Kikuhiro

There are relics which proof Pufferfish had been already eaten for over 2000 years in Japan. In the Meiji era, however, it had been prohibited to eat pufferfish because of its poison. After the war, a law was promulgated to permit only properly qualified person to prepare pufferfish. Currently it is treated as a high-class dish and is a specialty of Yamaguchi (the main area of production) and Osaka (due to there being many qualified chefs). You can, however, eat authentic pufferfish dish even in Tokyo. This is one of the rare pufferfish restaurants in Tokyo.

This restaurant is located in the downtown area in a historical building. You will recognize that this is a traditional Japanese restaurant from your first glimpse of the building. Inside the restaurant, there are Japanese-style rooms, seats in front of open kitchen and an array of sake. This restaurant has more than forty years of history. The walls are covered by the autographs of the famous people. Politicians such as a former Japanese prime minister, a former Minister of Education, and the names of culture and sports stars such as the wrestler Yoshida Shiori and the singer Go Hiromi and other famous people have visited this restaurant.

Basically, there are only three types of dishes in this restaurant: pufferfish, sushi and wagyu. Wagyu is offered as shabu-shabu only during the summer, but pufferfish and sushi are offered throughout of the year. You can select à la carte or a fixed menu.

You will be surprised at the price! Because all of the dishes are made of quite high quality ingredients, pufferfish itself is expensive, the homemade ponzu sauce ingredients are pricey, fish for sushi is purchased every day at Tsukiji, the highest A5 class of wagyu is selected for shabu-shabu, so you might think that the price will be high. That is not the case, however. The full course of pufferfish costs less than 8000 yen, whereas in Osaka it usually costs around 10,000 yen. The sushi dish with 10 pieces costs 1,500 yen, which is almost same as that of a run-of-the-mill conveyor belt sushi restaurant. The wagyu beef shabu shabu is about 5000 yen: all quite reasonable. These dishes are made by the second-generation chef who had been trained at Tsukiji Sushi Sei, the oldest sushi restaurant in Tsukiji. He is young, but his skill is quite amazing. The sushi he makes is of the highest class and contains just the right balance of air between the rice grains, so the firmness of the rice is perfect.