Review: Sumibi Yakiniku Nakahara

Tell us about your first impressions when you arrived.
When self-taught butcher Kentaro Nakahara became a chef more than 15 years ago, no one was using premium wagyu beef for yakiniku, the Japanese version of Korean barbeque that's closely associated with beer-soaked grill pubs and cheap cuts of meat. Today, he’s on a mission to elevate the genre to the level of fine dining, “like a sushi artisan,” he says. On any given day, you can find him at Tokyo’s Shibaura meat market investigating the provenance, age, and ancestry of the Tajima cows he buys whole; at night, he'll be behind the counter at Sumibi Yakiniku Nakahara in his chef’s whites, hair tied up in a blue-and-white do-rag, gleaming knife in hand.

What was the crowd like?
The bright and buzzy red-and-silver dining room is perennially packed with fervently loyal regulars, Japanese celebrities, and members of the international foodie jet set.

Main event: the food. Give us the lowdown—especially what not to miss.
Two tasting menus are on offer (à la carte is not an option) for ¥17,000 and ¥19,000. Spring for the latter, which includes the aptly named “legendary beef tongue.” It's hard to believe that the angle of a knife can change flavor, but Nakahara's Jedi-like concentration as he carves a marbled hunk of beef into wafer-thin slices will make you a believer. Both tasting menus come with the signature tartare, a stack of cubed raw beef dressed in runny egg yolk—the work of a true wagyu artisan.