bhrubin

Just returned Monday from our 2 weeks and 21 star extravaganza in Japan. A quick summary:

TOKYO

3* Yoshitake—truly a mind-blowing and very enjoyable experience. Really delicious. Was much more than just sushi. He made me enjoy a full raw oyster for the first time in my entire life, though that could also have been what made my husband sick later that same night! Service was excellent, and he even attempted to speak with us in English a bit during the dinner. Was full but not stuffed even after such a huge meal, but it only took 2.5 hrs. Highly recommended.

2* Narisawa—absolutely worthy of 3 stars and one of my 2 or 3 favorite meals in Japan. Food was stunning and delicious. Service was fabulous, and the mixed wine and sake pairings were tremendous. An amazing dinner, and yet I wasn’t stuffed like I’d normally be after such a lengthy 2.5 hr meal. I’d return in a second. Highly recommended, and agree that it’s one of the best in the world.

2* Sawada—very nice lunch with mostly just sushi in a sterner environment but surprisingly more casual too—perhaps because it was just 4 of us that day, all English speaking. Excellent sushi. Chefs wife was very friendly. Recommended but wasn’t blown away like everyone else.

offerendum

Visited in 2015 so not fresh. In general for my taste the pay very much attention to presentation while food is closer to a 1 star.

CappuccinoAddict

jbeans

I also loved Belcanto when I was there last year. I had the Lisbon menu, and thoroughly enjoyed the creatives presentations of all the local ingredients. Agree with CappuccinoAddict that the wine pairing was fantastic.

GadgetFreak

My wife and I went to Torishin, a 1* Japanese yakatori restaurant in Manhattan tonight. We hadn’t been there in at least 5 years. We got the chef’s Omakase dinner and shared a small plate of grilled, rare, Wagyu. Everything was quite superb. We sat at the robato/yakatori bar.

PsiFighter37

GadgetFreak

I hadn't been to the new one until last night either. I liked it. The robato bar is separate from some of the other seating rather than sort of in the middle of the room as in the UES location. So it has more of a feel of a few separate rooms compared to the one room in the old one. The decor and such was very nice. My wife and I were both saying we were sorry we hadn't been there for so long. We were going to a Broadway play afterwards and the new location is quite convenient for the theater district. In fact when they called Friday to confirm the reservation they asked if we were going to the theater after dinner so they could make sure they got us out in time.

exerda

Dined at a couple of 1-star restaurants in Taipei this past week. Here's my shots of, and thoughts on, Tairroir, an "innovating Taiwanese" cuisine restaurant.

Arrived 10 minutes ahead of my reservation--it was a short walk from my hotel--and was immediately seated. The NT$ 3650 menu is an 8-course set with two options: one a NT$ 380 (about $13) supplemental course, and a NT$ 2200 wine pairing option, neither inclusive of 10% service charge. I opted for the wine pairing. Atmosphere was upscale, but the music was ... weird. I do not expect to use "Hotel California" and "Michelin" in the same sentence; there was a lot of 70s and 80s pop playing for about the first hour, then they changed over to lounge band covers.

There was bread offered throughout the meal, a "baguette" roll and a ... did she describe it as "quinoa" roll? Anyway, it was a whole-grain bread with dried cherries, both served with house-made butter and a serving of large-grained salt.

Food quality was solidly 1-star, with well-executed, tasty dishes, but could have had more innovative dishes IMHO; overall, they struck me as continental European, lacking sufficient Taiwanese influence (and the restaurant bills itself as "innovative Taiwanese" FWIW). Service was closer to 2-star; very attentive, but not obtrusive. The pacing was perfect, with no rush to the diner yet also no long waits without food. The kitchen majordomo seemed to do a fantastic job as I watched him coordinate getting items from the chefs to the servers and tables and keeping everything straight.

