High Tables of Tokyo

World's Highest Michelin Starred City

Having clinked glasses with the Michelin boys and discerned the intricacies of Michelin's modus operandi we wouldn't be dashing to catch that next ANA flight to reach Tokyo in 8 hrs just to eat at the city's "Michelin-starred" restaurants. Rather, we'd smile with a savvy, super well-connected Frenchman recently arrived on the Japanese F&B circuit who winks, "Michelin, after all, is better-known for tyres than epicurean discretion"  (and it sounds so much more disdainful when enunciated in French...).
Yet the world prostrates at Michelin's alter and Michelin stars have become a synonym for infallibility in culinary realms. Indeed, Japan Private Tour, which runs a restaurant concierge, staggers at our reservations about some of Tokyo's most celebrated Michelin-starred restaurants. It's not within the scope of this story to scrutinise what incentivises Michelin. More amusing are intimations we've received on Tokyo dining. If you aren't Japanese, Japanese gastronomic restaurants mightn't accept you. Then, if your mother happens to be Japanese you seek her intervention to plead your case and credentials. A half-Japanese is just about acceptable...
Akhil Tiwari, a Lucknow boy heading the concierge at Four Seasons Tokyo, has even quirkier tales. He has worked around the world and been in Tokyo for 20 years, admirable feat given that most expats flee in 2 years: there's a method to Japanese madness and Akhil has decoded it. So it is with placidity he tells of a legendary sushi restaurant for whose sushi gourmets whizz over from LA just for lunch and fly back (let's not dwell on the veracity of the story, it's a good one!). The eccentric 90-year-old chef apparently permits  guests precisely 30 minutes to gulp down 20 pieces of freshly-dished sushi. You don't speak, just eat. And you're billed $300. Akhil further explains that whilst elsewhere on earth $1000 buys you a table, in Japan dangling money is the supreme insult. In his 18 years with Four Seasons, Akhil has had to submit to the whims of celebrities but despite exhausting summons to Michael Jackson's suites, he wasn't always able to fulfil the late star's demands. In Japan you respect the system.
But he guides us through Tokyo. Tokyo is unique because most of its top restaurants are quite literally "top." They occupy the top stories or high floors of tall buildings. Some restaurants floor us with their haute gastronomie, others give us a high with their heady spirits, whilst yet others present us Tokyo's high society. In any case, you leave in high spirits. We embarked to discover Tokyo's Michelin-starred restaurants. We came away with a more  spirited piece. Chin-chin!

Blanc Rouge, Tokyo Station Hotel: Tokyo's best-kept secret, stumbled upon quite fortuitously. This restaurant in a heritage hotel looks like it walked right out of France and it's surprising we managed a table as it seems a favourite with fine-palated wine aficionados. Sommelier Yuichiro Kawakami launches the evening with Mathieu-Princet Brut Premier Cru, yet another champagne from a "petit producer" and a felicitous discovery. We do ample justice to glass after glass of this wonderful number before Kawakami suggests we try GH Mumm Cordon Rouge Ros&eacute. And we do, again and again... Drink up. We mean the olive oil. Its wonders are such that we demand to see the bottle, brought to us for inspection. Clearly, Executive Chef Masahiro Ishihara uses only premium ingredients. And it shows. Breads doused in Oliva Premium Greek Organic Olive Oil from Messinia is a meal in itself. Then comes amuse-bouche that's an unction of bean mousse and jelly followed by a delicate seasonal salad, quietly innovative minestrone, Chef's Special Garden Style Vegetable Plate. It's an uninterrupted train of excellence culminating in an organic cereal risotto. No, it's not a frumpy porridge but as elegant as every other creation in this d&eacutegustation. And then there's White Chocolate Gateau with Pear Compote, a helluva lot classier than it sounds. The proof is in the taste and texture of the pudding! And the butterfly-light petit fours fluttering around your plate. Lots of butterflies in the head too, what with navigating the sommelier's creative selection of wines including Japanese– they exist and are actually good!

New York Grill, Park Hyatt Tokyo: Perhaps Tokyo's busiest restaurant on a Monday night. We get lost in the Metro, but happens in Tokyo... A Japanese girl buys our Metro tickets because credit cards aren't accepted for so risible an amount. From Shinjuku Station she escorts us into to the Park Hyatt. It's a delicious evening of Billecart Salmon champagne ros&eacute, gorgeous homemade breads and a surprising desi-style chickpea curry with rice for mains. More delicious still is the experience that lingers on memory's palate of a young Japanese girl who paid for our metro tickets, didn't disclose her details,  promised to meet us at our hotel where she had a lunch meeting next day. We waited and waited to return the kindness. We never saw her again.

