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Image 1: Since 2017, the restaurant has relocated to Yatsugatake mountain foot of Yamanashi prefecture.
Around a petrol station, through a small road, go around the building and walk down the stairs - who would have guessed this is another Michelin 3-star restaurant in Tokyo?!
Image 2: www.aoyamaesaki.net
Closed on Sunday, Golden week, mid-August, and Christmas period.
Image 3: Only a few tables in the dining area...
Image 4: ...plus a counter seat area.
Image 5: There was only one set menu at USD$50 written in Japanese. The server was (barely) able to describe the ingredients of each dish.
Image 6: Japanese rice wine
Image 7: The cuisine here is dominated by organic vegetables as the chef conducted meticulous research on each product he uses.
Image 8: Salad of asparagus with sazae (a marine snail called turban shell) sauce. The asparagus was nice as expected but the sauce had a slight bitterness.
Image 9: A small sashimi dish of sea bream.
Image 10: Yuba (tofu skin) soup with fish eggs garnished with kinome, an aromatic herb from leaves of Sansho (equivalent to Sichuan pepper) tree. This fresh herb dominated this dish with a slight tongue-tickling sensation!
Image 11: Grilled rock fish smothered with mandarin and walnut sauce. First, it wasn't easy to eat this saucy flaky fish with chopsticks. Second, the sauce didn't stick to the fish and there was no spoon. Third, the citrus sauce didn't go well with the fish as it was nutty followed by a sweet aftertaste.
Image 12: Fried rice
Image 13: Miso seaweed soup
Image 14: That was it!
An interesting final course though - a whole chestnut with caramel!
Image 15: It was actually mashed but reconstructed the shape of a chestnut! This was the best item of the meal.
Image 16: Organic mixed herbal tea.
Image 17: Michelin 3-star?!
I did ask for a business card at the end to confirm that we didn't go to a wrong place. Hard to believe, but this was really a 3-star meal! Oh well, maybe their dinner menu would be more interesting...
