Jimbocho Den Restaurant Tokyo

Was really excited about being able to try Den after one of my friends snapchatted me a picture of the famous DENtucky chicken which is Zairyo-san's rendition of the KFC but stuffed with chamame / sticky rice and other Asian influences.

The meal started off with this Japanese pancake. This is a dessert dish normally served at the end of the meal and as Den is really innovative, I knew that I was going to taste something different. 

One bite and I tasted the savory-smooth foie gras and was a bit surprised at the pairing of plum jam (jam reminded me of the British scones...), white miso and pickled daikon

His wife is the manager / sommelier and she told us that we both could get a welcome drink, either a sparkling wine (champagne) or sake or a non-alcoholic fruit juice.

The bottles they gave were huge... I thought my champagne was average / a bit flat but we liked most of the sake pairings that they gave.

This is the special dish of sweet corn - I first fell in love with this when cooking at the CIA and the school had fresh New England Sweet Corn. This dish is a twist on the traditional chawanmushi (egg custard) and they use two different types of corn 1. pure white (more savory and grainier) and 2. gold rush (sweet, luscious, decadent)

Time for the highlight of the meal! DENtucky fried chicken. Haha Zairyo-san printed his face on the cover of the box and on the back of the box, he wrote a list of his favourite restaurants. He wrote Florilege (a restaurant nearby) and Aria in Australia as some of his favorite places.

He knew we were visiting from Singapore so he placed the Singapore flag inside.



Really interesting and delicious stuffed chicken!

 

GarDEN salad - this is his signature dish as he used more than 26 different kind of vegetables grown from a friend's garden nearby. I struggled. This was way too much vegetables for me. Each vegetable had a different texture and flavor and they challenged us to guess what a certain vegetable was, we guessed it (spoiler alert: baby cucumber - it didn't look like it at all). My friend was previously vegetarian so he was fine with it, but.. sigh eat your greens.




Otsukuri - a crowd pleaser, this sashimi dish of snapper and sea urchin was paired with fresh wasabi, vinegar and seaweed



Another signature - donabe (earthenware) rice
He asked us how much we wanted - small / regular / large
I'm normally a big eater but I'm not a massive rice eater so I said -regular-
My friend eats a lot so he asked for X-large / Mount Fuji size lol
Embarrassingly, I wasn't able to finish mine because I didn't like the white fish in the rice (baby anchovies / shirasu) but this is purely a personal preference and the dish was very well-prepared.




Dessert was peach marinated in mint, coconut mousse and amaretto jelly. Paired with a tea.

I was rushing off to the airport after this, did tell the staff beforehand but I think it may have not been communicated to the rest of the team... They gave out a mayo souvenir to most guest but we had to leave in a hurry...

Overall, a fun meal! :)

Den Tokyo (Top 50 in the World 2017)
Address: 2 Chome-3-18 Jingumae, 渋谷区 Tokyo 150-0001, Japan
Phone: +81 3-6455-5433