its seasoning. A soup with the faintest trace of dashi. That faintness is what makes it elegant.
A chawanmushi made in an amusingly shaped dish, but a proper chawanmushi all the same lol
It looks lovely, and the scallop aside, the dashi comes through and it is delicious.
And then the main dish, chosen from two options. There were two of us, so we took one each and shared.
First, the stir-fried kuruma shrimp and asparagus. You can choose whether or not to have it spicy, and this time I asked for spicy. The shrimp are plump and springy and delicious! The seasoning really is refined. Though by this point it had been quite filling, so I was already stuffed lol
Pork kakuni that looks like a chocolate cake lol Really beautiful.
Wonderfully soft kakuni, on the sweet side. A thick, glossy sauce clings all over it and pulls the whole thing together! Delicious.
Mapo tofu! It looks seriously good. Is this a place with Sichuan cooking as its base, I wonder? The mapo tofu itself is made fairly sweet. The heat is certainly there, but if anything it is the sweetness and the savory depth that come forward, and the ground meat asserts itself quite a bit, I would say. Rice actually comes with it, but I was well and truly full by then, so I had them skip the rice.
Dessert is annin tofu and melon! That is a good way to cut a melon lol A luxurious cut!
So there we are — Chinese food seasoned with great delicacy and refinement. You start to feel that the chef’s character is somehow showing through in it. It was delicious!!! And this much food for 3,000 yen. It is seriously generous, and thinking purely about value, I would call this a place that scores very high indeed. It is a lovely room with a good atmosphere, so it would work for a business dinner or a family occasion, and the seasoning is so gentle that I think it would suit just about anyone. I suspect this place is going to get popular and the lunch prices are going to go up lol
Akasaka Shien (Chinese / Akasaka Station, Aoyama-itchome Station, Akasaka-mitsuke Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
