Our time in Japan last month coincided with my wife Jun’s birthday so I wanted to find a special restaurant to celebrate together. I wanted to visit at least one French restaurant in Tokyo and decided on Crony. As noted in my review of Restaurant San in Seoul, we happened to be sitting next to Crony’s chef Michihiro Haruta and said hi to him after the meal. As we entered the restaurant, we saw the chef at the kitchen and were glad that the handsome chef remembered us. The modern French restaurant, which had gained critical acclaims over time including two Michelin stars, quite lived up to its reputation and our dinner at Crony was one of my favorite dining experiences during our trip to Korea and Japan.
According to the restaurant, the word “crony,” unlike the negative connotation in English, means a lifelong friend one can share tea with. The restaurant blends French and Japanese cuisine a bit of New Nordic sensibility and emphasizes sustainability from sourcing of ingredients and minimizing waste. What I found remarkable about the food at Crony was how each dish felt so refined without being over the top. The flavor profile overall was quite clean even though you can tell a lot of thoughts and efforts went into each dish. After a soothing tea (mugicha made with roasted barley), we started our meal with really delicious bites like ikura and sweet shrimp, Hokkaikogane potato and truffle, tuna (both chutoro and otoro cuts) with white eggplant and a donut with cured wagyu and cream cheese. The menu showed which part of Japan each dish’s ingredients came from and sometimes even the name of the purveyor. The plating of the dishes at Crony is really top notch, too, like the colorful combination of green beans, edamame and squid that evoked a taste of summer, or the chawanmushi with zucchini, clam dashi and caviar that Jun was particularly impressed with. The fried eel with truffle and onion was also terrific.
When we go to a restaurant, Jun typically doesn’t too much bread in order to save room for other dishes but at Crony she happily gorged on the sake sourdough bread that was indeed outstanding. Isaki, a prized Japanese white fish, came with fishbone dashi sauce and sansho pepper and was expertly cooked. I would say my favorite dish of the night was the lamb, which came with pickled watermelon and Palermo pepper. Jun and I have certainly had our share of outstanding lamb dishes but the juicy meat texture at Crony was really second to none. After a delightful bite of blue cheese ball (where the blue cheese explodes in your mouth to a sensational effect), we had a refreshing palate cleanser of Japanese pear sorbet and vanilla cream, followed by the main dessert of ice cream made from the same mugicha tea that was served at the beginning. All of the petit fours, from honey macaron to salted caramel to airy gâteau au chocolat to smoked madeleine, were also irresistible even though we were pretty full at this point.
Crony was surprisingly not terribly difficult to get a reservation unlike other high-end restaurants in Tokyo but I would still monitor when the reservation window opens on the TableCheck website. The service, not surprisingly from a fine dining restaurant in Japan, was quite attentive. We got a wine pairing curated by sommelier-owner Kazutaka Ozawa and it was one of the stronger pairings we had done this year, featuring mainly French wines across different parts of the country. Ozawa san, who spoke reasonably good English, kindly explained the story behind each wine that he brought out personally. The decoration and atmosphere of the dining space also aligned very well with the clean, minimalist ethos of the restaurant’s food. Jun and I had been to plenty of fine dining French restaurants in our culinary journey together so I thought prior to our visit to Crony that we had pretty seen it all. What I experienced at the restaurant, however, changed my mindset that there are still outstanding restaurants that can surprise us with their unique point of view. Crony was certainly one of the restaurants that made me smile as we headed back to our hotel.
KenScale: 8.75/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.5/10)
Address: 1-20-3 Higashiazabu, Minato Ku, Tokyo, Japan
Website: http://www.fft-crony.jp
Reservation via TableCheck (Japan’s online reservation app)
