Den, Top Kaiseki Restaurant in Tokyo with 2 Michelin Stars 傳

This week I went to the #1 Kaiseki restaurant and #19 overall restaurant in Tokyo which also ranks in the top 50 restaurants in all of Japan according to Tabelog. Needless to say my expectations were extremely high. We were welcomed in extremely kind fashion by all the staff. The woman who served us also happened to speak seemingly fluent English, which was very useful for my 2 non-Japanese speaking friends and for me when there was something I didn't understand. Last but not least, the chef also showed his face before the meal began, wishing us a pleasant meal. After ordering some drinks we were served our first course.

Interestingly enough our first course came packaged just like Japanese candy. Inside was something that also looked a lot like Japanese candy. However, the insides were not red beans or some grean tea like filling. The crackers were filled with Foie Gras and pickles instead, which tasted great!

The second course was even more interesting than the first.

Packaged in a real Pringles box, woow!

 How's that for a smile!

 

Once we opened up this very interesting packaging, we were happy to find the smiley faced chips inside instead of real Pringles. This however did not mean the Pringles had gone to waste. On the bottom of the can was Tenpura fried fish. The Pringles had been used for the Tenpura batter. The chips were the best I've ever had and the Tenpura fish was honestly even better! Awesome, feel-good dish!

For the next course we got something slightly more normal, although only slightly.

 Little frog-like beans swimming in a bath of frog eggs.

This dish looks like it's taken straight from a Studio Ghibli movie. I was the only one who thought so, but the waitress definitely took a note of that. We were told to drop the frog eggs into the cup, mix it and eat it. It was mainly very refreshing. It tasted quite nice, but the most awesome part about this dish is definitely the way it looks and the attention to detail.

The next course is quite easily the most hilarious one I've ever eaten in a restaurant ever anywhere!

 Uh-oh!

 It's still a mystery to us how they knew 2 of us were Dutch! We never told them!

Phew!

When they told us that because the next course would take a while to prepare they got us something so we wouldn't get too hungry, we weren't really sure what to expect. When they brought out a can of Kentucky Fried Chicken, we didn't really know what to think, until we opened up the box. Somehow there was a Dutch flag in there! Immediately I started thinking back to the reservation I made by telephone about 1.5 months earlier. I could've sworn I hadn't told them my Nationality. In fact Í'm almost certain! I still don't know how they figured out that me(and 1 of my friends) were Dutch, our best guess is they must've overheard some sort of conversation shortly after we entered and improvised, but how they had a Dutch flag available and all... pretty astonishing!

The worries about the food proved ungrounded aswell! The chicken was of high quality, with no bone and a very nice filling of a Risotto like substance. Epic dish!

Now for a few normal courses. Honestly this time!

A simple piece of fish, with a sauce made from dried plums and topped off with Wasabi.

It happens to be the case that one of the 2 Japanese foods I don't like is dried plums, the other one being Natto. It did taste a little like dried plums, but not nearly as strong which made it allright. To say I really liked it though would be quite a big overstatement. This was just not my thing.

This dish consisted of a fried fish in the middle, A piece of very interesting green bread on the left and a pâté on the right. Unfortunately enough I don't remember what any of it was made of. I do however remember the fish tasted great! As did the bread, but the pâté tasted very strong. Once I put a little of it on the bread it was okay, but still quite strong and we'd still be left with a lot of left-over pâté with no more bread to eat it with. So I wasn't that big a fan of the pâté. Not bad, but a little too intense for my taste buds.

Onto course number 7.

And this salad, ladies and gentlemen, was by far the best course of the evening. I quite like salads actually, but to go to a 2 star restaurant and have the highlight of the night be a salad is not something I'd ever expect. This salad was simply outstanding however!

There was a wide variety of the freshest of the fresh vegetables, a crispy tenpura thing and it all looked great just like the other courses. However the most fantastic thing about this salad was as unexpected as the salad itself. I normally hate tomatos and while I can eat them I've always disliked the taste unless it's like a tomato sauce on a pasta. This tomato was something special though. I'm not sure exactly what they did to it, but they said the process took a few days. The result... simply unbelievable. Not quite as good as the Foie Gras I recently had at Ukai Tei in Yokohama, but definitely one of the very best pieces of food I've ever eaten. Too bad it was just one tomato, because I could eat these things all day, every day!

This soup was made with linguistine, which according to one of my friends is a more luxurious version of lobster? To be honest I prefer actual lobster. The soup wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything special either. Pretty straightforward.

 

 Small, Medium or Large? Large of course!

 Large portion. Was bigger than it looks.

This course was really quite ordinary. It tasted good, but compared to most of the meal this was a little simple. The pickles and miso soup were definitely nothing special. The rice does deserve a little bit more attention though. The little pieces of beef mixed into it were a great addition.

Last up was dessert.

A little bit like the pâté from earlier the dark sugary(don't mistake it for chocolate) paste had an extremely intense taste. I first tried eating them apart, but that didn't work out so well, then I ate them together, which still was too intense. Finally when I decided to stir it up completely and eat it like that, it tasted mildly and quite good. The waitress said nothing about mixing and just said 'eat them together', so I'm not sure I ate it the way I was supposed to, but mixing is definitely the way to go here in my opinion.

Overall I really enjoyed this meal. The atmosphere in the restaurant, the staff, the chef and their sense of humor is fantastic! I also thought it was quite good value for money at 15000JPY/person. Which included a lot of drinks and quite expensive bottled water. But what will definitely make me come back is the enthusiasm of the staff and especially the chef. When we left the restaurant, the chef and the waitress who had served us came all the way outside and waved us goodbye until we were around the corner and out of sight! Hilarious AND great food and a very fun evening are guaranteed at 傳!