During the first week of May, I went on a trip to Japan, and was lucky enough to encounter a fantastic restaurant — Hakusyu Teppan-yaki.
The restaurant is located in a small street near the Shibuya subway station. It is relatively easy to find using Google Maps.
The menu can be seen outside the restaurant:
If this does not make sense, don’t worry — they have an English menu, and you probably want almost everything anyway.
For our experience, we ordered:
- 180 grams of Filet Kobe Beef + Veggie Salad (7500 yen) for each person
- Shrimps (1200 yen)
- Clam (1000 yen)
- Squid (1000 yen)
- Veggies (700 yen)
Before the meal, three dishes of sauces were placed in front of each person: vinegar and radish; soy sauce and raw egg yolk; salt and pepper.
The meal is entirely timed and cooked by the chef (“the chef” does not have to be one person; courses might be served by multiple chefs, but the experience is the same). You can consult him/her whenever you have questions, e.g., how to use the sauces.
A piece of bread was placed on the cooking table, which functioned as “plates” to soak oil when the food is served.
The first course was the veggies, including eggplants, onions and sweet potatoes. The three were not cooked in the exact same way: the onion and sweet potatoes were covered by a bronze lid during cooking.
Shrimps and clams were served next. Like with the onions, the lid was used as well, and when the lid was raised, our chef poured Brandy liquor on the seafood.
Then we proceeded with the squid. This time the chef pressed hard on the lid for around 30 seconds; this is the only time he used this technique. A piece of butter is also cooked and melted with the squid.
After the squid, it is finally time to prepare for our protagonist — beef. A bowl of salad is also served with the beef.
The beef was cooked with brandy and butter with the lid closed. Then the chef cut the beef into pieces.
That beef was the most delicious I ever had. The timing of the cooking was perfect — it was rare enough that I hardly had to bite it in order to swallow it, but also cooked enough that beef was filled with the aroma of brandy and butter.
Finally, the chef served some bean sprouts, which is the last dish, so we could finally eat the bread in front of us.
There are at least three chefs in the restaurant, and we were served by two chefs. Both chefs kindly speak to us in English when they serve the dish. We talked about where we came from, how we liked Tokyo and Japan in general, how to pronounce words in Japanese, and how our English were.
The restaurant was small, with only a bar table of 6, a table of 6 and a table of 4. Therefore, some reservation is needed to ensure a seat in the restaurant. You can call the restaurant to book seats (English and Japanese are both supported).
There are so many excellent restaurant in Japan, but if I could stay in Tokyo for a longer period of time, I would definitely revisit this place :)
They have a Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/hakusyu/timeline