Mikuni

Mikuni (三國)

⭐⭐⭐

French / 📍 Yotsuya

📓 Visits: 1

Kiyomi Mikuni is a titan among chefs in Japan, having been in the business for 56 years.  Despite his reputation and training at some of the best restaurants in France, his signature restaurant never earned a Michelin Star and closed in 2022 with a Tabelog rating of just 3.66.  I never made it to Hotel de Mikuni before it closed but rumour was that he was planning to open a counter format restaurant.  In September 2025 he did just that, on the very same spot as his old restaurant, which was demolished and turned into a residential block, the new restaurant on the ground floor.  The menu is carte blanche and it's a jaw-dropping JPY 55,000 + 15% service and tax.

First a hot-out-of oven onion "tart" (actually a quiche) with truffle and truffle sauce.  A generous amount of truffle but I've had better quality and the dish overall is just fine but not memorable.  7.5/10 at this price.

Next maguro tartar and Oscietra caviar.  The caviar is the best ever.  The maguro can't live up to it.  Perhaps mixing in some toro (or even salmon?) rather than just akami would make it better?

After this a small foie gras chawanmushi, shark fin, double beef consomme, uni.  Fairly rich.  Unfortunately it's acrid in large parts from the uni being torched.

The fish course is hirame with a lobster mousse and lobster bisque, sauteed matsutake.  Hirame is a difficult fish to cook well and here it had the usual wooly texture.  The mousse ended up tasting like whipped cheese, as is often the case with mousses in classic French cooking.  The bisque had excellent depth of flavour, but the chef had overdone the Cayenne pepper - you shouldn't be left with a burning sensation in your mouth.

The main dish is beef.  You can specify a small, regular or large portion.  The beef is extremely fatty and I regret asking for large.  Cooked in a fry pan and oven, there's no real crust.  The sauce is made from red wine and hatchomiso.

Two kinds of bread are served, both baked to order.  The brioche is delicious.  The multigrain bread needs more salt for me.  You can choose from French butter or olive oil for lubrication.  If you still haven't had enough food before the (three!) desserts to follow a portion of rice is served alongside the main course.  It's Yumepirika and of course it's delicious.

The first dessert is melon flambeed with Hennesey Cognac and served with Madagasgan vanilla ice-cream.  The melon is fine.  The ice-cream is too airy.  The dish seems to be more about aroma than anything else.

Next is organic yuzu brulee.  Best dish of the meal!  The yuzu not over perfumed, the sharpness cutting through the rich custard and the sugar top adding sweetness.

The final dessert is (it's Autumn, so drum roll, please...) mont blanc.  Not just gold but platinum leaf on top, it can't not bring a smile to your face.  You can taste every component (except the metal): chestnut, cream, blackcurrant sorbet, sponge.  Unfortunately it's not more than the sum of its parts, none of which are exceptional.  And yet more animal fat.

Before tea and petit fours, tea and petit fours.  The chocolate in the matcha ganache is great.  The matcha is unfortunately clumpy, having not been whisked properly.

You're taken back to the bar at this point and served more petit fours and more tea.  It takes 20 minutes for the tea to come out.

It's an enormous meal.  Despite the amount of food it's served at a good pace within two hours (minus the wait for the tea), and that's despite the fact three people are thirty minutes late so there's a slow start.  Service is as you would expect from a restaurant of this level in Tokyo, but there are a few things that unsettle me: like the chef licking his fingers when he serves the caviar, the water served to you from a 500ml PET bottle, the wastebin brought from the back kitchen to the "stage kitchen" before the meal has finished, the kitchen assistant who has less enthusiasm than the staff in Crisp Salad Works, a "tut" and scowl from the chef when a guest isn't paying attention to him.

The restaurant reminded me of Naoto.K: French, counter-only, simultaneous start, expensive ingredients, almost everything cooked a la minute in front of you.  Except the cooking at Naoto.K is much better and it's a fraction of the price.

You're partly paying for the cost of the ingredients, you're partly paying for the staff (almost a 1-1 ratio of staff to diners), you're partly paying for the fit-out (wood, gold, chandeliers, curves, monogrammed Bernardaud porcelain) and you're largely paying for the name.  For privilege of being pampered for two hours, watching a legend cook for you and serve you directly (you won't need to ask for a photo with the Great Bear as it's programmed in), if you've got the money it's worth going once as a bucket-list experience.  But even if it had been half the price the cooking wasn't good enough for me to want to return.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1308/A130801/13313308/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 3.4 (experience: 4.0)

📱 Booking: Up to two months in advance by phone in Japanese only.  I booked early as I'm expecting this to be a difficult reservation.  Menu in Japanese and French.  No English spoken.

📍 Location: 

1-18-6 Wakaba.  10 mins south-west from Yotsuya Station.

Map data ©2025 Google

📶 Free WiFi? ✅ Yes.  Poor phone reception.

📅 Visit October 2025

Tarte à l'oignon au truffe.
Tartare de thon et caviar, gout de soja "Goyogura".
Flan de foie gras et oursin, consommé double.
Paupiette de barbue et homard, sauce homardine.
Filet de boeuf rôti, vin rouge et "Hachyomiso".
Melon flambé à la glace vanille.
Brûlée au "Yuzu".
Mont Blanc au cassis glacé.
Cuyère Chocolat.
Café ou thé et petits fours.

💴 Damage: 73,490 (55k + water @ 800 + drinks at 2300 + 15% + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h25m