The entire wait staff split time between tables, though I usually had the attention of the same server; I think her English was the strongest, so she handled my table and tried to always be handy to explain each course as it came out. The sommelier's French was good and his knowledge of the wines good as well, but that was also the only place I really felt the service was less-than-stellar: the wine accompaniment was only 4 pours total for what turned out to be effectively 11 courses, and there was no explanation of, "This wine is for the next 3 dishes," etc., just a pour, description of the wine, and voila! No dessert wine either, which struck me as odd given 2 dessert courses plus mignardises (the latter offered with tea or coffee, which made sense). Would it have been that hard to pour a Sauternes? In retrospect, I'd have probably just ordered a single bottle of wine to myself instead of the accompaniment. At least the pours were relatively generous, particularly for the main course, but there were no top-offs offered.

Overall, it was a good value meal in terms of the cost (the main menu around $120), and the food was worthy of 1-star. I do think they have room to improve, but would also go back.



Place setting. As a solo diner, I was given a table large enough to seat 4; this was the "standard" table size, and I saw both couples and parties of 3-4 people seated at the same. I appreciated the large amount of space; several places will put solo diners or even couples crammed into a seating hardly larger than the menu placard. They also had a private dining room and a table set up for a larger group in the main dining room where I was.


Amuse bouche course, not on the menu. Clockwise from the top left, they included a cheese & herb pillow, a phyllo tartlet stuffed with "many varied mushrooms" according to my server, and a roll with IIRC some sort of fish. All three were tasty and went well with the champagne wine accompaniment.


First course: Green asparagus veloute with salted egg gougeres. The soup is topped with mushroom foam and dehydrated mushroom and is intended to be stirred before drinking. This was a solid, well-executed course, if not anything particularly creative.


"Bouillabaisse" with Guisgan Island Carabinero, Hokkaido uni, Rouille, and Chinese yam puree. This was a very nice course, with the uni being absolutely delicious. The wine pairing was a sake which worked very well and complimented the oiliness of the dish.


Heirloom tomato collection with gazpacho "cloud" and stracciatella with basil and olive oil. This was a nicely-presented dish which also happened to be tasty, although the gazpacho foam "cloud" was a bit out of proportion to the rest of the dish (both visibly and in terms of flavor). The wine accompaniment continued to be sake (there should be more on which courses go with which wines, IMHO--more on that later).


Supplementary course: Pu'er tea silkie egg with congee, sweet potato fondant, and buckwheat tuile. Congree poured in at the table. Served with the instruction to break the tuile and mix the components together. Overall, this was a nice dish, with a good mix of textures and flavors. The congee was very tasty, as was the tea egg--and the yolk was still runny even with the whites having actually picked up some good tea color and flavor. Wine pairing continued to be sake...


Chicken wing stuffed with braised abalone, "vert." This dish looks better than it was; the textures of the abalone and chicken simply didn't work together, and the green sauce (barely visible in this photo; apologies) wasn't distinctive. I like wings, and I like abalone, but it was just too chewy and rubbery with a little crispiness surrounding it. Still sake for the wine... which I was out of with no refill offered...


Poisson du jour, served with chickpeas, chickpea foam, and pickled cabbage bouillon. I never found out the particular fish. The fish was great, with a crispy, flavorful skin, and the chickpeas were good... but overwhelmed by foam. Wine was a really nice chardonnay.


Preview of the main course, which was Pingtung pigeon served two ways. Incredibly aromatic and appetizing. Wine was an appropriately-dry red, although I forget the varietal (it was French, I do remember).


The first of two servings of the pigeon, with the Shimeji mushrooms and petit pois with seaweed coulis. This was tasty, although I've had better cuts of pigeon before.


Second serving of the pigeon: Fried leg, served with heart and with a pate of pigeon liver (both under the greens). Honestly, this was my favorite of the two presentations, and was very tasty, although I'd have preferred 2 legs be included.


Another off-menu course: ramen flavored with chives, cheese, mushroom, and seaweed, accompanied by a chicken broth. Both were very good. The suggested order was for the noodles, then drink the broth.


