Tinc gana

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🇪🇸 Spanish / 📍 Ichigaya

📓 Visits: 1

So much about restaurants comes down to expectations.  If I'd never been to Gracia, never heard of the chef and had the 15K menu here I might be raving about it.  Alas, none of those things are true and it's through that prism I reflect on my meal at Tinc gana.

There are a couple of key indicators of consistency at a restaurant: (1) the head chef in the kitchen at every service and (2) a Michelin Star.  As has been discussed before, the Michelin Guide is a lot less relevant in Japan with so many restaurants opting out from inspections and even delisting once they've made it into The Guide.  But one of the big differences between dining out in Japanese and European restaurants is that if the chef's name is above the door in Japan then the chef will be cooking and that's one of the reasons why even if the restaurant doesn't have a Star you should not expect wildly different standards from visit to visit.

Some of the best meals and best value meals I've had in recent years have been at Gracia.  My most recent meal was not up to the same standard as previous ones and I think that's largely due to changes in staff.  So when Jerome Quilbeuf announced his second restaurant in Japan I put it top of my list.  What I was expecting was Jerome back in the kitchen, a larger kitchen with more staff, more refinement and complexity in the dishes, more consistency and, above all, a push for a Michelin Star.  Based on my one visit I got some of that.

Unlke at Gracia it's omakase courses only.  The most expensive course is priced at JPY 15,000 and is available at lunch and dinner.  Alternatively, the entry-level course at lunch is JPY 5,500 while the entry-level dinner course is JPY 8,000.  Prices are inclusive.  No after-meal drink is included in courses.  On my visit I had the cheapest lunch.  Thanks to a helpful comment in my review of Gracia I went expecting this might not be enough food but nonetheless I wanted to see what you could get for 5K and the cheap course is unlikely to be around forever.

The best two dishes in the meal where the kaki, nashi, coriander and sour cream and the aori ika, kabu and tonburi in a seaweed tart.  The oyster dish a refined evolution of the cevice/oyster dish at Gracia and the cuttlefish dish rich in flavour with perfect pastry.  Both 10/10.  Next best the Iberico pluma, potato galette, and peppers two ways.  9/10.  The meal was flanked by some disappointments.  Ikura tart was fine, which is as good as it's going to get when you're not charging for the best possible ingredients.  The croquette was not as good as the croquette at Gracia.  The ice-cream in the first dessert was a bit grainy.  Served with fresh blueberries and coulis it was too simple.  I enjoyed the pomegranate ice pop, spiced melon and chocolate.  The coconut canelle was delicious but too cold.  I would have preferred an extra savoury course and one proper dessert rather than all the sweet elements I got at the end of the meal.  As part of a longer course with a proper dessert this might have worked but with the short course it didn't.

The 5K lunch is indeed not enough for a full meal so it's not as good value as the 6K lunch at Gracia was, which is sadly no longer available.  If you want a full meal it seems like you do need to go for the 15K course which seems to add about 6 extra dishes and still looks, at a minimum, good value.

Jerome was in the kitchen on my visit and if you're eating on your own then being able to chat with Jerome makes a big difference.  But he's continuing to oversee Gracia, stepping in when staff are absent, and is about to open a third restaurant in Kamakura so he's not going to be here at every service.  He's also not aiming for a Michelin Star.  That doesn't mean the food isn't good enough and it takes the pressure off worrying about losing it once you've got it.  But it does mean you're not committing yourself to consistency.  Without the ambition of a Michelin Star and the chef patron in the kitchen at every service then standards can slip, which is what happened at Gracia.

I will go back to Tinc gana but I can't say I'm in a hurry and I might try the 9K menu at Gracia first.  You should eat every well here.  Better than you'd eat at Zurriola (review to come) and for a fraction of the price you'd pay at Aca.  Overall, Tinc gana didn't live up to my expectations but that's because they were sky high and ultimately misplaced.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1309/A130904/13275231/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.1

📱 Booking: 🟩  Easy.  Advance bookings by Tabelog or TableCheck.  Same day by phone.  Walk-ins possible.

📍 Location: 

1F GEMS Ichigaya, 4-3 Rokubancho.  4 mins walk from JR Ichigaya station.  Depending on the line you take it can take up to 10 minutes to exit Ichigaya Metro station.  Same building as Nakahara.  Dedicated street-facing entrance.
Map data ©2022 Google

📶 Free WiFi? ✅ Yes

📅 Visit October 2022

Ikura, lime, brick pastry tart; shiitake, ebi, shiso croquette
Joselito Iberico, tomato bruscetta
Kaki, nashi, coriander, sour cream
Aori ika, kabu, tonburi, seaweed pastry tart
Iberico pluma, pommes dauphine, piman two ways
Smoked milk ice-cream, blueberries
Pomegranate ice lolly, coconut canelle, chocolate, spiced melon

💴 Damage: 6,600 (5550 + 1 drink @ 1100)
⏱️ Time taken: 1h10m