Yumanite

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🇫🇷 French / 📍 Yoyogi

📓 Visits: 4 (2024 x1, 2023 x1, 2022 x2)

Yumanite is another restaurant for which I can never seem to finish my write-up.  On my first visit I thought it was faultless: a rare 5.0.  My second visit was not quite as good: a couple of underwhelming dishes, a few elements that could be improved, ingredients that could be better in quality, but (most of all) an extremely slow meal.  With my third visit I feel comfortable with my understanding of this restaurant.

What's pushed this review over the line is finding out that prices are discounted for the first three months of 2024 and the restaurant is now open for lunch.  Annoyingly, I only discovered this in late February, otherwise I would have been more than once already this year.  But better late than never and if you're considering a visit try to book before prices go up after 23rd March.  If you can't make it by then I still recommend you go, and I will keep going back.

My evaluation of each meal follows but I'll provide an overview of the restaurant and summarise.  The creativity, execution and quality of cooking at Yumanite is equal to or better than at any of the top French restaurants in Tokyo: Quintessence, l’Effervescence, Ete, Esquisse, l'Osier, l'equateur, Sugalabo, Sezanne, I've been to them all.  There's complexity in every dish, an amazing attention to detail and almost every dish is complete in terms of flavour and texture.  Desserts are so often the Achilles heel of a restaurant.  The top places can afford to employ a dedicated pastry chef and it shows when they do and shows when they don't.  Pastry is actually one of the Yumanite's specialities and the chef occasionally runs dessert-only courses.  At dinner it might be something else but the signature seasonal millefeuille is always on the new lunch menu and is also available for take-out orders.  The drinks are as outstanding as the food.  Several choices of homemade non-alcoholic drink are available.  Only Ukiyo (review here) has comparable non-alcoholic drinks.

So if the food is as good as it looks and as I've described you're probably wondering why you've never heard of this restaurant, who's in the kitchen and how much it costs.  All the top restaurants have two things in common: (1) dinner will cost you 30K++ and (2) they all have a team of people in the kitchen.  There are many bistros in Tokyo where there's only one chef but it's not really possible for one person to produce a multi-course menu of complex food.  My heart always slightly sinks when I go to a French restaurant for the first time and see there's only one chef - you just know the food is going to be limited.  This makes it all the more remarkable that dinner at Yumanite is cheap and that it's a one-man band.  Yuma Ishizaki previously worked at 2-Star Florliege and another restaurant you've probably never heard of, Nine Stories.  Nine Stories was another under-the-radar restaurant that had two short lives, but when it was open served an amazing 8 or 9 course dinner for the incredible price of JPY 5,000.  That talent was always going to emerge somewhere else and when I saw Yumanite open in November 2021 I put it top of my list.

Originally dinner was priced at JPY 12,000.  From 1st Jan to 23rd March 2024 dinner is JPY 9,900 but goes up to JPY 16,500 thereafter.  Pairing options are available and I recommend the full non-alcohol pairing.  Since the beginning of 2024 lunch is served on weekends and holidays and is priced at JPY 8,800.  Until 15th March a weekday-only lunch is available priced at JPY 3,500.  There's simply no better value modern French restaurant in Tokyo.

So far, so amazing, but I've chosen my words carefully and only talked about the cooking, the drinks and the cost and there's more to a restaurant than that.

You'll find a smattering of expensive ingredients in the food here: caviar, foie gras, awabi, bottan ebi, truffle, zuwaigani have all made an appearance.  Beef has only appeared as bresaola.  Fugu and uni have never appeared.  At this price, you're not going to get an abundance of trophy ingredients (and even 30k won't buy you wagyu at Sezanne) but the fact that Ishizaki-san can still find a way to incorporate some luxury into his course makes the pricing even more incredible.  Having said that, the quality of the proteins is not the best and they are sometimes a little small in size.  The other reason the top restaurants are so good is because they use the highest quality proteins.  I mentioned the specialisation in desserts.  They're large and good, but there's room for improvement (raw whole cherries with their stalks in look pretty but are clumsy).  Though it's still incredible value, the menu has got shorter each time I've been.

