(photo by leslie scurry)

XEX is in the Roppongi ward of Tokyo. Roppongi is the home to many of Japan's foreign embassies and their staff residences. For many years, I avoided Roppongi for this very reason - as a foreigner in Japan the last thing I wanted was to be in the company of more foreigners. But shedding all that faux-predjudice, Roppongi to me is just another ward with the interesting and dull; inspiring and banal. One could apply this to any district of Tokyo or any other city in the world, large or small. It doesn't mean that avoidance is warranted without some exploration.

Because lots of official (and governmental) business is done in Roppongi, large expense accounts are still thrown around like beads at Mardi Gras. And for many years, this has attracted several super-high-end restaurants. In fact, if you choose to shoot your wad on a really expensive meal in Japan, chances are you'll do it here. But coming in on the lower end of the scale, XEX is not cheap but it's not about to cause you to break any international currency laws for bringing three hundred metric tons of yen just to enter the party.

Walking through what amounts to a residential area off the main drag of Roppongi, a severely minimalist black granite half-wall with cut out brilliant white kanji characters spelling Morimoto and XEX greets you as your only clue to where to enter. Once inside, the staff at the front treat you like royalty and guide you to whichever floor you're dining on. All of the floors are lit softly and have modern fixtures and muted colors which immediately put you at ease. There is teppan yaki on the basement floor and sushi on the first floor. The second floor is half private dining and half an eye-popping retro-late 70's lounge replete with a fine selection of single malt and other quaffables, cigars and dessert. The sushi floor was our choice of the evening.

As with most sushi bars, one can order by the piece or allow the chefs to pick for you (omakase). But XEX also has a couple of tasting menus: one is straight-ahead sushi selection menu and one is called "Morimoto" tasting which incorporates the innovative interpretations of Japanese cuisine that Morimoto is famous for. Each of the menus also features a wine/sake pairing for about $50 more. We chose the Morimoto tasting menu because it seemed like the best showcase of modern and traditional. And while the sushi was certainly excellent, the modern dishes excelled.

baked onion with pork miso and bonito (photo by leslie scurry)

There were four "modern" courses featuring buffalo mozzarella, baked onion, oyster and foie gras, and toro tuna tartare. Substituting buffalo mozzarella for the rice in a sushi setting was visually delightful and stunningly delicious. The creaminess of the mozzarella is a real swerve from grains of vinegared rice and pairs nicely with raw fish. A nod to the Italian nature of the dish included a nicely marbled slice of prosciutto wrapped around one of the pieces of mozzarella. The baked onion featured caramelized sweetness with the tang of pork miso and a substantially thick shaving of bonito. The saltiness of the bonito drew out the sweetness and tang even more. The oyster and foie gras course was a mouthful of richness and texture with sea urchin adding some extra creaminess to an already dense foie gras.

toro tuna tartare palette (photo by leslie scurry)

The toro tuna tartare is classic Morimoto; combining the familiar with a unique "play-with-your-food" presentation. A "palette" of finely chopped fatty tuna belly and eight "seasonings" was presented on a mini-artist's easel standing in a decorative bowl filled with ice, surrounded by native Japanese flora including a "mountain" peach (yamamomo), and a small bowl of dashi soy. A wooden "paint brush" completed the artist's concept. The presentation of these simple ingredients was so visually impressive that I was torn between staring at it for a good, long time and diving right in.

The eight seasonings included wasabi, creme fraiche, avocado, a variety of Japanese pickled vegetables (tsukemono) and small, bb-shaped arare rice crackers. The initial suggestion from the chefs was to use the "paint brush" to take a bit of the tartare and dip it into a bit of each of the eight seasonings but not the dashi soy so you could get the taste of all together. Beyond that, we could go nuts with whichever combinations we wanted. Even though there were 8+ flavors competing for attention, the simplicity of each of them made this a uniquely uncomplicated dish, and because of that, it was one of the most "fun" dishes I have even had anywhere. Anywhere.

The sushi part of the tasting menu was very good but not nearly as impressive as the dynamic mix of flavors in the courses before it. Although it was a bit anti-climatic, the sushi was near the top of the heap, quality-wise, it was just that the toro tartare palette, the onion, and the oyster/foie gras dishes just overshadowed it a little bit more than I had expected.

Still, the fish was impeccably fresh, the rice was so near perfect that any sushi lover would swoon. The standouts were the raw shrimp with a nice pad of olive-green shrimp roe, a beautiful sliced piece of aji with glistening silver skin and freshly grated ginger and tare sauce, and melt-in-your-mouth scallop. We received a few extras including a real California roll made with triple-finger fat fresh king crab leg and some gorgeously roasted out-sized fresh chestnuts.

Dessert was another deceptively simple affair. A lip-puckeringly tart lemon sorbet was offset by a sweet and spicy raspberry/wasabi macaron. The macarons were so good, I wanted a take away box of a couple dozen...

masters of the house (photo by leslie scurry)

Through out the entire meal, our three chefs were a joy to talk with (being able to speak a nice handful of Japanese helped move that along...) and went out of their way to make everything enjoyable. In fact, the staff in the front and the wait staff on both the sushi floor and in the bar afterward all went out of their way to make XEX an experience that enhanced Morimoto's food. As it sometimes customary in upper-scale restaurants in Japan, the front staff also accompanied us out as we were leaving and stood in the street outside the restaurant and watched and waved until were were on our way back to the main street to catch the subway home.

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restaurant morimoto XEX, 7-21-19 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, ph. 03-3479-0065