HONO 焱 OMASAKE

The evening opens not with a single dashi shot — as is common in many Edomae kitchens — but with a generous bowl of chawanmushi layered with foie gras, ikura, and forest mushrooms. This is a deliberate escalation of the genre’s register.

The custard itself is set to the precise quiver point: gelatinous enough to hold its bowl form when the lid lifts, but yielding completely on the spoon — a collapse that releases the trapped dashi in a flood of immediate warmth. The hue is the colour of old ivory with a faint amber wash from the mushroom liquor, punctuated by the translucent coral of ikura and the mahogany-tinged lobe of foie gras nestled within like hidden treasure. Texturally: the custard provides a yielding, custard-silk base; the ikura introduce a delicate aqueous pop; the foie gras delivers a fatty, unctuous weight that anchors the dish from floating into delicacy alone. Together, the mouthfeel is one of sustained richness folded into cloud-lightness — a contradiction that is the dish’s central achievement.

Presented in a lacquered wooden box from which white oak smoke billows as the lid is lifted — a moment of pure stagecraft that captures the attention of every guest simultaneously. What the smoke reveals is a careful triptych: Amberjack (Kanpachi), whose flesh is a firm, clean-grained white of near-translucency, cut thick enough to register resistance; Seabream (Tai), ivory-pale and delicate, cross-hatched faintly from ice-chilling which firms the surface while the interior retains a characteristic sweet creaminess; and Otoro — premium fatty tuna belly — whose deep ruby gives way in cross-section to the ivory tributaries of intramuscular fat, a marbling that reads visually as geological strata.

The smoke does not cook the fish. At this temperature and duration, it functions as an aromatic envelope — a fleeting impression of campfire and dry cedar that lingers on the nasal passage after each piece is consumed, creating a ghost of flavour that extends the sashimi’s aftertaste well beyond its physical consumption. It is genuinely effective, though the gold dust sprinkled atop adds nothing beyond visual shimmer.

The finest dish of the evening. The tempura discipline is immaculate: batter mixed cold (near-iced water is essential), under-stirred to preserve gluten strands and leave the flour only barely hydrated, producing a coat of extraordinary thinness — a gauze rather than a shell. Fried in sesame-neutral oil at approximately 180°C, the Amberjack’s batter achieves a pale gold colour verging on champagne, a hue that signals the precise moment of completion, before the oil’s heat over-dries the coating into opacity.

What follows in the mouth is among the most satisfying sequences in Japanese cooking: the audible shattering of the batter under the bite, a brief resistance before it yields cleanly, giving way to the fish within — moist, flaking in large saline chunks, the fat of the Amberjack having steamed inside the batter shell rather than leaching out. The shiso leaf tempura provides a contrasting herbal astringency and a slightly deeper olive-green hue; pumpkin purée adds sweetness and a smooth velvet contrast to the crisped exteriors.

Kinmedai (Golden Eye Snapper) with Kombu: The fish is cured briefly against kombu, allowing glutamates from the seaweed to permeate the flesh and deepen its natural sweetness without obscuring the delicacy of the fat. Hue: pale pink verging on translucent, with a faint green shimmer at the surface from kombu contact. Texture: satiny, coherent — it does not flake but rather yields in a single piece, clinging to the rice as intended.

Sea Robin with Yuzu: A more unusual choice. Sea Robin is a lean, firm white-fleshed fish of modest glamour, but here the chef’s choice of yuzu as the acidulating agent is well-judged — the bright citrus lifts the fish’s mild earthiness without masking it. Hue: white to alabaster. Texture: slightly denser and less yielding than the Kinmedai, providing a satisfying chew.

Aburi Engawa with Mullet Roe (Karasumi): The Engawa — flounder fin — is an anatomical cut prized for its layered alternation of muscle and fat. Aburi torching renders the fat just sufficiently to produce a characteristic lip-coating richness and a caramelised surface note. Paired with the powdered karasumi (dried mullet roe), whose amber-orange hue dusts the piece, the flavour is boldly saline and deep — the single most intensely flavoured sushi of the course.