First dessert course: Calamansi sorbet with Jin Xuan-Ai Yu jelly, lemon, and Ilha Formosa white wine with "crystal" (sugar). Suggestion was to mix, and the sugar did help balance out the sourness of the lemon, and the textures blended well. A decent palate cleanser. But... no wine pairing? Maybe the next course...


Main dessert course. There were 2 options; I chose the Pineapple "cake" (it was Taiwan, after all), served with pineapples, baba, camellia oil ice cream, and rum & raisin cream. It was like bread pudding pineapple cake and was great. But... no wine pairing?


Mignardises cart, "pick 3."


My selected mignardises. Clockwise from bottom left: A tart with cilantro cream (my favorite); a local chewy candy; a lemon tart; and some sort of rum-cake-esque thing. I picked the 1st 2 and asked the server to recommend a favorite; he gave me the other 2. The little cake was too dry and needed a creamier center given how thick the dry shell was. Lemon tart was very nice, if not distinctive. The chew was... chewy. Served with tea.

HKTraveler

Thank you for the review, definitely one of the places on my list in Taipei. Did you manage to make it to Raw or Mume and can compare them with Tairroir?

exerda

I made it to Mume; will post a review of it shortly. Never did clear the Raw waitlist, unfortunately; I'll have to try it next time. Sometime between when they waitlisted me and when I got to Taipei, they seemed to have changed their reservation system, too, so it's possible I fell through the cracks... or more likely, there weren't any cancellations for a Saturday night dinner at a hot restaurant.

Between Tairroir and Mume, the former is superior IMHO, but Mume has some high points as well. I just felt overall, it was a half a star behind Tairroir, and that the two aren't entirely comparable (more on this when I put together the review).

CappuccinoAddict

Thank you so much for the pictures and detailed report! That mignardises cart looks absolutely stunning. It all looks very good for a 1-star.

HKTraveler

arkellvspressdram

Your rum cake is a canele I think, interior should be almost custardy if they nail it but it's one of those tricky things that only someone's Grandfather in Bordeaux can get right or some such.

exerda

You may be right... though if so, the execution was even further off. The interior was too dry and cake-y; custardy would have been my expectation and significantly better.


On to Mume, which was the other 1-star place I visited in Taipei which bills itself as a European cuisine restaurant using locally-sourced Taiwanese ingredients and flavors. I'm not sure of the dining options for dinner, but was offered only a la carte. I believe they used to have a tasting menu (maybe still do?), but there's no way to reserve it online, and I admit I didn't follow up with them prior to dining to check. I've since read that the set menu is no longer offered, FWIW.

Traffic was bad--I took a taxi from the Marriott rather than metro--and I arrived a couple of minutes late (I also blame my hotel a bit, as when I asked them to grab me a taxi, they said, "Oh, you don't need to leave yet! Wait another 20 minutes, and you will be fine."), but they seated me right away without issue. The table itself was set up for 2, but was somewhat tight quarters, against the wall on one side and adjacent to a table for 4 on the other. Still, I've had tighter seats in DC at several places I really like, and as a solo diner, don't expect a massive table to myself. Utensils were in a drawer pulled out from the table, with stacks of spoons, forks, and knives, so you can for each course refresh your own flatware. (No chopsticks, though given the European cuisine angle, I get that.)

I opted for four courses, with amuse bouche ("snacks"), appetizer ("smaller"), a main ("bigger"), and dessert ("sweeter"). The menu was pretty appetizing overall, and I asked my server for suggestions as to quantities and to help decide between some of the options; her suggestions were IMHO good ones.

