Akasaka Kien – Fox and Cat Travels

We were very fortunate to have visited this place twice, once in 2014 and 2019. The notes here reflect our first visit to this restaurant.

Tucked away from the noise and busy main roads of Akasaka is a small, cozy Japanese kaiseki restaurant called Akasaka Kien. The menu is catered to the flavors and tastes of the season so each visit will vary. When we visited in spring of 2019, bamboo was the primary ingredient and each dish was elegantly designed around it to bring out the sweetness and crispiness of this vegetable.

Back to 2014, on a rainy Saturday, we visited this fairly affordable Michelin star restaurant for lunch. On weekdays, there is a cheap lunch set starting at ￥1700 and on Saturdays, there is a course that starts at around ￥4500. The prices have changed since our last visit, but it is still very affordable with weekday teishoku lunch set for ￥1900, but the kaiseki course now starts at ￥7480.

The restaurant itself is located on a quiet street just beyond one of the major highways/street that goes through Asakusa. Luckily, we were able to find the restaurant without any trouble.

Upon arriving, we were taken to a small banquet room. The rooms are thinly partitioned for privacy, but if you want to quietly enjoy your meal, it may vary depending on the surrounding guests. Regardless, the atmosphere was nice.

For this meal, we also ordered a bottle of Pouilly-fume. The light white wine paired beautifully with the delicate and delectable Japanese dishes.

The course started with a kind of tofu cake in a medium broth topped with crab and roe. The broth had the biggest impact for me and I would go back (for a third time) just to have a taste of that broth again. It was followed by a tempura dish and then a soup-like dish with eggs and bamboo. Then there was grilled fish served on beautiful patterned plates as you can see in the variation in the pictures below. Near the end, there was a rice dish, miso soup and assortment of pickles. Completing the course is a choice of dessert, but it was very hard to narrow down the options. We ended up picking four different ones so that we could “share” if we wanted. It was a fantastic ending to the meal.

If you’re looking for a glimpse into what kaiseki offers, I think this a good stepping stone. Although the prices have gone up quite a lot since 2014, I would still recommend giving this lovely, quaint Japanese restaurant.