Acid Brianza

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🎁 Innovative / 📍 Azabu-Juban

📓 Visits: 5 (2022-2024)

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.  The best-selling cookbook that became a Netflix series touts that it's these four elements you need to master to make a good dish great.  There's plenty of salty and fatty food to be found in Japan, though if you've ever been underwhelmed by kaiseki it could well be down to the distinct absence of fat and salt in such a meal.  As for acidity, no Japanese meal is complete without pickles, a vinegar jelly is often a key component of a starter in a kaiseki meal and your sashimi might be served with some sudachi or ponzu.  But other than that, acidity is a rare thing in Japanese cooking with sweet and savoury often the dominant flavour profiles.  Fermentation is not really a thing in Japanese restaurants either.  Hold on, what about miso, shoyu, katsuoboshi, komezu?  Well, yes, fermentation is a cornerstone of Japanese cuisine but the nearest any Japanese restaurant might get to performing its own fermentation is making its own tsukemono, which is so rudimentary, it's likely not thought of that way.  Chef Tomoya Kodama is on a one-man mission to change all this.  In 2022 he took over what was formerly the Italian restaurant known as Via Brianza (and Ristorante la Brianza prior to 2017) and launched it in a completely new direction.

To understand Kodama-san's cooking you need to know where he's come from.  At the risk of pointing out the bleedin' obvious he's Japanese and, being in Japan, most ingredients are Japanese.  But the techniques and flavours are anything but.  A kaiseki meal might feature 1-3 ingredients per dish.  Kodama-san's genre-defying food might feature 10.  Sauces are often weak or even non-existent in restaurants in Japan but Kodama-san's first overseas stint was as saucier at SaQuaNa in France, which previously held two Michelin Stars (the restaurant relaunched as a bistro in 2021).  So Kodama-san knows how to make a proper sauce and some of the sauces I've had at Acid Brianza have been stunning.  The main influence is probably his most recent stint as chef de partie at 2-star Kadeau in Copenhagen where he learned about Nordic cooking and fermentation.  Every dish uniquely brings these three food cultures together.  So if you want to sum-up Kodama-san's cooking in three words you could do it using the three countries in which he's worked in as a chef: Denmark, France, Japan.  But you'd only be boringly scratching the surface.

When the restaurant opened lunch of around 8 courses was priced at JPY 8,800 while dinner of around 14 courses was priced at JPY 16,500.  Lunch and dinner increased in price by JPY 2,200 and JPY 1,500, respectively from 1st June 2023.  Prices are subject to an 880 yen water charge and 10% service.  On all my visits I've been for lunch.  The restaurant has two tables for four, one for two and a counter seating four.  With a little perturbation, only one person deals with front of house but the new person is a sommelier and can speak English.  The food menu is mainly English.  Cutlery is only changed depending on the dish.  A four-glass alcohol pairing for JPY 4,400 was available on my first visit but was no longer listed on subsequent visits with only an eight-glass pairing available now priced at JPY 9,900.   A glass of Champagne is JPY 2,200 and was poor.  Non-alcoholic drink offerings are in need of improvement.

Kodama-san co-won “Promising Young Chef Award" as part of the 2023 Gault & Millau awards.  Disappointingly, Acid Brianza was included in the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2024 but without a star.  (Another chef I prematurely congratulated).  My first meal here was close to perfect and I was hoping the minor faults would be corrected on the next.  Subsequent meals haven't quite lived up to that and you can see a definite format in the menu but only the 'signature' koubo dish (and the brown butter cake) are fixed and providing you go in different seasons every other dish will be different and across five visits there's only been two dishes I haven't really liked.  So I'll keep going back.  There's nowhere else serving food like this in Tokyo right now.  This was one of the best new openings of 2022 and one of the most important restaurants to open in Japan in years.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1307/A130702/13272286/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.55 (food: 4.7, restaurant: 3.95)

📱 Booking: 🟩 Easy.  A day in advance is sufficient.  Book via phone, Tabelog or Omakase.  English spoken.

