De Roanne

De Roanne is probably one of the best French restaurants that I've visited in years.
The restaurant is located on the opposite side from Ebisu Garden Place. The interior is whitish with a high ceiling, so it's moderately spacious and nice--- unlike many crowded restaurants that try to seat as many customers as they can...

We started out with sea urchin mousse topped with consomme jelly. Next came a salad with conger myriaster ('hamo'in Japanese), fresh matsutake mushrooms topped with balsamic dressing, followed by pot steamed foie gras bavarois with port wine truffle sauce. If you think you cannot eat fois gras, this you can. It doesn't have any special livery smell and the salty taste of the fois gras bavarois harmonically matches with the sweet port wine truffle sauce. Excellent!
We had 2 main dishes-- flatfish with brown butter sauce and mashed potatoes with sprinkled capers and sauteed beef strips with truffle sauce. After this we had a small chicory mousse which tasted like cafe au lait. It was really surprising to see that the chicory as we know as a little green herb would taste like this.
For dessert we had grapefruit pudding topped with fresh grapefruit and some cakes from the wagon.

We had quite a lot to eat, but unlike usual French restaurants, the chef uses many sour tasting ingredients in between, so it's not as heavy as you would think it would be. The chef also specialises in cooking vegetables and seems to be ordering the best fresh ingredients of the season from all over Japan.

This is a restaurant that I would like to go to quite frequently and is a place where I can take my gourmet friends to with confident.

Dazzle

Last Friday, we went to a restaurant called 'Dazzle' in Ginza.
It's a new restaurant that opened this year in the Mikimoto 2 Building.
They serve Pacific Rim~Californian Cuisine-ish dishes.

Firstly, we went to the bar on the 8th floor where we had
a delicious peach cocktail--fresh peach crushed in champagne.
After finishing this drink, we went on a special elevator to the main dining on the 9th floor. This elevator, for some reason, becomes dark just before
the door opens.

On the main dining floor we were welcomed by smiley staff, a huge diamond shaped
wine cellar and a number of swarovski crystal balls hanging from the ceiling. Everything
there is sparkling and shining.

We had 2 appetizers--crab cake and caesar salad, today's pasta, which was mushroom
& pancietta risotto with summer truffles, grilled platinum pork,
mashed potatoes (yummy!!), dessert and coffee. My dessert was a cream puff with
passion fruit flavored custard cream and coconut ice cream.
Apart from the food and cocktail, I had 2 glasses of wine, and the cost per person was
8,000 yen. This is quite reasonable for a restaurant in Ginza with good service and delicious
food. This restaurant has become one of my top reccomendable restaurants in Tokyo.

Ramen Museum

Today we went to the Ramen Museum in Shin-Yokohama.
The whole museum is made to be some city of Japan in the 1960s.
There are old fashioned bars, barbers, Japanese style hotels etc.
and you will feel as if you've time slipped.
There are 8 ramen restaurants, which are all famous, selected restaurants
from different regions of Japan. The types of ramen are different, so you can choose
the type of ramen that you like. They have regular sizes and mini sizes,
so if you're really hungry, you can probably eat 4 different mini-sized ramens.
I had 3 mini ramens, plus coffee-flavored milk and a bite of fried sugar bread...
and I'm full...!!!
The museum has pamphlets written in English, Chinese and Korean, so non-Japanese
speakers can also enjoy the place.

Japanese Cherries

The cherry blossom season is around March~April in Japan, and it is now the 'Cherry Season'.
The most famous cherry brand in Japan is 'Satoh Nishiki'. There are very cheap cherries that cost about 398yen per package which are not so sweet and are rather small. But the big and very sweet ones are very expensive, and we are not able to buy these quite often. I love cherries and I eat them like crazy around this time of the year. I usually buy them via the internet straight from the cherry farms---and this year, I bought the most expensive cherries that I've ever bought in my entire life. These expensive cherries are often sent as gifts, so they are beautifully packed in a wooden box. The gold sticker on the box says that these cherries have won the award from the Minister of Agriculture 4 times. The regular price was 25,000 yen, but I bought it for 12,530 yen as I bidded it off at an internet auction. I tried one of these cherries today and it was big, juicy, sweet and was the most delicious cherry that I've ever had! It's a shame that I have to eat these cherries within a day or so... but of course I'll eat them while they are fresh and sweet.