Akasaka Shimabukuro (赤坂島袋)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🇯🇵 Kaiseki / 📍 Akasaka

📓 Visits: 1 (2024)

Soba is the restaurant speciality and the meal comprised three soba dishes. The first a near perfect combination of nihachi, botan ebi, lemon, nori and karasumi and the best dish of the meal. The third kamo nanban: the duck, grilled on tamahage, the dashi too good to leave a drop behind. The second dish of juwari cold soba was the weakest dish of the meal and I rated it 7/10. The owan I rated 8.5/10. The shokuji consisted of plain white rice. The rice was close to perfect but the karasumi and chirimen sansho was oversalted for me. Pictures of a meal identical to mine are in this Tabelog review.

Chef Youhei Shimabukuro was head chef at Ginza Shinohara for four years. The food is less flashy than Shinohara and Kitagawa and it's a smaller meal, but the cooking is a bit tighter. Service was excellent. The restaurant hadn't been open more than two months but you wouldn't have known that from the service. Shima-san doesn't lack presence and his handsome young sous chef was accomplished.

Unusually, for a kaiseki restaurant, you got an itemized receipt. Mineral water is charged at JPY 1,200 a bottle and tea at 500 yen a cup. No service charge is taken so pricing is very fair, some might say excellent in value.

If you don't like soba (I don't) it's hard to recommend, as you can bet on around three soba dishes being served any time you go. Moreover, I felt the duck soba was much better at Kanjo.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1308/A130801/13300943/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0

📱 Booking: 🟧 Omakase. No English menu. No English spoken.

📍 Location:

3F Kubo Bldg., 3-21-8 Akasaka. 1 min west from Akasaka-Mitsuke Station Exit 10 (Bic Camera). 3F multi-tenant building.
Map data ©2025 Google

📅 Visit November 2024

Kasugodai, pickles
Owan: kegani shinjo, tofu
Katsuo warayaki
Suppon to-age
Nihachi, botan ebi, lemon, nori, karasumi
Kuri age, shibukawa-ni, ginnan
Yaki fugu
Renkon moichi, Ezo awabi, horenso
Shinmai, kamasu shio-yaki
Juwari cold soba
Kamo nanban
Coconut ice-cream, Champagne jelly, fruit
Jimai tofu
Sencha

💴 Damage: 35,600

⏱️ Time taken: 2h5m

The Tokyo Gourmet

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