• 3
• Slightly disappointing

Having read the raving reviews on HC we came away feeling a bit disappointed with our lunch here. The ambiance is a bit unsettling - feels very much like an attachment to a cooking school, which is exactly what it is, as you can see into their cooking studio. Something about it feels kind of artificial and less than cozy but I guess this *is* Tokyo so the aesthetic probably has some fans. In our opinion they need a consultation with a feng shui master to sort out the flow of ch'ii. Anyway that's not so important. What's important is the food and less so the service. We were asked to move tables after having started into our drinks and the tone was somewhat less than apologetic - the lady who did the deed was quite abrupt and matron-like which for Japan felt to verge on mean. The food... Well it's certainly not terrible and if you're in the area looking for lunch it's probably worth a visit. But given that it's a cooking school you'd expect a certain level of professionalism in the flavour profiles and we felt that was missing. It's fusion, so neither Japanese nor really Western, but the chef doesn't have great taste. It seems they throw random ingredients together in an attempt to be original and creative but it doesn't always work. Case in point - mint in the shiokoji cucumber appetizer confused more than it achieved. We also tried a tri-colour noodle dish only to find that none of the 3 sauces were particularly delicious and the noodles were average to boot. The vegetable balls covered in crunchy rice puffs were good and the miso soup was decent but for a cooking school we felt there was room for improvement. For access, check the review below ours as that description was really useful when our taxi dumped us in some random backstreet based on the shop address.