The final fine dining booking I made for my recent Tokyo trip (other restaurant reviews, as well as a summary that incorporates a host of more casual spots, are on my profile), I hadn't initially planned on visiting Nikuya Tanaka Ginza, but felt compelled to book after eating the most exquisite beef at Ginza Kitagawa. Given that Nikuya Tanaka specializes in beef – with the beef on offer the night I dined being Specialty Matsusaka beef, bred for 52 months, from breeder Kazuto Hamaguchi – I was optimistic that I would try beef as good as that from Ginza Kitagawa. While that wasn't quite the case, my visit to Nikuya Tanaka Ginza was still enjoyable, with excellent service, a friendly atmosphere, and some very fine beef dishes.
The Ginza outpost of a beef empire, Satoru Tanaka (a third-generation bovine specialist) opened the restaurant in 2019, three years after the flagship, Nikuya Setsugekka in Nagoya, opened its doors. Since then, Tanaka-san has gone on to open restaurants up and down the country, as well as in other countries in Asia. And while beef is of course the star (this is wagyu kappo cuisine, after all), there are other fine ingredients to be had here, such as snow crab, uni, caviar and matsutake mushrooms.
The seasonal appetizers may not have been much to write home about – the hassun comprising caviar, a beef roulade and fig – but the beef and sea urchin sashimi, served with a dab of wasabi and set upon a shallow pool of soy sauce, was the real start to the meal; fatty meat complemented by creamy, cool uni, and a hint of spice from the wasabi, made for a luxurious beginning.
The braised taro stems brought things down the hill with gentler flavours, before the tataki moved things back up a notch, with the soy sauce and wasabi once again being accompaniments to the beef tataki, though with the soy sauce now strewn through with green onion, and salt on the side to bring out the rich flavour of the meat. A soup of female snow crab followed, the flaky meat sitting in a clear broth that was vegetal and only sparingly salted. At this point, I was quite enjoying the alternating "rich beef dish followed by softer seasonal dish" menu, though it would be deceitful to suggest that the two types of dishes were on par – the beef dishes were clearly favoured, not just by myself but also by the other diners (Nikuya Tanaka Ginza's main room counter seats nine, and it was a full-house the night that I dined). Propitious, as what followed was all beef, until the dessert. The beef tenderloin tempura (thick and piping hot, with the tender interior nicely juxtaposing the crispy shell) and beautifully marbled, thinly sliced sirloin "shabu shabu" followed, and were the two highlights of the savoury courses, the latter in particular having a gorgeous melt-in-the-mouth quality that was not bettered all evening. The tenderloin steak, cooked over a binchotan grill, was succulent with a great sear (though eclipsed by the tenderloin offered at Ginza Kitagawa a few days before), and the chestnut rice with beef sukiyaki was a pleasant (if not greatly inspiring) end to the savoury courses. For dessert, Japanese musk melon, which blew me away with how sweet, soft and syrupy it was. Who knew that the highlight of an outing to a wagyu kappo restaurant would be a slice of melon?
An enjoyable meal with some very good beef dishes, the hefty price tag (49500 yen for the dinner tasting through Omakase) and lack of real excitement (it's beef cooked very well, is the bottom line) makes it the least likely that I will return to, of the restaurants that I visited during this trip.
Courses:
- Hassun (pictured second, then onwards)
- Beef and sea urchin sashimi
- Yoshino-style braised taro stems
- Specialty Matsusaka beef tataki
- Clear soup with Kobako Crab
- Specialty Matsusaka beef tenderloin tempura
- Sirloin "shabu-shabu"
- Ramen with rich beef broth
- Specialty Matsusaka beef tenderloin steak
- Chestnut rice with beef sukiyaki
- Dessert of the day
by MaaDFoXX