Suzutashiki

Suzutashiki (鈴田式)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🇯🇵 Kaiseki / 📍 Azabu-Juban

📓 Visits: 2 (2021-2022)

Suzutashiki had been on my radar for a while.  You can't be a foodie and not salivate at "that picture" of an ¾-inch thick wood-fired Chateaubriand on rice.  But the Tabelog rating was not that high (3.82 in 2021) yet while reservations were being taken once a month, the next reservation period was many months away.  And then there's the exploitative cancellation policy.  I ranted about this before in my review of Makitori Shin-Kobe, which has the same owner and where the same policy applies.  As I noted there, my strategy for getting a seat at these restaurants is to wait for a not-too-distant cancellation and that's how I got both my reservations at Suzutashiki.

You can smell the smoke from the wood-fired grill as you approach the restaurant from the station, the "wrong side" of Azubu Juban.  If you didn't get it already, Suzutashiki specializes in wood-fired kaiseki.

The price of the course seems to have increased by JPY 10,000 since the restaurant opened in May 2019.  It's now 35K in March to August and 39K the rest of the year due to the cost of expensive ingredients like crab and matsutake.

📅 Visit January 2022

First a chawanmushi with yurine and wood-fired bottan ebi.  The yurine was huge and sweet.  The bottan ebi had exceptional flavour.  Overall, excellent but a touch sweet.  8.5/10.  Next meiji maguro aburi.  This was great.  The fish was packed with oils and the sauce was delicious.  9.5/10 - at least as good as Kimoto's.  Next, wood-fired shiitake.  I thought it was better last time so even further away from Chiune (review to come).  7.5/10.  Next, 'that' beef.  It was better than I remembered it but I still prefer my animal seasoned with salt.  There was no flavour from the smoke.  The beef at Aca is much better.  8/10.  Akagai next, which looked the same as before but was not nearly as memorable second time around and a little salty. 7.5-8/10.  After this torafugu and shirako.  The smokey flavour the shirako had taken on made it the best fugu shirako I'd ever eaten.  9/10.  Sashimi of shiro amadai with caviar, ponzu and kimo was a little salty.  Owan with Matsuba kani shinjo was next.  The crab was so sweet it made the soup a little too sweet but this was close to perfect.  9.5/10.  Next kainomi temaki. 9.5/10.  The rice dish had the same crab as in the owan but had been smoked before being added to the pot.  This was the best rice I'd ever had in my life.  I wasn't offered a refill but I would never have forgiven myself if I hadn't asked and chef obliged.  This was the main reason I came back to the restaurant in crab season and this dish lived up to my expectations.  10/10.  The final savoury dish was the same shio soba from last time and as before it was like eating crack to start with but I'd soon got my fix and even sukuname was more than I needed.  Desserts were as before.  9.5/10 for the ice-cream (not quite as good as the ice-cream at Naoto.K).

Pictures of the course here.

Bottan ebi, yurine chawanmushi
Meiji maguro aburi, negi sauce
Shiitake
Tajima Chateaubriand, sticky rice
Akagai
Fugu + shirako, sweet and sour sauce
Shiro amadai, caviar, ponzu, kimo
Matsuba kani owan
Kainomi temaki
Matsuba kani takikomi gohan
Shio soba
Smoked milk ice, whiskey
Taiwanese castella
Taiwan tea

💴 Damage: 49,500 (39600 + 2 drinks at 4950 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 1h55m

