A note on the words: omakase means you leave the menu to the chef. Amuse-bouche is the one-bite opener of a tasting menu. Bellota is the top grade of Spanish Iberico ham, from acorn-fed pigs, and pluma is a small, prized cut of Iberico pork. Pan con tomate is bread rubbed with tomato, a Catalan staple, and canelón is a rolled pasta parcel. Onigiri is a Japanese hand-formed rice ball, kogomi are young fiddlehead ferns, and blancmange is a set milk-and-almond pudding.
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Tinc gana on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
So, Hangover Meshi here. Every now and then I feel like going out alone to eat something good. Hunting for a good place I could go to solo, I found this seriously stylish Spanish restaurant with an open live kitchen, in Ichigaya of all places. Well, if I am sitting at the counter watching them cook while I eat, going alone is fine, ha. So I made a reservation at “Tinc gana” in Ichigaya. It runs to a fair sum, but once in a while that is allowed, right!
Since I was on my own, being in the middle of a lively crowd did not appeal, and I had time, so I booked the 17:30 slot ^^
Sure enough, the first customer was just me! Having this good-looking room all to myself feels rather nice.
Though I am sure it fills up steadily from half an hour on!
[Dinner] Chef Jerome’s Signature Omakase Course, 19,000 yen
[Dinner] Seasonal Dinner Course, 14,000 yen
Since I was coming alone anyway, I went all in and picked the 19,000-yen course.
There was a wine pairing on offer, so I took that to start with.
Separately I also had a beer. Estrella Damm. A standard Barcelona beer, they tell me.
No off notes at all, very easy to drink, a refreshing beer.
And the first customer gets to drink the freshly opened bottle! So they opened the first Cava of the pairing right in front of me. Well now, glad I came early.
Cava Gran Reserva Brut.
A beautiful golden color! The nose is fresh, floral and sweet notes mixed together. There is fruit in there too!
It goes down very smoothly and is extremely easy to drink.
First up, an amuse-bouche of crab, sardine and shrimp.
An aka-za-ebi shrimp croquette, a crab quiche and a sardine served taco-style. Every one of them delicious!
Dishes that set your imagination going about where the course will head from here. Splendid.
A generous heap of aged Iberico ham on top of pan con tomate!!
The combination of bread rubbed with tomato and garlic and the cured ham is superb. And the ham melts away the moment it hits your mouth. This is seriously good! And here comes the next wine.
Txarmant Txakoli. A very clean, crisp wine, and yes, it does go with the bellota.
I do not know much about wine, so having it served as a pairing like this is a good thing!
I do not have to think about anything, and it tastes good.
This one was amazing too!
The oyster is chopped so it is easy to eat, and a beet sauce wraps the flavor of the raw oyster up nicely.
The savor really stands out. They pour the sauce at the table, so it is fun to watch as well, and the small amount of fresh strawberry in there gives the whole thing a sharp, bright edge. Seriously delicious.
The next pairing wine is
Mon Amour Baja 2019. Another Spanish wine!
A complex nose with a slightly vanilla-like note. An acidic white wine with a good balance against the fruit!
The green sauce is artichoke.
It looks like a sauce that would assert itself, but eating it, the savor of the Hokkaido scallop overpowers it and spreads through your mouth with force. There is a cilantro-like note that suits it well. Maybe there is cilantro in there. The cooking is perfect, leaving that snappy raw texture, and it goes beautifully with the white wine that came just before.
What is wrapped around the outside of the beef is sheet pasta. Is something rolled up like this what they call a canelón, I wonder.
Deeply savory beef and a faint mushroom aroma, porcini-like. The sweetness of the port wine sauce poured over at the finish acts as the conductor pulling it all together into a symphony. Splendid! Seriously delicious!
The fish course is skate! I had the impression that only the fin gets eaten, but apparently it is eaten a lot in southern Spain. From my vague image of skate as an angler’s catch I thought it might smell a bit strong. But the white flesh is richly savory while eating clean, with no off odor whatsoever. My impression of skate has been turned completely around, ha. I had no idea it could be this good. It works well with the tart balsamic and berry sauce, the cauliflower alongside has good texture, and the mashed potato underneath is good too. You get to enjoy that soft, enveloping flavor of the white flesh!
After the fish comes the meat. The next pairing wine appears.
An organic red wine! Cervoles Negre, 2021.
A gentle spicy aroma. It reads as a proper red wine, and yet it is very easy to drink.
I had been wondering what pluma was, and apparently
it is a rare cut of top-grade Spanish Iberico pork, and from a single roughly 160-kilo pig you only get two pieces of about 180 grams, ha ha.
Really, it was that fancy? On an ordinary pig it is said to be part of the loin.
The cooking draws out an exquisite savor and it is delicious! I do not often eat pork with a texture this close to rare, but this might be very good indeed. The kogomi fiddlehead ferns in the middle have a deep aroma that seems to wrap this good pork up and create harmony across the whole plate! Tasty.
A paella onigiri, ha.
The sauce poured over it is a rich poisson sauce. The rice ball itself is gentle in flavor and fragrant with saffron, and it does not look like paella at all, yet the rich seafood stock and the saffron aroma make it firmly paella. Splendid.
Then, with only dessert left, they asked whether I would like some cheese, so I had some ^^
Having come this far, you have to go all the way!
That said, I was pretty full, so only two kinds.
A blue cheese from Karuizawa called “Hisui.” A distinctive flavor where the sharp bite characteristic of blue-mold aging is joined by a mellow roundness.
And queso tetilla, I think. Clean-tasting and good. They leave bread and raisins out alongside it too, which is a treat, ha.
An almond blancmange with plenty of olive oil poured over it.
At the very bottom there is a layer of salted ice cream, and scooping down and eating them together is seriously delicious ^^
This is the restaurant’s signature, the Jerome cheesecake, they say.
A delicious cheesecake, molten in the middle. Mmm, good!
I felt like drinking tea, so they brewed me one called Marco Polo.
There is still more coming, ha
Well now! I am full and it was delicious!
A very good few hours. Even after finishing all this it was still before 20:00. What a luxurious way to spend an evening. After doing entirely as I pleased, the bill came to about 35,000 yen in total. Spending money this way once in a while is not bad at all! Sitting alone thinking about this and that while eating good food. That is a fine thing, isn’t it. And since I was eating at the counter watching the live kitchen, I enjoyed myself completely even on my own, and I barely noticed the people around me, ha. Highly recommended for solo dining too!
Tinc gana (Spanish / Ichigaya Station, Kojimachi Station, Yotsuya 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?
