Matsugen

It seems we’ve been to every Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant in the city. We tried his original Jean-Georges in Columbus Circle a couple of years back. That was followed by Vong, Spice Market, and Perry Street. Last night we tried his latest restaurant – Matsugen, a really cool Japanese place on Church Street with some interesting twists to traditional Japanese omakase cuisine.

Here’s a round-up of what we had: sea urchin in a yuzu jelly, Kurobota braised pork belly that was as tender as firm tofu and accompanied by a wonderful mustard; Yamakake hot soba with grated yam; chicken meatballs with hot mustard; black cod with miso which was similar but not as good as Nobu’s; raw fluke slices with ponzu, cilantro and wasabi; cold Inaka soba; Japanese omelet cut into sushi-size pieces; hot soba with duck soup. Soba is Matusugen’s specialty so we each had a soba dish. Matsugen has ruined things for me; now I will never quite enjoy any other soba.

The waitress actually forgot to give Marita’s black cod with miso. When we pointed out the oversight, she quickly brought the cod and then gave us three desserts – on the house! The most memorable was six large wedges of grapefruit on a bed of ice. At least that’s what they looked like at first glance. Actually, Jean-Georges did a Ferran Adria for this dessert. The grapefruit flesh was removed, then combined with sugar and jelly and then carefully replaced on the wedge so that it looked like a normal grapefruit wedge. No need for spoon or fork; you could hold the wedge and bite off the flesh, and not get any pulp in your teeth.

Matsugen and Nobu are hands-down, the best Japanese restaurants we’ve been to. (My all time best was a small restaurant in Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo). I wish it wasn’t so expensive to eat in these places. Oh well, I can always go to our standby Japanese at Mitsuwa in New Jersey. The soba is, well, OK. But you can’t go wrong with $7 for hot soba, especially on a cold winter’s night.