Now on the size of courses for a moment... the "snacks" varied widely in size, with the tartlets, oyster, and pate all indeed snack-sized; however, the table next to me ordered the toast and the sourdough with beef fat butter, both of which were significant portions. Likewise, my "smaller" course was fairly large for an appetizer and physically larger than my "bigger" one, but several of the "smaller" courses did look to be smaller in size (such as the Wagyu tartare). I think the menu works best with multiple diners, each ordering at least one of each type of course and sharing small-plates/family style across the table; for a solo diner, you may want to double-up on some courses or cut back on others. I probably would have gone for two selections from the "snacks" section, and depending on the appetizer, might have picked two from there (the one I selected was fairly large, though--larger than my main, LOL). In retrospect, I definitely wished I tried the Wagyu tartare; seeing some others' photos and descriptions of it, I think it would have been great.

The wine list needs work, and there were plenty of cocktails offered, but in the end, I went for a local pale ale given I was only doing four courses.

Service was attentive, if not always coordinated (e.g. I had one server asking me if I was ready to order drinks while the bartender was already preparing mine, and another server asking if I was ready to order dinner after already having put my order in with another). Pacing was fine, if a tad bit slow for me as a single diner. I think it would work well for a couple or small group, with the diners never rushed. The value was good; I think my total bill came to about NT$ 2000, which for the quality and quantity of food was a good deal.

Comparing Mume to Tairroir, I felt like Mume actually offered more Taiwanese-inspired flavors than the latter, despite being described as a European restaurant and the latter as "innovative Taiwanese" cuisine. The food was right at 1-star; I've had some 1-star places with better food, and some with lesser. The food was creative (but not extremely so), and definitely seemed to capture local flavors. Service might have been better, though again, I've dined at 1-star places with more inconsistent service, too. Next time I'm in Taipei, I will try it again to see how the seasonable aspects of the menu change, and to try the Wagyu tartare, for sure. I actually started to ask if they had reservations available for the next night (when I was waitlisted for Raw) given the value, but decided on such a short trip I should try as many different places as I could--and ended up trying a couple of beer-focused places the next day, along with the Keelung night market...




Amuse bouche, the seasonal tartlets. The server described the one on the left as having a konbun-based pastry shell, but honestly, I think she got that backwards, and the left one is phyllo, whereas the one on the right was kelp-flavored. The left bite was a fish-infused cream topped with fried or dried sweet potato shavings; the one on the right had a baked cheese and what the server described as "peas" (they weren't English peas; they looked more like soy beans, but had a more pea-like texture). Both were good, if very different. I'd probably go for another helping of this size...



Appetizer: Burnt cabbage. The server recommended this over all of the other appetizers I considered, describing it as a cabbage which had been cooked (in coals?) to the point of charring the outside, then opened up and served with an oyster sauce, salmon roe, pickled onions, greens, and pine nuts. It was quite good. The server said "the bottom layer is not edible," which I took (correctly) to mean the pieces which were utterly charred and which only applied to a small band near the edge of the plate--so the instruction was a bit confusing, I suppose, though I've seen others' photos of this dish with a lot more of the bottom burnt to a crisp than was the case for mine. This was overall a nice blend of textures and flavors, with the pine nuts and fish eggs and oyster sauce ("using dried oyster for more intense flavor," my server explained) really going well together.



My main: fish (some kind of bass--should be local based on the restaurant's philosophy, although a lot of Taiwan's seafood is imported, so I dunno..) served in a lemon verbena broth. The broth was poured tableside and was incredibly fragrant, as well as tasty--I finished it off entirely. The kelp and herbs in the broth could have been chopped a bit more finely, IMHO, but that's personal preference.



Dessert: Roasted custard apple (hidden, bottom layer) topped with puff pastry and a passionfruit creme fraiche ice cream. The puff pastry sheet layer was overcooked; I suppose they wanted it to really hold its shape, but it was browned to the point of just being this side of burnt (they did call it "caramelized" IIRC; they weren't kidding). I like custard apple, and having it baked was an interesting variation. The ice cream was very tart, and the instruction to mix each bite between all the portions was a good one to help balance the tartness. I could have used a salty ingredient of some sort to perfect the dish, in retrospect, but I did enjoy it.

offerendum

Very nice designed food!