Botan Ebi with Foie Gras: The pairing of sweet prawn and liver fat is a known Japanese-French bridge. The prawn’s translucent celadon-pink flesh, raw-sweet and faintly mineral, sits beneath a pressed sliver of seared foie gras whose caramelised exterior gives way to a trembling, barely-cooked centre. Texturally: cool snap of prawn against warm, melting liver — a hot-cold thermal contrast that extends the pleasure of the bite considerably.

The most genuinely surprising moment of the evening. A lobe of sea urchin — saffron-deep, dense, smelling of cold ocean — is placed by the chef onto the back of the diner’s hand. Then a soap bubble (likely a lecithin-based culinary foam) is blown directly over it, encasing the uni in a shimmering, iridescent membrane that trembles with each breath. The diner must consume both together before the bubble collapses.

The bubble is near-flavourless — it functions as texture and light rather than taste, delivering a sensation of cold, aerated nothing that amplifies the uni’s concentrated sweetness by contrast. The hand delivery forces an intimacy with the food that the counter format otherwise doesn’t demand. It is, unambiguously, theatre — but theatre in service of a heightened sensory experience rather than mere novelty. The uni itself is of high quality: a rich saffron-orange lobe of dense, creamy texture, free of the metallic edge that marks lesser product. It dissolves slowly, leaving a long iodine-sweet finish.

A white ceramic ring — styled with the proportions of a signet — is presented to each diner. The flat top bears a single nigiri of Chutoro, medium fatty tuna belly, crowned with a small quantity of caviar and finished with gold dust. The metaphor of the edible ring is self-aware to the point of playfulness; the chef’s wit lands.

The Chutoro itself is of serious quality: the marbling is abundant but even, running in thin white rivers through the ruby flesh. At room temperature, the fat softens into something approaching a confection — melting cleanly rather than coating. The caviar’s salinity and small textural resistance from each bead creates an effective foil to the fat’s unctuousness, punctuating the richness with mineral precision. The rice beneath is at the ideal temperature — body-warm, seasoned with red vinegar, grains retaining their individual structure while adhering as a coherent form.

Somen is Japan’s thinnest dried noodle — drawn to hair-like diameter, dried in long curtain falls, cooked in seconds. Here, served in a cold-smoke cloud of dry ice mist, the somen arrives in a cool tangle, glistening with a truffle-infused broth that coats each strand in an impossibly thin savoury film. Slices of wagyu — A4 or A5 grade, briefly introduced to heat — are laid across the top in a slight collapse, their surface browning catching the overhead light.

The textural interplay is the dish’s central pleasure: the somen strands are slippery, cool, and fine enough to offer almost no resistance; the wagyu, in contrast, yields with only a moment’s pressure, its fibres separated by fat into individual cells of concentrated beef flavour; the black truffle shavings — dry, slightly earthy, intensely aromatic — add granular interruption. The combination is neither Japanese nor French but occupies a productive space between them, and it works entirely.

The dessert arrives on an elevated platform — a cedar dais — beneath which a carbon ring is ignited, producing a shower of gold sparks. The theatrical finale is the evening’s most overt, and not unearned at this stage: the meal has built a grammar of performance, and the dessert honours it with a fittingly dramatic close.

The Monaka — a traditional confection of two thin wafer shells sandwiching sweet paste — is here filled with goma (black sesame) ice cream. The wafer shells, kiln-dried to a shattering thinness, are the pale amber of rice paper and yield with a pronounced crack, releasing the cold, dense sesame filling whose hue is an unusual charcoal-grey — almost inky — against the cream wafer. The flavour registers as nutty, slightly bitter, deeply roasted.

The accompanying fruit — a wedge of premium melon and several white strawberries — is eaten first on the advice of the chef, a sound instruction: the melon is of extraordinary sweetness and perfume, its orange flesh dense with Brix-measured sugar; the white strawberries, paler than the pink varieties but no less intensely flavoured, carry a tropical edge, almost pineapple, with none of the tartness that characterises red varieties. Both fruits read as the clearest expression of ingredient quality on the evening’s table.