Maguro Mart — Restaurant in Tokyo

What a treasure Maguro Mart is!

The 8 Course Luxurious set menu is highly recommended. Course 1 was the seaonal seafood with tuna dashi. I thought this was a soup but it came with Nigiri pieces. Tuna was fresh and rice was well seasoned.

Course 2 was the tuna "yukhoe". This was seasoned raw tuna with an egg yolk on top. Mix it all in to enjoy the creamy textures.

Course 3 was the Maguro Mart assortment. This was an assortment of different cuts of tuna. My personal favorites were the leaner cuts where some others may prefer the fattier pieces. All the sashimi slices were high quality.

Course 4 was the simmered tuna. This was more delicious than it looked. This was tuna fin cooked and simmered. It was so flavorful with again leaner parts and fattier/collegan bits. I couldn't get enough.

Course 5 was the uni-sho. I just realized as I am typing this review, they forgot about this dish because we added the uni and tuna pieces on top of our set menu. This was exactly what I was looking for with chunks of raw minced tuna and heaping amounts of uni with rice and wrapped with roasted seaweed.

Course 6 was the rare tuna tempura. Thumbs up to deliciously fried, but light batter tempura. The corn, zucchini and unagi were my favorites. I didn't care for the tuna because I don't love the taste of cooked tuna this way.

Course 7 nakaochi. This is the tuna bone that you scrape and place into your rice. Wrap everything up with seaweed and you won't be disappointed. Everything worked well and the seasoned rice added to it.

Course 8 is sort of related to be eaten with the nakaochi

I would absolutely visit this spot again and again. The set meal provided variety, the price was only 3980 yen (each person must order a drink as well on top) and the staff...

Please be aware that if you’re a solo traveller/diner making an online reservation, you have to have at least 2 people confirmed to show up.

The online reservation system does not accept 1 person reservations (even if you indicate it in the comments that 1 person will show up for a 2 people reservation, which was what I did). The restaurant charged me 2,000 JPY as a cancellation as only 1 person (myself) showed up instead of the 2 indicated in the online reservation.

Also I was told that since I was dining alone (1 person), I was not allowed to order their 7/8 course meals, as they are meant for 2 people. So I had to pay 2,000 JPY on top of the Ala Carte food that I ordered.

Was kind of angry as this information was only given to me after the drink I had ordered came; I felt that the restaurant should have addressed the comment I had left when making the reservation but I guess it was my fault for not knowing this beforehand.

Still ate here and paid the cancellation charge, as this place requires reservations if you really wanna eat here.

The food is very fresh and well prepared; just don’t make the same mistake as I did if you’re a solo...

This was a head-to-tail maguro (tuna) eating experience! At first, I was wondering if it was just hype but can safely say it's well worth it's reputation and the 1 month advance reservation! Be punctual because a lot of other people with reservations will be waiting there well before the 5pm opening.

We took the course and also some ala carte items. For the course, we started with an appetizer, which in our case was anago and lotus root. Then, parts of the tuna head is served as sashimi. The waiter will explain which parts of the head it is from and the difference in texture. The cheeks were served on a different plate for some reason. Texture was wagyu-like!

Next, fried potato wedges with dashi and katsobushi was served and then tempura (which takes a while). Finally the last dish is the body of the tuna, which you will have to use a small scoop to scrape the sashimi off yourself and make your own hand roll with the nori and rice provided. Make sure you scrape every last bit off!

All in all, a fantastic experience! Highly recommended!

Do note - Everyone needs to order a drink regardless whether you ordered the course...