The biggest gap in the experience at Yumanite compared with a top place is hospitality.  As I mentioned, Ishizaki-san runs the restaurant by himself.  Inevitably, it's a simultaneous start.  At my first meal there was just one other person dining and the meal took just over two hours.  But on my second meal there were two other groups of two diners and the meal took nearly three and a half hours with waits of up to 25 minutes between courses and bread slow to replace.  If Ishizaki-san added 1,500 yen to the price of the course then (providing he got 4 diners a night) he could take on an assistant for service and I'd happily pay the extra if it took 45 minutes off the length of a meal.  (It seems he's looking for someone but hasn't found anyone yet).  Ishizaki-san is friendly if you can get him going but doesn't speak any English and for some reason he still insists on wearing a mask.  Seating is counter-only (8 seats).  Music ends up being a bit repetitive.  Ventilation could be improved.  The restaurant can be cold and several hours perched at a counter can get tiring.  Cutlery is replaced between dishes and there's Molton Brown soap in the toilet.  Bet you've never heard that said before in the same sentence.

If it wasn't for the length of meal I'd be here once every couple of months.  There are a ton of restaurants in Tokyo that don't have a PR machine, Michelin Star, listing on Omakase or legion of Instagram influencers behind them but are churning out food as good as you'll find anywhere else and charging a fraction of the price.  Yumanite is one of them.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1318/A131810/13264596/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.8 (cooking: 4.7, ingredients: 4.0, service: 3.8, value: 5.0)

📱 Booking: 🟩  At least a day before via TableCheck only.  Credit card required.  100% day-before cancellation charge, 50% two days before.

📍 Location: 

2F JP Bldg, 1-1-20 Yoyogi.  2F multi-tenant building.  (Previously occupied by Ardoak which has now moved to Kamakura.)  2 mins from Yoyogi-Koen station Exit 2 and Yoyogihachiman station South Exit.
Map data ©2022 Google

📅 Visit March 2024

🕛 Lunch

Canapes were merely 9/10 instead of the usual 10/10.  Fresh peas in the blancmange were super.  Pate de campagne was prize-worthy: packed with meat (pork, shika, foie gras), super perfume of red wine, perfect hot water pastry and jelly, refreshing side of white asparagus and mustard (10/10).  Shirako meuniere with truffle, pomme puree and fried kale was a perfectly executed classic (10/10).  The main was more of a bistro dish: pork with a saute of vegetables.  Again, the quality of the pork was such that you couldn't score this dish so highly.  8/10.  Millefeuille was available as an extra charge but I declined: I had it before at Nine Stories and it wasn't as good as I hoped.  The usual campagne was included (not pictured) though without the moreish burnt negi brown butter.  Drinks: Hibiscus and then craft cola were hard to beat.

Even without the inclusion of dessert this was at least half the price you'd expect to pay for a meal like this.  Bonkers.

Brussels sprout, pork cheek, cheese, sable
Boudin noir, kumquat
Cauliflower blancmange, fresh peas, pea shoots, salt jelly
Pate de campagne
Shirako meuniere, truffle, pomme puree, fried kale
Pork, vegetable sautee

🍸 Hibiscus
🍸 Craft cola

💴 Damage: 5,100 (3500 + 2 drinks @ 800 each)
⏱️ Time taken: 45m

📅 Visit August 2023

🕕 Dinner

Canapes were all 10/10 again.  Bottan ebi and peach soup needed more of each to score a 10 and I'm not convinced avocado belongs on the menu in a fine dining restaurant.  Kamo nasu, bresaola, sauce Périgueux, truffle, gyutan, foie gras and celeriac puree sounded better than it tasted: one umami element too many and gyutan not the best (the kaki variation of this dish last time was much better).  Awabi chawanmushi had plenty of awabi but I'm not a fan of capers and flavours were very strong.  7.5/10.  Ayu pie needed more ayu and I wanted to taste the bitterness of the fish.  The pastry was exemplary, sauce great and using cabbage instead of a crepe was a master stroke.  8.5/10.  Venison had no taste.  On the other hand the sauces were stunning: a vanilla kabocha puree that tasted like creme pat and the best beetroot puree ever, tasting like jam.  A different take on the signature millefeuille but it was assembled a-la-minute for six diners and took 15 mins to plate.

18:44 Goya, cheese sable
18:46 Smoked croissant, aori ika, caviar
18:48 Boudin noir, red wine jelly, cardamon sable
18:55 Pancake, edamame mouse, sakaramasu, tonburi, black olive
19:06 Momo gazpacho, bottan ebi, cheese granita, avocado, myoga
19:25 Kamo nasu, bresaola, sauce Périgueux, truffle, gyutan, foie gras, celeriac puree
19:47 Awabi, capers, chawanmushi, awabi dashi kimo, uddo frit
20:09 Ayu, hotate pie
20:35 Sika, vanilla kabocha puree, beetroot puree
21:11 Grape millefeuille, elderflower jelly, camomile ice-cream

🍸 Taiwan tea kombucha, lemongrass, peach, bay, summer savory
🍸 Sun Rouge kombucha, akareso?, elderberry, thyme pepper
🍸 Decaffeinated coffee
🍸 Gyokuro, ao yuzu, oba, whey, sansho
🍸 Rooibos tea, fermented dried tomatoes, sumac, dried strawberries, saffron
🍸 ???

