Any recent experiences at RyuGin in Tokyo? We're planning on dining there next month, and while I see nothing but glowing reviews from years ago, folks online seem to have gotten a bit quieter on it lately.

I've been to Ryugin each year for the past couple years--still my favorite restaurant.

I'm hoping to get reservations this October too.

Glad to hear that, thanks.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D257 Safari/9537.53)

I really enjoyed Hedone, but it didn't strike me as particularly good value. From memory it cost as much or more than 3* Akelarré and wasn't far off dinner at Le Gavroche. I felt it was priced as a 2*, but could forgive it as the food I felt was also at that level (it's only currently got 1*).

I respect your consideration that Hedone didn't strike you as a good value--as that can often be true. I have to ask, however, why you worry about and mention the Michelin ranking when you can adjudicate its value based entirely on your own impression. Either the meal for you was very worth the price, worth the price, not quite worth the price, or definitely not worth the price based on your own preferences and priorities--regardless of the Michelin standard. Shouldn't that be the case?

I also don't believe most restaurants are priced always consistently with their "rankings" as much as their rankings/demand relative to the cities in which they are located. Some top restaurants have lower rankings/demand that price out higher because their city is more pricey, whereas as other top restaurants have higher rankings/demand that price out lower because their city is less expensive. There always are exceptions, of course. But sometimes we make the bad assumption that the Michelin standard (or Pellegrino or any of several others) is the best standard for everyone. I usually find, for example, that a 3 Michelin star restaurant is very pricey and also very high on formality and design--but there are several that are quite informal and some that are not high on design (at least in my taste). So I'm not sure thinking along the lines of Michelin stars is as important overall as your own personal impression to justify the price for you!

Didn't I just give my opinion? :confused:

The Michelin stars are a useful contextualisation and as it happens whilst Hedone was an enjoyable innovative meal, it wasn't as good as Le Gavroche and Akelarre, in my opinion.

Did you have lunch or dinner at Hedone? Like many restaurants - its lunch menu is considerably less expensive than its dinner menu:

http://www.hedonerestaurant.com/

Robyn

We had the Carte Blanche tasting menu at lunch (which is £10 cheaper then dinner), with paired wines. Total was over £400 for 2.

I suspect it's the London effect, but as I said above, whilst it was a very good meal, I've eaten as well and paid quite a bit less, and eaten better, and paid the same or less.

That is a lot IMO - 85 BP if I figure correctly. Especially compared to something like the 100 euro (now the 110 euro) lunch at Guy Savoy - about the same price (liquor/wine prices of course vary depending on what one drinks). Or lunch at Gordon Ramsay RHR (basic lunch is 55 BP). OTOH - basic lunch at Hedone is 45 BP for 4 courses - so perhaps that's the way to go?

Was there anything that blew you away? The dessert trolley at Guy Savoy blew me away. I would have paid 100 euros for that - without anything else :). Robyn

This is what I had. With aperitif, plus wine pairings and the additional cheese plate I think I paid about £110. In hindsight, I do think that is probably a little higher than I've paid at comparatively better restaurants. Petrus comes to mind.

My memory is failing me, and with a long tasting menu its hard to place individual courses but there was a runny egg yoke and horseradish foam dish which was delightful, optically and taste wise. Dessert featured popping candy (I think) and possibly a "chocolate dome melted by sauce" ganache thing. Not especially memorable.

One annoyance was that service was so long (over 4 hours), we almost ran into evening service and the brigade were eating at the next table to us for the last few courses (in fairness we were asked if this was ok).

4+ hours for lunch is OTT for me (for dinner as well). We did stretch out our "100 euro" lunch at Guy Savoy to almost 3 hours. But that was only because it was our last day in Paris - and we returned to our hotel - picked up our bags - and took a cab to the airport after a late lunch to overnight at the airport (very early morning flight). My favorite "big deal" meal length is about 2-3 hours. Depending on where/when/number of courses.

And one of my favorite "lunch days" ever was lunch at Gordon Ramsay RHR combined with an afternoon at the Chelsea Flower Show. Price there is still reasonable IMO (55 BP for 3 courses). But I don't know how good the food is these days (it was ^^^ at our lunch). Robyn

I had a similar experience even with the limited lunch menu. Just seemed like I was sitting there forever, and there weren't lot of 'in-between' bites from the kitchen to fill those gaps.

To each, their own. My 4 hour lunch at Noma had 15 mini courses to start and 7 true courses that followed...and I loved it.

I rather enjoy a spectacular fine dining experience that takes its time, allowing me plenty of time to process and appreciate what I've eaten...not to mention time to chat and catch up with my fellow dining companions.

I appreciate that not all might want to spend that much time with lunch if they have more to do that day, but for me it was a near perfect meal. For dinner, I truly appreciate the long meal, as well, since I think of it as an experience to be enjoyed and not timed. Even at home in the States, my husband and I tend to dine for longer periods of time than others...so it's just a matter of taste and cultural convention.

+1 I don't have the stamina that I used to. I was alone having Guy Savoy's new 16-course (or something like that) dinner when he launched it. I plowed through in around an hour and a half. Kudos to the servers and kitchen for picking up the queues about my desired pace -- you would expect that in a Michelin three-star but it doesn't always happen. Guy Savoy, who must be the least snobby chef in the world, seemed a bit perturbed at me.

I've been to only a handful of French two- and three-stars, but this is my favorite.