📍 Location: 

1F Park I building, 2-17-8 Azabu-Juban.  Dedicated street-facing entrance.  2 mins West from Azabu-Juban station Exit 1.
Map data ©2023 Google

📅 Visit March 2024

Lowest scoring dishes were the first canape of soramame tofu, sayori, strawberry kimchi, pistachio and the starter of hotaru ika, takenoko, nanohana, wakame, fermented tomato juice and horseradish.  Combinations didn't work for me, especially the hotaru ika dish which felt like a dish of very different (though high quality) things.  8.5-9/10 for these.  The fresh pea, Brussels sprout and hokkigai tart was stunning: 10/10.  The morel dish lists only three ingredients but it actually contained fukinoto, hotate, beef tartar, taranome, kogomi, that Comte sauce and a dab of raspberry sauce.  The raspberry was inspired.  Another genre-defying dish that you'd only get here.  9/10.  The dessert was the best since visit #1: a riff on îles flottantes: a coconut and lemongrass ice-cream, an orange and Kaffir lime custard and candied walnuts instead of almonds.  9.5/10.

Overall this was favourite meal at Acid Brianza since visit #1.  Notably there were only four other diners on this visit and the meal finished in well under two hours.

揚げ豆腐
Fava Bean/Shrimp/Strawberry

グリーンピース
Green Pea/Clam/Brussels Sprout

お浸し
Firefly Squid/Bamboo/Tomato

酵母
Yeast/Sweet Bread/Crown Daisy

飛竜頭
Truffle/Beef Tendon/Tofu

山
Morel/Mountain Vegetable/Comté

もち豚
Pork/Potato/Seasonal Onion

イルフロッタント
Orange/Coconut/Caramel

花粉
Pound Cake/Pollen/Brown Butter

💴 Damage: 13,068 (11k + water @ 880 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 1h40m

📅 Visit October 2023

The duck in the main dish was delicious, as was the rich salmis sauce that came  with it.  The garnish of anno imo was a bit small and I don't think the sansho and white miso was a good match.  The first dish proper of taro, ginnan, sanma, nasu, tomato water and seaweed oil had too much vinegar and was my lowest scoring dish - 7-7.5/10.  There were a few problems with temperature control: the fish and meat served on cold plates, the dessert which should have been served in a bowl that was frozen.  You need to mix the sweetbread dish well, otherwise the flavours are uneven.  Most of these comments are critical but most dishes I rated 8.5-9/10 and most dishes were new.

蓮根餅
Lotus Root / Truffle

子牛
Veal / Colinky Squash

秋
Mackerel Pike/ Taro/Tomato

酵母
Yeast/Sweet Bread/Crown Daisy

ガレット
Duck/Chestnut/Blueberry

南瓜
Fish / Squash / Comté

紀州鴨
Duck/Sweet Potato/White Sesame

シャインマスカット
Shine Muscat/White Chocolate/Pastis

花粉
Pound Cake/Pollen/Brown Butter

💴 Damage: 15,488 (11000 + 2 drinks @1100 ea + water @880 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h

📅 Visit May 2023

Sweetbread dish (back on form, with no funk), eel crepe dish and morel dish I rated 10/10.  Duck 9.5 (10 with better quality duck but can't complain at this price).  Corn dish and oyster dish 9/10.  Dessert I rated 7.5/10.  Could have been 8 if it had some crunch. 

Unagi was served with myoga, oba and walnuts in a crepe - a stunning combination of flavours and textures.  Morels were stuffed with scallop mousse and served with a plate-licking, rich sauce made from sansai, yamatoimo, charcoal oil and Comte.  The waffle was better than last time but (as before) is no longer replenished.

Previously you could 'cheat' and ask to be seated at 12:30 rather than 12:00 for lunch but still finish with everyone else around 2pm.  That's no longer possible and it's a 12pm start for up to 14 diners so the meal takes two hours, which is easier for the kitchen but frustratingly slow for the diner.

