Out of chef-patron Tateru Yoshino's 3 restaurants in Tokyo, Tateru Yoshino Shiba has the most Michelin stars sitting at 2 at the moment. (In 2010, the restaurant was awarded with 2 stars after receiving one star back in 2007.) The talented chef has also been operating Michelin starred Stella Maris in Paris since 1997.
After a very impressive lunch at Sant Pau in the afternoon, we tried to get on a roll with Tateru Yoshino Shiba in the evening. Located on the ground floor of Park Hotel Shiba, Tateru Yoshino Shiba turned out to be a lot trickier to find than we first expected. After getting off the metro at Onarimon Station, we walked around for about 10 minutes before finding a very small hostel-type of hotel where we found a small sign that said "Park Hotel". But that's not all. The restaurant is not located in the main building but instead inside an annex building which can be found at the back of the main building.
The dining room was curiously located in the middle of the annex building lobby. At 7pm, the restaurant was completely empty with us being the only customers and it stayed that way throughout the night. I guess the locals obviously didn't care much about the Michelin Guide.
But I do like the interior of Tateru Yoshino Shiba. They used a lot of wood and it gives you that warm and comfortable feeling. Less successful was the service. Despite our server's valiant effort to entertain us throughout the dinner, his incompetency in English failed him miserably and that has undisputedly put a dent in our enjoyment of this meal.
After we were comfortably seated, we were offered a menu in French and Japanese. Obviously I don't speak nor read in neither languages but since our server was unable to clearly explain the menu to us, we had to take our chance on the degustation menu.
Here we go and the first amuse was a small plate of cheese puffs.
That was followed by two further amuses including a sashimi with a dash of truffle and a porcini mushroom soup (6/10).
The house speciality, "Mille-feuilles” of tuna and eggplant with tapenade sauce was our starter of the night. Tuna and eggplant provided quite an interested combination of flavors there (6.5/10).
A Japanese white fish with a champagne sauce soon followed (4.5/10).
Two choices of meat course were available on this night. The first was a roasted rack of lamb with parsley and nuts (6/10).
And I had the beef tenderloin served with a Perigueux sauce and a silky smooth mash. The beef was a little disappointing but the sauce was quite nice - very rich with truffle flavors (5/10).
As always, a small pre-dessert before our dessert.
Dessert was a fairly refreshing combination of pink grapefruit, passion fruit, kiwi purée and goat cheese sorbet in the shape of a sunshine egg (6.5/10).
Finally a traditional style petite fours before we took off.
This was not a two-star Michelin experience any way we looked at it.
Food Rating: 6/10
Price: ¥¥¥¥
Address: Shiba Park Hotel Annex 1/F, 1-5-10 Shiba Kouen, Minato-ku Tokyo, JapanClosest Metro Station: Onarimon
Tel: +81 (0) 3-5405-7800
Website: www.tateruyoshino.com/english/shiba/index.html
View Larger Map
Post a Comment
Please tell us what you think