The chef’s creativity is evident—the Sea Urchin Chawanmushi was excellent and the Eel Brain Soup was a unique highlight. However, the Unagi Burger felt unnecessary (eel isn’t as natural a fit for burgers as cod or salmon). My main issue was the value and pacing. With only seven seats and a capacity to cook just three portions at a time, the wait for the main course was far too long. To top it off, the large portion of eel rice was exhaustingly rich and greasy by the end. If your goal is simply to have a satisfying, high-quality bowl of eel rice, the price-to-performance ratio (CP value) here is quite low 25,000 JPY per person

+3

You don't come here for a just traditional 鰻重 just rice box with Unagi on top. You have to come here for something new, unique, and imaginative that you have never tried before and this restaurant didn't disappoint. Many things exceeded my expectations. There was one eel dish similar to a sashimi but technically not raw that was spectacular in texture and taste. For eel on rice, the chef also said the eel was caught naturally from Chiba prefecture. You know that the eel was good for the traditional charcoal grill inside the restaurant.

+3

You go up a staircase to get here. The food was good. The chief does not use any help. The process took about 2.5 hours. There was another group with a different course set at the same time as us so we spent more time watching the chief prepare food for two different meals, than eating. The dishes made the presentation cute. One dish was scrambled eggs with eel and dessert was vanilla ice cream with grapes. The cost was high for the quality and presentation.

The unaju and shirayaki were actually pretty good. I didn’t feel like the western-fusion concept added any value (e.g. jamon + unagi?), but the unagi was well grilled, and had the right mix of fatty and crisp. In terms of style, it was less pillowy but more crispy than Uomasa. My main beef with the place was with the way they pushed us to order a wild caught unagi. The staff were quite insistent that we get one to compare with the farmed unaju, but the price turned out to be ¥28500, which is a ridiculous premium over their standard unagi. Granted, that’s the market price, but the most unforgivable part came when the chef told us that both bowls we had were farmed, only to sheepishly return 30 seconds later and say that the bowl on the right was wild caught unagi. When presenting something this expensive, how can you mix it up? It did not give me any confidence in the dish at all. Overall, there are much better places in Tokyo (and Shizuoka!) for high end unagi, without the service pressure.

The food presentation is very artsy and the service is highly attentive. Yet, the taste of the overall course is less impressive, and the unaju served at last also tastes a bit dry… Maybe my expectation for this place was too high given all of its Tabelog and Google ratings.

+1