Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "writeback" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+writeback" bit from the end of the URL.

Sun, 14 Sep 2003

A nice Italian restaurant and a not so nice French one in Tokyo

We went to a very nice Italian restaurant in Minami Aoyama yesterday, called Ristorante Hiro, to celebrate our mariage with Eiko's family.

The food was very nice and refined (I had some home-made pasta with wild duck meat, sauteed foie gras, grilled lamb and a chocolate parfait), and there's just enough to make you full but not sick!

There are different menus, price ranging from ¥6,500 to ¥10,000 (the higher priced sets including more choices), but they're quite worth it. Just the plate of succulent beef Eiko had would cost you that price in a regular restaurant!

On the other hand, we also went to a so-called French restaurant called Monna Lisa in Marunouchi building, next to the Tokyo train station.

Quite honestly speaking, you would expect more from a restaurant at the top floor of that building: the room is quite small, leaving very little space between the tables, it's quite noisy, the tiles and the walls echoing and mixing the conversations of all the customers into a loud background noise making you feel in a bistro.
The food is not bad (although the mussels and the fish were overcooked) but over-priced in my opinion for this quality (same range of prices as the restaurant above).

I believe the price you pay reflects more the image of the restaurant (French restaurant on the 36th floor of a recent building) than the food itself.
What also makes me believe in this is the way the menu is written, with tons of basic spelling mistakes (in French) and the actual way the food is prepared: I don't recall having eaten shellfish cooked with soy sauce in France.

Yet, I have to admit that the view over the Imperial Palace and the buildings of Shinjuku is quite nice, but all the other factors make it a little difficult to appreciate that last positive point.