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.
