<a target="_blank" href="http://www.yakiniku-futago.com/">Yakiniku Futago –
Tokyo&nbsp;</a>

2 Chome 11-10

New Shinbashi

Tokyo

Tel +81 3 6550 8725

BY NEAL MARTIN | MARCH 22, 2019&nbsp;

The Food

Tomato
jelly in a miniature beer glass, with edamame seasoned with truffle salt

Corn
with béchamel sauce, pasted pumpkin with cream cheese (pumpkin monaka), tempura of young ayu (sweetfish) and water shield on monaka, wagyu beef sushi with yuzu ponzu, radish and caviar

Shioyaki: thinly sliced
salted tongue, Ibérico fatty pork and beef foie gras made from pancreas, with
pineapple lemon sauce and yuzu gochujang

Wagyu
beef sandwich and truffle sandwich wrapped in newspaper

Ippin: steamed egg
pudding (foie gras chawanmushi) with
Moroccan sauceTokusen yaki: yakiniku beef from
Aomori (northern Honshu) with yuzu ponzu,
wasabi and garlic chips

Wagyu
sukiyaki with yolk sauce and rice

Shime: somen noodles
simmered for 8 hours with plum, Japanese ginger, broccoli sprout and edible
flowers

Vanilla
ice cream with mascarpone and coffee mousse frozen with liquid nitrogen

Herb
teas

The Wines

<table>
 <tbody><tr>
 <td>2015
 Domaine Ostertag Barriques Pinot Gris</td>
 <td class="wysiwyg-text-align-right">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 90</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>2015 Talley Vineyards
 Chardonnay Estate</td>
 <td class="wysiwyg-text-align-right">91</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>2013 Clos Henri Pinot Noir</td>
 <td class="wysiwyg-text-align-right">88</td>
 </tr></tbody></table>

Following
brief forays into selling personal indemnity insurance (a job as dull as it
sounds) and teaching English in Tokyo (if you meet a Japanese person with indecipherable
English, I probably taught them), I began my professional wine career working
in the London office of a Japanese importer. I admit to fibbing my way into the
position, feigning interest in wine even though I cared little about it beyond
its intoxicating attributes. My vinous passion blossomed a few months into the
job when I realized that a vocation revolving around fine wine was unlikely to
be bettered. In 2006 I quit that job to write full time; however, I keep in
touch with my Tokyo colleagues and meet up with them whenever I’m in town. They
have a knack for choosing exemplary restaurants, and this year was no exception:
we dined at Yakiniku Futago in the central district of Shimbashi.

Yakiniku
Futago is a small chain of yakiniku
restaurants, and Shimbashi is their flagship branch, where the quality of meat
and presentation aspire to another level. You enter through a dimly lit casual
bar and pass a freezer housing assorted joints of meat, each labeled with the
name of its owner, who can reserve a table and take another cut whenever they
feel carnivorous. It’s a neat way of guaranteeing repeat business and is a widespread
practice among Tokyo’s top meat restaurants.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1553281444013-futago+edamame+with+beer.jpg"> 

Futago edamame with beer

The
standard was set with the first course, a miniature pint of beer and two salted
edamame – except that the beer was in
fact a cunningly disguised cool tomato jelly that you scooped out with a miniature
spoon residing in a slide-out drawer under the table, along with other utensils
that would be required later. It was a clever and fun way to begin. 

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1553281470368-futago+amuse+bouches.jpg"> 

Futago amuse bouches

The
second course arrived as a quartet of amuses
bouches presented in a lacquered box. The pick of the ensemble was the sweet-pasted
pumpkin with cream cheese and a stunning wagyu beef topped with yuzu ponzu and a blob of caviar. The
third course was the first yakiniku
dish, so we got the carbonized coals burning. (Readers who read my Vinous Table
for Cobau should know all about that.) Called shioyaki (“salt-grilled”), this technique is usually applied to
fish, but can extend to meat and poultry. Our servings included tongue, usually
the thickest and requiring longer on the grill; Ibérico fatty pork; and a
melt-in-your-mouth foie gras made from beef pancreas. The chef recommended yuzu gochujang sauce, but I found it
overwhelmingly spicy and preferred a citric pineapple and lemon sauce that
complemented the flavors more discreetly. 