📅 Visit March 2021

Things got off to a good start with a thimble of dashi with really deep flavour, and then kinmedai aburi, the skin like glass.  A single grilled shiitake was very good but it's hard to beat the shiitake at Chiune.  Next was the signature steak on rice.  I was surprised this was served so early in the course.  How do you follow a dish like that?  The beef was Hyogo tajima hire.  It did not have much of a crust due to the fact it was relatively small and due to the relatively limited sustained intensity of heat you can get from an open fire, compared with a Josper or kiln.  The beef was seasoned with a tare and sansho, a flavour not to my liking.  I'm not sure whether or not chef seasoned the beef with salt and pepper before grilling.  I guess he did not and once you got past the numbness of the sansho, the beef lacked umami.  Frankly, the meat on rice at Arabikidaze is more satisfying but given my moderate expectations for the meal I wasn't really disappointed.  Next was a fruit tomato.  Large but not the best flavour and "enhanced" with yuzu.  Had the tomato been higher quality it wouldn't need any other seasoning.  Next was nodoguro deep fried.  This wasn't particularly crispy but you can't really go wrong with deep fried fish.  The meal got back on form with akagai.  Akagai is not one of my favourites but here it was the best dish of the night so far.  Served cold in a shiso jelly, perhaps it was the couple of seconds licked by the flames of the fire it had been given to slightly char before being served that brought out the flavour.  Owan was in the Kanto style so relatively salty but had very deep flavour.  The shiro amadai in the soup was a large piece and the flavour had been enhanced through the cooking on the fire.  9/10.  Takenoko was a huge variety from near Fuji.  You can see how large this type of takenoko is in the pictures of the course.  It was surprisingly sweet for a vegetable of that size.  Takenoko doesn't usually excite me but it will be hard to eat takenoko anywhere else after eating that.  The rice dish was Sakura ebi, hotaru ika and takenono takikomi gohan.  This was one of the best rice dishes I've ever had.  Up there with the rice at Den and Ogino.  The final savoury dish was shio soba.  Other guests were raving about it but it just tasted strange to me, though slightly addictive.  I was glad I requested sukuname.  First dessert was smoked milk ice-cream to which a drop of whiskey was added.  This had me rocking back in my chair.  Dessert two was a hot-out-of-oven castella served with tea from Taiwan.  The castella was rich in flavour and very eggy.

Pictures of the course here.

Dashi
Kinmedai aburi
Shiitake
Steak, sticky rice
Fruit tomato
Nodoguro agemono
Akagai
Shiro amadai owan
Beef temaki
Takenoko
Sakura ebi, hotaru ika takikomi gohan
Shio soba
Smoked milk ice cream, whiskey
Taiwanese castella
Taiwan tea

💴 Damage: 42,108 (38280 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2.5h?

Drinks are a little expensive.  A glass of champagne is priced between JPY 3850 and 5500.  On my visit I was charged the minimum + service for glass from a 750ml bottle that retails at JPY 6,380.  It must have been twice the volume of a standard glass though and was good quality.  There's a poor choice of non-alcoholic drinks with just tea (charged at JPY 1,100 + service) or mineral water available.  The same tea is served at the end of the meal and refilled without asking.

No English is spoken and the drinks menu is in Japanese only.  There isn't much of an atmosphere in the restaurant.  Chef pretty much works in silence but he introduces the dishes properly and answers any questions you might have.  The restaurant is warm in winter.  It seems like there's good ventilation so there wasn't a huge amount of smell on my clothes when I left.

At 40-50K this is one of the more expensive kaiseki restaurants in Tokyo so I'm going to be very picky.  The menu doesn't change that much from season to season and, for me, the beef is a bit of a let-down.  I don't see myself going back again, not at least for a long time or not unless it's in advance of a price increase.  But I did enjoy both my meals at Suzutashiki and on both visits I left very full.  If that's not enough, everyone takes home two onigiri and a portion of the castella.  Ingredients are expensive and high-quality and some of the dishes really are unique and outstanding.  I recommend you visit.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1307/A130702/13234010/ 

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5

📱 Booking: 🟥  As explained at length, difficult and exploitative.  Two rotations per night, occasional lunch.  https://omakase.in/en/r/ss535225

📍 Location: 

1-10-17 Mita.  2 mins walk West from Azabu-Juban station, Exit 2.  Dedicated street-facing entrance.  The door will open automatically as you approach it.