焼きとうきび
12:11 Baby Corn /Blueberry /Bergamot

牡蠣
12:19 Oyster /Tomato /Dill

酵母
12:31 Yeast /Sweet Bread /Crown Daisy

鰻重
12:44 Eel /Glutinous Rice /Soba

山
12:59 Morel /Mountain Vegetable /Comté

紀州鴨
13:18 Duck /Bamboo Shoot Japanese Pepper

苺と昆布
13:39 Strawberry /Kombu /Dango

花粉
13:51 Pound Cake /Bee Pollen /Brown Butter

💴 Damage: 13,068 (8800 + 2 drinks @1100 + water @880 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h

📅 Visit January 2023

Monkfish liver dish I rated 10/10.  This was a perfect combination of rich, fatty protein with narazuke, daikon, grapefruit, wasabi, yuzu, fresh and semi-dried tomato, a soup made from fermented tomato water and charred kombu to cut through.  The main of roast chicken I also rated 10/10.  Perfectly cooked: the flesh moist and the skin crispy.  Served with Jerusalem artichoke two ways (pureed and fermented).  The truffle sauce had bags of flavour.  The sweetbread dish was as before but slightly let down by either a sweetbread that was past its best or yeast that was too funky.  9/10.  Fried chicken in the soba crepe was moist, greaseless and full of flavour.  Hard to score a fried chicken dish more than 8.5/10 in a fine dining restaurant.  The scallop dish was served with a lemongrass and coconut sauce this time and had too much lemongrass for my taste.  8/10.  The waffle it was served with strangely didn't have much taste this time.  Dessert was not as good as last time.  Tofu ice-cream, fig leaf, kuromitsu, mikan, sugar crystals.  It lacked texture and at the end of the day was just fruit and ice-cream.  7.5-8/10.  The cake was served without fig jam this time.

羊心臟
Lamb Heart/Cauliflower/Blueberry

あんこう鍋
Monkfish Liver/Daikon/Tomato

酵母
Yeast/Sweet Bread/Chrysanthemum

ガレット
Chicken/Cabbage/Chili Pepper

ココナッツカレー
Scallop/Lemongrass/Coconut

伊達鷄
Chicken/Jerusalem Artichoke/Truffle

豆腐
Tofu/Mikan/Brown Sugar

花粉
Bee Pollen/Butter/Honey

💴 Damage: 12,100 (8800 + 2 drinks @1100 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 90m

📅 Visit August 2022

Most dishes I rated 10/10.  Sweetbread: butter roasted veal sweetbread, shungiku foam, broccoli, sweet yeast sauce, fried burdock, amazake.  An amazing combination of flavours and textures with a properly cooked sweetbread.  Scallop: perfectly cooked sweet scallop, pomme puree, Comte sauce, nori sauce.  Butter, cheese and potato is a 10 all day long.  Even the waffle, which was replenished, was a 10.  Dessert of fromage blanc, hazelnuts, tarragon, raspberry three ways (fresh, sauce, freeze-dried) had everything and was a giant portion.  The burned butter pound cake was sweet and salty, rich and moist and served with fig jam and bee pollen.  With good coffee to finish this was the most satisfying way to finish the meal.

Not quite up to the dizzying heights of those dishes was the sardine (9/10), duck crepe (8/10) which was spoiled, for me, by slimy okra, and the main dish of duck that was served with shiro nasu (which is never going to be as good as potato) and which needed to be hotter.

揚げ饅
Eel/Timur/Garlic

寝かせた芋
Potato/Fennel/Sardines

酵母
Yeast/Sweet bread/Crown daisy

ガレット
Duck/Blueberry/Soba

磯
Scallop/Comte/Seaweed

紀州鴨
Duck/Plum/Pistachio

酸と酸
Fresh cheese/ Raspberry/Hazelnut

花粉
Bee pollen/Fig/Butter

💴 Damage: 15,488 (8800 + pairing @4400 + water @880 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 1h45m