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1553281492164-futago+shioyaki.jpg"> 

Futago shioyaki

Next
we were each presented with a black lacquered box that upon opening revealed – cue
drumroll – a scrunched-up ball of newspaper. That was a bit of a
disappointment. But we unwrapped it to find a small square of wagyu beef
sandwich that was utterly delicious. Two mouthfuls and it had disappeared. The
fifth course took a break from the meat, offering a steamed egg pudding known
as chawanmushi, its sweetness offset
by a Moroccan sauce. The dish was quite homely and comforting, something you
could imagine eating on a cold winter day. (Unfortunately, it was about 100°F/38°C
outside.) This course could have served as a dessert, although here it gave the
taste buds time to ready themselves for the main attractions.

The
tokusen beef came from a herd in the
Aomori prefecture in the northern part of Honshu, Japan’s main island. Tokusen translates as “specially prized,”
so we are talking A5 quality wagyu (again, see my future Vinous Table for
Cobau). It arrived in a small treasure chest with liquid nitrogen pouring out
over the table, the fog gradually clearing to reveal two slices of meat. All it
needed was a “ta-da!” from the chef to complete the show. I made a mental note
to instruct my wife to present all dishes this way at home.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1553281519111-futago+wagyu.jpg"> 

Futago wagyu

The
meat had wonderful marbling. I flash-cooked mine for just 30 seconds on each
side before dipping it in a saucer of yuzu
ponzu sauce (and skipping the wasabi, as I find it overwhelms the purity of
flavor and destroys any wine you might be drinking). The result was so
delicious that I wanted to masticate in slow motion to prolong the gustatory experience.
The final meat was the wagyu beef sukiyaki,
the most heavily marbled of the meats. It was flash-grilled and then dipped in
raw egg yolk. Imagine the tastiest thing you have ever eaten; it was like that,
but even more delicious.

Since
we had no vegetable courses, we finished with somen (thin wheat noodles), served cold and delicately seasoned
with Japanese plum, ginger and edible flowers. The somen cleansed the mouth and revivified the senses. Finally, we
were each given a plate with one ball of vanilla ice cream, which seemed an underwhelming
end to a spectacular dinner. Then out came a bleached dried branch along which perched
four mascarpone and coffee mousses, frozen with liquid nitrogen. We were
instructed to pull out our drawers and reach for a small metal hammer, bash the
mousse to smithereens and mix it with the ice cream. This was another bit of
interactive fun and a perfect way to finish a sensational meal. All that was
left was a choice of eight infused teas, presented in test tubes so that we
could nose each one and make our selection. 

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1553281588124-futago+wines.jpg"> 

We
kept the wine modest and, incidentally, all served blind, commencing in the
Alsace with a fine 2015 Barriques Pinot
Gris from Domaine Ostertag. I
must admit that the 10-month barrique aging
misled me away from Alsace, but the wood is nicely assimilated. Ripe pears
mingle with freshly sliced lemon on the voluminous palate, which still retains
admirable elegance toward the simple, slightly honeyed finish. A delicious
Pinot Gris, though not long-term. Next came the 2015 Chardonnay Estate from Talley
Vineyards. I found much to like on the nose, where subtle tropical scents
of guava and passion fruit slowly give way to more resinous aromas. The palate
is very well focused, offering freshly sliced pineapple and Conference pear and
gradually gaining depth with aeration, though I would have preferred a little
more tension right on the finish. The 2013
Pinot Noir came from Clos Henri,
the vines located in Marlborough. I could not quite get a hold of the nose, which
lacked the immediacy I often find in New Zealand Pinot Noir; this one felt a
touch aloof. The palate is better, delivering dusky red fruit, quite assertive
tannin and lively red cherries and cranberry toward the low-key finish.

This
was a fabulous yakiniku set meal that
delivered everything you could wish for: mouthwatering meat from the finest wagyu, stunning presentation and a bit
of theatre. While the media tends to focus on celebrity sushi chefs, in fact many
of Tokyo’s restaurants tend to be noisy and lively, but that does not preclude cuisine
that is out of this world. I guess a restaurant like Yakiniku Futago doesn’t
take itself too seriously – only the quality of the food. Thanking my former
colleagues for their hospitality, I wondered how my life would have mapped out
if they had not given me an interview and I had not bluffed my way into my
first job in wine. I would not have been writing this, for a start.

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