Kanjo

Kanjo (感情)

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🦆🍜  Duck Soba x Kaiseki / 📍 Roppongi

📓 Visits: 1 (2022)

How do you elevate a humble dish like duck soba?  Walking up the stairs of a multi-tenant building in Roppongi to a black door with a hand-written sign stuck on with tape, you'd probably be expecting a very different kind of "treat" from what you're actually going to get at Kanjo.  But once inside it's like you've been transported into one of Kyoto's fine kappo restaurants.

After a tasting of soba to start a series of starters including two soup dishes.  There was nothing to fault with any of these.  The sabazushi would stand up against any place specialising in this.  The mackerel was fat and had no smell whatsoever.  The kinmedai in the 'aqua pazza' was equally good: a large piece, great taste from the fat and the tomato served in the dish was a proper fruit tomato that tasted like candy.  There were 8 grilled duck dishes.  These are served with roughly-chopped daikon oroshii which is constantly topped up by the staff.  The tsukune (coated with sauce made from fruit and togarashi) and hatsu were the highlights - 10/10 for the former and 9.5/10 for the latter.  The best dish in the meal was the duck sashimi.  Cured in kombu and served with a sweet soy sauce it was exceptional, tasting like really good maguro akami.  While the grilled duck was good, it just did not live up to the sashimi and was not as good as a really good piece of roasted duck from France.  As for the soba, I only really like soba if it's special and here it really was.  I never thought I could score soba 10/10 but here I did, both for the hot and cold soba.  I was glad I asked for a large portion of soba to finish.  Two desserts were served.  First mizu yokan which was better than the yokan I had at Ginza Kitagawa (review here) the same month and anin tofu ice-cream, which I've never had a better version of.

Service was perfect.  Three handsome young staff run the restaurant, smiling the whole time.  I was really impressed that such young staff could achieve service of this standard.  Chef Hitoshi Toyoda previously worked at Anu Shohei Shimono, Tousenkaku (review here) and Inua.

The duck (sourcing is, apparently, a secret) is meant to be the star of the show but as I mentioned the grilled duck was not as good as the other dishes.  So I would think of it as a kaiseki restaurant that specialises in duck and soba rather than a restaurant specialising just in duck, but however you look at it it's outstanding.  I went just before the price rise (JPY 22,000 including tax then, JPY 27,500 now).  It was cheap at 22k but even with the increase I still think it's reasonable value.  If you're looking for kaiseki with a difference I'd unreservedly recommend a visit to Kanjo.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1307/A130701/13267945/ 

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5

📱 Booking: 🟩  Easy.  Should be possible to get a booking for the same week.  Bookings via Omakase are mostly for two diners or more but you can phone them or DM them for other dates for a single seat and they'll send you an invite via Omakase.

📍 Location: 

3F Roppongi 144 Building, 4-12-5 Roppongi.  Above Kuroobi Ramen.  3F multi-tenant building, no lift.
Map data ©2022 Google

📶 Free WiFi? ✅ Yes

📅 Visit October 2022

Soba
Shishamo tempura, karasumi
Ishigaki-gai, tamanegi
Kamo sashimi
Kamo momo, matsutake shabu shabu
Saba zushi
Kinmedai 'acqua pazza'
Kamo rosu sumiyaki
Shiitake
Sasami
Hatsu
Renkon
Tsukune
Negi
Kamo rosu (sumiyaki)
Soba cold
Soba hot
Tea
Mizu yokan
Anin tofu ice-cream

💴 Damage: 27,830 (20k + 2 drinks @ 3k + 10% + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h20m