Quinto

⭐⭐⭐

🎁 Innovative ✖️ 🇯🇵 Japanese / 📍 Higashi-Yama

📓 Visits: 1 (2023)

Quinto is the first sister restaurant of Treis (review to come).  While Treis serves 'innovative' French, Quinto serves innovative Japanese food.  Initially it was a referral-only but since September 2023 they've opened up for general reservations.  Omakase is JPY 19,800.

Ichijiku with goma sauce is a classic kaiseki summer dish, here it's re-imagined with pistachio and pistachio shirae.  Ikura donburi another firm seasonal favourite in sushi restaurants, here the rice is replaced with moichi.  If you eat at a kaiseki restaurant in summer you're quite likely to find ayu on the menu, here the ayu is steamed whole inside goya.  The best dish of the night was that ayu.  Ayu is a bitter fish and steaming it inside a bitter vegetable was a master stroke and you could taste the bitterness of the goya as well.  The fish was served without a sauce but I didn't miss it.  There were a decent amount of expensive ingredients.  A massive cep and a large portion of hamo went into a consomme.  The burger was excellent and didn't need any sauces.  Unfortunately those were all the positives.  I'd take a classic goma ichijiku and ikura donburi any day over the 'innovative' versions here: they were not improvements.  Carbohydrate came in the form of freshly baked brioche and curry.  The brioche needed to be lighter and the curry had decent bits of beef tendon but was more spicy than meaty.  I probably wouldn't have asked for refills of these if I wasn't the only one dining that night but it seemed like a waste not to so this ended up being a very large meal.  The desserts were completely lacking in innovation and originality.  The 'pre-dessert' was three raw grapes mutilated so they could stand up on a flat plate.  These were billed as Shine Muscat but they were no better than any Shine Muscat you could buy in your local supermarket.  If you're going to serve raw fruit as a course in a meal costing 20K+ it needs to be better than that.  The 'main' dessert was the ubiquitously monotonous Basque cheesecake.

As at Treis, just about everything is prepared from scratch during the meal, there's only one chef and eight seats so the meal can last several hours.  Much to my surprise no-one else was dining that night so the meal took just over two.  I felt sorry for the chef and sommelier having to work that night for one person.  Neither the chef nor sommelier spoke English and no printed menus were produced so if you don't speak any Japanese you're going to be in for a long night.  If you do, then staff are engaging.

The food genre is quite different from Treis and there's a lot more going on on most of the plates so you can't really compare them.  I appreciate a chef trying to break the mould but the innovation was not an improvement, the overall problem being a general lack of depth of flavour throughout the entire meal.  20K for this quality and amount of food for dinner in Tokyo is good value but the only dish I'd want to eat again is the ayu.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1317/A131701/13285235/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 3.55

📱 Booking: 🟩 Same week via Tabelog or TableCheck.  No English menu.  No English spoken.

📍 Location: 

1-31-6 Higashi-Yama. ~15 mins from nearby stations.

Map data ©2023 Google

📅 Visit October 2023

Bottan ebi, ebi and tomato sauce
Ichijiku, pistachio shira-ae, pistachio
Ikura, moichi
Shika spring roll
Porcini, hamo consomme
Ayu
Hamburg
Gyu suji curry
Shine Muscat
Tea (or coffee)
Basque cheesecake

💴 Damage: 28,435 (18k + drinks @7850 + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h10m