💴 Damage: 18,000 (12k + pairing @5k +1k?)
⏱️ Time taken: 3h

📅 Visit July 2022

🕕 Dinner

The four opening canapes I scored all 10/10.  Better than faultless, they were sublime, the kind a food that makes you sigh, close your eyes and rock back in your chair.  I was going to forgive the cauliflower blancmange and coriander jelly dish being ever so slightly too salty but then there were a couple of genuine faults.  The second and third pieces of bread (the same homemade campagne) were slightly more stodgy suggesting that they'd come from a loaf that had been underproved.  So marked down from 9.5 to 8.5.  Compared with what you'd get in a top sushi restaurant, the awabi in the awabi kimo chawanmushi was a bit rubbery, the chawanmushi was not quite rich enough, the rice cracker was like all unseasoned rice crackers (a scouring agent), the bouillabaisse wanted to be stronger and Pernod might have worked better than the metallic saffron.  7.5 for this dish.  The main dish of duck I scored 8.5.  The duck was excellent, as was the sauce, but wasn't the best I'd ever had and the vegetable garnish was underwhelming.  The fish dish I scored 8.25/10.  Nothing wrong with it, just not electrifying like previous dishes.  Dessert 8.5 - no faults as such but didn't make me sigh - perhaps a kick of some alcohol could have done that.  Aside from the canapes, the best two dishes were the ayu beignet with ayu butter and okahijiki (10/10) and the kaki wrapped in home-cured wagyu, celeriac puree, sauce Périgueux and truffle (10/10).  Overall, a superlative meal but just not quite perfect and very slow.

18:07 Edamame, cream cheese, parmesan pastry, iwashi
18:09 Croissant, caviar, aori ika
18:13 Boudin noir mousse, cherry, spiced sable
18:23 Corn crepe, corn puree, foie gras terrine, young corn tempura
18:36 Momo gazpacho, ebi, yoghurt powder
18:50 Cauliflower blancmange, coriander jelly, zuwaigani
19:06 Ayu beignet, ayu butter, okahijiki
19:30 Kaki wrapped in bresaola, celeriac puree, sauce Périgueux, truffle
19:46 Awabi kimo chawanmushi, saffron bouillabaisse, rice cracker
20:11 Ara, girolles
20:26 Cherry sorbet
20:36 Kamo, blackcurrant, beets, potatoes, courgette pasta
21:02 Tea (or coffee or herb tea)
21:10 Cheesecake cream, momo, momo sorbet biscuit, fennel macaron, shoga jelly, custard

🍸 Cherry, hibiscus, clove, star anise kombucha
🍸 Cucumber, lemon, dill, juniper
🍸 Lemon verbena, sansho, pineapple
🍸 Gyokuro, mango, anise hyssop
🍸 Coffee, passion fruit kombucha
🍸 Elderflower, melon, lychee, fennel
🍸 Lemongrass soda
🍸 Grape juice, tea

💴 Damage: 18,000 (12k + pairing @5k +1k?)
⏱️ Time taken: 3h25m

📅 Visit March 2022

🕕 Dinner

No notes.  It was flawless.

18:07 Beet jelly, boudin noir, ringo jam, chocolate sable
18:09 Croissant, duck ham, caviar, sour cream
18:11 Beets tuile, foie gras, inoshishi
18:14 Pig's trotter croquette, fukinoto
18:23 Shin tama negi blancmange, green peas, ika
18:35 Hamaguri parsely gratin; hamaguri chowder, sansai
18:44 White asparagus two ways, strawberry, you? jelly, saba, shiso granita
18:57 Potato pancake, smoked salmon, truffle, beurre blanc
19:15 Amadai, shinguki, sakura ebi, soramame risotto, madai shinguki Thai broth
19:24 Raspberry sorbet
19:29 Kamo, kinako, kabu
19:37 Duck leg, liver sausage
19:49 Hassaku creme brulee, coconut mousse, rosemary salt meringue, yoghurt ice powder
19:52 Herb tea (or coffee or tea, not pictured)
19:56 Tiramisu, coffee jelly, mascarpone, rum, strawberry sorbet, chocolate crumb, pastry
20:02 Caramel chocolate, langue du chat, canelle

💴 Damage: 15,200 (12k + 2 drinks @2.2k? +1k?)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h10m