Matsugen

Tons of hype surrounded the opening of this restaurant.  Lots of blogger reviews, lots of official reviews, and last Wednesday, Bruni himself dropped 3 stars on the new joint venture by Jean-Georges Vongrichten and the Matsuhisa brothers of Japan.  So I’m not going to tell you about the great light in the restaurant, the high ceilings, the attentive service; these are all things you expect from a restaurant of this caliber.  We’re just here to talk about the food, mm’k?

Well, one gratuitous shot of the interior communal table.  This shot has been in tons of pubs already, and done much better by more talented photographers, but whatever, I took this one, I like it, I felt like showing it.

I happened to have made reservations before finding out that Bruni would be dropping a review on Matsugen that very day.  I’m glad I did so before the review, because it will probably be pretty hard to get a spot now… although the reservations were for lunch, not dinner.  I roped StB into going with me – who better to go with than the girl with whom I share soba tastes? 

We started off with the uni with yuzu jelly appetizer ($24).  This dish was the very reason I’d sent StB an email two weeks ago with the subject line “Must go here.  You must come.”  We both like uni (sea urchin gonads) a lot, and we’ve both enjoyed the uni soba at Soba Koh.  (Though there is a dish on the menu here that is uni soba, StB rationalized to me that if we split the appetizer of uni and I ordered the soba dish I wanted, it would get me the ingredients I wanted to eat… all of them.) 

When the dish came, we both peered at it, a bit surprised.  We’d both expected less yuzu jelly- not that there wasn’t enough uni, just rather, so much yuzu jelly glopped on top, it didn’t look that appetizing.  Yuzu can be overpowering if applied wrong!  Fortunately, as we dug in (there were two spoons), the yuzu jelly was gently flavored and just left an accent of taste.  The uni was smooth, fresh, and while briny, was not overwhelmingly so.  However, given the way this was served, I blasphemously suggested it possibly could have been better served with bread – though upon reflection, perhaps rice crackers (wasabi flavored?) would have been a nice foil to the creaminess of the uni and yuzu jelly. 

StB’s Matsugen soba came with every imaginable topping.  Her opinion can be found here (along with something slightly embarrassing I said during lunch that I hadn’t expected to see on her site, lol). 

My kamoseiro soba, which I’d wanted to order for comparison purposes.  Mmm, duck.  Though I didn’t take a picture, there are 6 pieces of duck breast in the broth there, perfectly cooked, still slightly pink in the center and super ‘lish.  The leeks (giant scallions?) floating in the broth, once I’d lifted one out, showed themselves to be grilled and charred on one side, making them super tender and flavorful.  I ate every single one, when normally I may have just left them.  The broth was wonderfully flavored, complex and sweet, savory, all at the same time.  Dropping my noodles in there before inhaling them was a pleasurable experience. 

As for the noodles themselves, though they were extremely fresh and perfectly cooked to slightly al dente, with a great chew to them, no premature breakage, and held up well to the broth, they also weren’t particularly, well, fantastic.  I didn’t notice much else of interest… I prefer Sobaya’s noodles greatly, and even their kamoseiro.  Admittedly, price does play a role in the enjoyment here; if I know I can get the exact same thing elsewhere for much less money, and don’t care about the atmosphere… well. 

On a whim, we decided to order the green tea ice cream brulee for dessert.  I was curious how they’d brulee ice cream; my first time at Morimoto NYC, we’d been served creme brulee with Earl Grey ice cream on the side, and the brulee had actually been done separately – a bit of sugar, caramelized and torched on its own, then laid over the top of the custard to create the “brulee” effect.  So I thought that might be how they’d brulee ice cream, but this is not true.  As you can see, it was bruleed straight on top!  I’m going to guess they super froze the ice cream, or… I don’t know?  Any guesses or anyone knowledgeable enough to tell me?  The ice cream was not rock hard, nor was it melty as it might be after a butane torch had burned some sugar on top…

In any case, I actually really liked this dessert.  It wasn’t overly sweet, and had the right amount of bitterness from the green tea infused throughout.  It was creamy and yet a bit crunchy on top from the bruleed part – each bite had a bit of the caramelized sugar on top, just right.  Perfect end to a lovely meal.

Yvo says: Overall, a lovely meal and a lovely experience; service was attentive and unintrusive and our water glasses never went empty.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  However, I will most likely not be returning as this would be destination dining… and the food simply was good, not great, which does not justify the prices.  I can definitely get soba that is equally tasty elsewhere, for much cheaper, and also closer to where I hang out. 
recommended at least once, just to try