MegatopLover

Can anyone comment on Alain Ducasse's restaurant atop the Chanel Building in Ginza? Seems to be very well-regarded, up there with the top international restaurants in Tokyo. Worth the steep prices? Better than Pierre Gagnaire's place?

I searched but didn't find a single word on Beige in all of FT.

exc3ll

Interesting, I am actually searching for the same thing. I walked by last time I was in Tokyo but I didn't end up going in. I'd like to give it a try this time. I am in tokyo this week. Any reviews will be great! ^

LapLap

Funnily enough, MrLapLap spent a couple of days working at Chanel this month. He and his colleagues discussed having their lunch upstairs - the discussion was nothing more than some light hearted humour, good for a few chuckles.

MegatopLover

Why the chuckles?

Shareholder

Probably the cost...getting reservations...

Pickles

I've been to Beige a few times. Pretty good, but not stellar. Not bad value for money overall at those price levels. See the crazy prize gourmet lunch thread for more, I think that's where I posted a review.

LapLap

Hmmm, the thought of 25 young carpenters, electricians, riggers and technicians caked in work gear ripened by over 24 hours of continuous hard graft popping up for lunch at Beige is an amusing thought on so many levels.

MegatopLover

'Til you explained, I certainly didn't have that image. Now that I do... yum.

Thanks, Pickles. That's about what I expected. Mr. Megatop and I are tentatively booked in to Beige for our last night in Japan in December. The concierge has given us some alternatives in part because Beige does not permit corkage. (Pierre does, BTW, at the vaguely reasonable charge of 5000 yen.) Trying to decide, but leaning toward Beige right now, in part because Ginza is a lot more convenient to our hotel than Omotesando is.

Pickles

They have a pretty reasonable wine pairing menu, something like 3-4,000 yen for 3-4 glasses paired to your meal, so you may want to check that online see what's on offer. I thought the sommelier did a pretty good job in that regard.

MegatopLover

Good tip re the wine pairings. I've looked at their list. It's impressive, although the price premiums are very steep. Par for the course for this type of place, especially in Tokyo.

Braindrain

FWIW, Enoteca Pinchiorri is also top notch. Since you were looking for Ginza, thought I'd suggest an alternative...

MegatopLover

Avoid Beige! Take your yen elsewhere.

Mr. Megatop and I dined at Beige on Boxing Day 2007. It was meant to be our very special Christmas-New Year's dinner, as we often wind up having low-key evenings on the actual days of Christmas and New Year's Eve. The company was the best part, though Beige had nothing to do with that, of course. The setting was the second-best part, and it saved the evening. As requested, we were given a table by the window, which afforded a spectacular view of Chuo-Dori and the Ginza nightscape. The restaurant itself, in a word, sucked.

Service was painfully slow. It took quite some time for anyone to acknowledge us after we were seated. No one put our napkins down for us, much less did they offer black napkins to avoid lint on our dark suits. As many high-end restaurants are wont to do, they presented the wine list and cocktail menu and expected us to make a choice before seeing what's on the dinner menu. Well, asking for the dinner menu seemed to be a real inconvenience, and it took quite a while yet to appear. When we had finally sorted out what we were going to order, subject to a question or two, it took some more effort to get the waiter to appear again and take our order. They could not subsitute something from the a la carte menu onto the three-or-four-course menu, so Mr. Megatop had to order an 8900-yen pork dish on top of his 18,000-yen three-course menu in order to have four courses along with me (he doesn't eat beef and the other two options on the four-courser, both fish, don't go with Bordeaux). The excuse was that they couldn't downsize the pork dish to go with the four-course option, a notion that seemed plausible until we saw the pork dish as-served. Another mild annoyance. So was the menu itself, actually, which inexplicably wandered between French and English from one word to the next.

The wine list was actually more impressive in person than on the website. It had evidently been updated or expanded, and it was simply incredible. So was the sommelier, though not in a good way. Asked to make a recommendation between 1985 Ch. Cos d'Estournel and 1985 Ch. Leoville Las Cases, all he could do was point and nod at the Las Cases. He could not provided any explanation as to why he would recommend one over the other, and really couldn't say anything at all, at least in English. (Even allowing that we were not in an English-speaking country, and that the restaurant is ostensibly French, the fellow can fairly be expected to have something to say-- something! Anything!) I went with the Las Cases. My annoyance increased, as it took FOREVER for him to open the bloody bottle, as he let it sit unopened on the sommelier's cart for nearly 15 minutes despite my (needlessly, I would have thought) asking that it be opened promptly so it could breathe. When he finally got round to opening it, he used the sommelier's candle for light rather than under the neck of the bottle, and he opened it at least 30 feet away from me, so I couldn't really see much of what he was doing. He presented the taste without presenting the cork (very bad form), and when he finally gave me the cork after I specifically asked, I realized why: he had broken it. The wine was fine--i.e., not corked--but not terribly impressive. Maybe I should have stuck with my instincts and gone for the Cos.

The food was completely unremarkable. The cheeses in the cheese course were presented in the "wrong" order with accompaniments that clashed more than anything. Other service lapses included: we had to ask for water (after being seated for more than an hour with nothing on our table save for the menus), food was served to the wrong person, a waiter's stand was left empty on the floor nearby our table for 10 or 15 minutes, and the "expediting" waitress who served one of our courses couldn't tell us anything about it.

Dessert was a rare good point.

For nearly $500 per person (including the wine, service, tax), it was not worth the money, not even close. The meal we had at a steakhouse in Osaka a few days earlier, for a fraction of the price, was much much much better. In fact, so was the wine. For the record, the steakhouse was called "Ron," and the wine was a 2003 Spottswoode (which I had brought with us from home). Yes, an '03 Spottswoode was better than an '85 Las Cases.

Pickles

Ouch. Sounds like a mess. On the substitutions, you must have had some Japanese Dr. No running the show that day. It is very typical for set menus in restaurants in Japan not to accept substitutions, but I remember distinctly doing that myself. I believe the Maitre D' (the French Algerian guy, was he there?) had no problem with that, except they charged me a bit more money because of the price differential on the substitution.

The service lapses are inexcusable. Was the place full of young Japanese couples on closing dinners? Reminded me of the fancy dinner scene in Tampopo.

MegatopLover

I didn't make a fuss about the substitution because I suspected substitutions might not be done much in Japan. I was more concerned with convincing Mr. Megatop to order what he really wanted and not worry about anything else. I didn't see a French Algerian fellow, and the guy who showed us in and showed us out was Japanese.

I didn't see that many young Japanese couples. A few under-dressed young guys who seemed to be in very mixed groups (age, gender), so I'm guessing they were with their families. A couple of tables of six or eight, which could have been business types but also seemed more like families. The one or two couples I had a good view of were not that young, more like mid-30s to mid-40s range. I think more of those closing dinners (such a good term) took place the previous two nights.

What is Tampopo?

LapLap

No one better to recommend this excellent film to than you

AMAZON LINK

Indirectly started a noodle craze in London as it was responsible for the founders of the incredibly successful Wagamama getting their idea (although Wagamama is better thought of as an Asian fusion joint than somewhere that serves Japanese food - which it doesn't... not really)

I often ask for substitutions, especially with kaiseiki menus (at restaurants and at inns) as the only meat I eat is fish. A couple of times I've been charged a modest amount (or my host has) but usually there's no problem. My request seems pretty common.