8/25/19
Happy Monday everyone! Today I’m writing about our recent experience at Sushi Arai 鮨あらい, a one-Michelin star sushi restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. Overall, it was an amazing experience, complete with incredibly fresh food and impeccable service. Below I will give a brief description of the restaurant and then go into the food pictures which, let’s face it, is the real reason why you are reading this post.
We made a lunch reservation for Sushi Arai about a month and a half in advance through a Japanese concierge site called TableAll. In total, the food cost us about $250 USD per person, which we paid in advance. BTW, this price is about the norm for one-Michelin star sushi restaurants in Tokyo. We’ve heard that being on time is late in Japan, especially for these types of restaurants, so we arrived about 15 minutes early to our 12 PM lunch.
The restaurant is located in a discrete building on the basement level. There isn’t much of a waiting area, so we stood for a couple of minutes behind the door until the waiters let us in.
Once they allowed us in, we were separated into two different rooms, one for Japanese speakers and one for English speakers. The idea is for the guests to be able to interact with their sushi chef, which I really appreciated. Our sushi chef was Takeru Watanabe, who has been with the restaurant since its inception. Chef Watanabe really made an effort to talk with the guests and explain each dish. He even had a book of all the different fish with Japanese and English translations.
The aesthetic of the restaurant was very simple, Japanese style – clean wood lines and hand-painted tableware.
Now, onto the fun stuff – the actual food! This was the entirety of the meal, in order of which it was served. Needless to say it was very filling.
Eggplant
- Octopus
- Tuna (I’m assuming yellowfin)
- Grouper
- Scallop from Hokkaido
- Atlantic custlassfish
- Small snapper
- Dotted gizzard shad
- Lean bluefin tuna (akami)
- Fatty bluefin tuna (chutoro)
- Very fatty bluefin tuna (otoro)
- Aji horse mackerel
- Sardine
- Prawn from Kyushu
- Trout roe
- Uni from Hokkaido
- Smoked sea eel
- Pickled cucumber and eggplant
- Clam miso soup
The rice for the sushi is seasoned with azaku red vinegar. I would say that out of all the pieces, my favorite was the otoro, or very fatty bluefin tuna. It melted in my mouth almost instantly, and tasted a lot like wagyu beef.
In summary, we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch at Sushi Arai. It is definitely worth making a reservation in advance if you know you’re going to Tokyo. Thanks for reading, and let us know if you have any questions or comments!
Food and Miles 