Arva, Aman Tokyo: Tall, dark and handsome, as a sexy Italian should be. The glam set emerge from Porsches, when not descending from a chopper, to dine at this high-set restaurant with those high, high ceilings. If Aman restaurants were once the prerogative of in-house guests, they are now accessible and Arva's where you go to see and be seen, usually spending $300 on an Italian main course. Teetering so high, surrounded by Tokyo high society, you need no other high. But then there's that exhilarating prosecco...
You exit the restaurant and your head spins, not because of the prosecco but you just heard someone say he found a dosa place in Tokyo. The champagne bubble comes crashing down to earth. Forget the champagne. We want that damn dosa!

Daigo: It's amongst Tokyo's priciest gastronomic restaurants. And it's vegetarian! If you thought Japanese food is all raw fish and wagyu beef remember that Japanese buddhists (at least the devout) are vegetarian. Step out of your shoes and into this restaurant where the kimono-clad pretty young manageress Mato with mincing steps leads you into a tatami-matted private chamber with sunken Japanese-style low seating overlooking a mini Japanese garden. You're nicely ensconced for a leviathan Japanese d&eacutegustation. It could stretch to 14 courses. A young chef helms the kitchen infusing with modernity his grandmother's recipes that this restaurant has served for 3 generations. Lunch begins with ambrosia-like homemade plum wine- nowhere again over a month in Japan will we find its equal. And never again will we have that tofu textured like a cloud at dawn. We'd feign have 14 courses of it but Chef has other plans. Each course arrives in beautiful Japanese ceramic. That stewed aubergine or okra could conceal such complexity of flavour and feel you never imagined. After the ultimate rice porridge we can hardly extract ourselves from our sunken seats. We tell Chef we're coming back- for 14 courses of that inimitable tofu...

BVLGARI II Ristorante Luca Fantin: Aperitif is Dom P&eacuterignon, 2009, mind you. We'd concede 3-Michelin-stars only for the temperature at which the champagne is served. It's crisp and sharp and feels like a spray of chilled diamonds tingling your palate. When was the last time that happened? Can't remember. Not from having had too much champagne... But because the art of serving champagne has, well, lost its artistry. Nowadays, it suffices to serve a "brand." Matters not if the champagne comes warm and syrupy. This restaurant's dashing young sommelier Yasuhiro Okado could be modelling for Bvlgari were he not upholding the art of serving champagne. Mercifully he has dedicated himself to the worthy cause for here's the ONLY place in Japan that serves champagne at the right temperature. Remember also Bvlgari-owned establishments exclusively serve
Dom P&eacuterignon by the glass as the same company now owns both, for want of a classier word, brands.
And so we submit to 2 glasses of diamond-sharp Brut and then a glass of  petal-soft Dom P&eacuterignon Ros&eacute 2005.  After 3 glasses of Dom P&eacuterignon the chandeliers are swinging and the curtains become a creamy rain. The timely arrival of breads rescues the evening. Chef Luca Fantin's cuisine is worth sobering for. Breads are served with a Japanese olive oil which Chef champions to promote local products. But there's a trolley bearing a select assemblage of European olive oils. Fantin craftily manoeuvres local ingredients in innovations like home-made ravioli with seasonal corn pur&eacutee and black truffle or saut&eacuteed mushrooms with a particular orange from Mt. Fuji. It's sacrilege to avow a preference for the more classic cuisine at his restaurant at The Bvlgari Resort Bali when Fantin presents here iced almond spheres enclosing mozzarella and tomato with tomato jelly and such like. Increasingly more complex dishes apotheosise in the extraordinary Composition of Unpasteurised Milk from Hokkaido with granita and gelato. Each course is paired with the splendours of fine Italian wines. Keep coming those Barolos and Brunellos...
Had this restaurant a French or Japanese chef it would have 3 Michelin stars. Haply we stamped it Tokyo's best restaurant before discovering it now figures amongst Asia's top 50 restaurants. Another glass of Dom P&eacuterignon? Why thank you. Brut 2009 or Ros&eacute 2005. Choices choices...
Piacere, Shangri-La Tokyo: The Shangri-La Tokyo is perhaps the glitziest address in town, literally, sparkling with what seems a billion lights, including spectacular chandeliers cascading down the grand staircase. And Piacere has that Milanese sophistication about it. Suave settees, stylish lights and a glamorous clientele to go. Italian Executive Chef Andrea Ferrero concocts creations like Chef Omakase Aomori Herbs and Flowers and even homemade dry-salted Ricotta for his Piennolo Tomato Spaghetti. Garlic risotto with sour cream and cheese seems a gentle liberty within the confines of classic Italian cuisine.
If you expect the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, it doesn't happen at Tokyo's luxury 5-star hotels. But English afternoon tea with French-style pastries does unfold at the Lobby Lounge. The bi-monthly changing themed teatime offering ensures locals keep coming back.

Hoshinoya Tokyo: In Bali when every resort thunderously proclaimed they served sushi only one resort desisted. It was Bali's sole Japanese resort, the newly-launched Hoshinoya Bali. The young executive chef was firm. Bali hadn't appropriate ingredients for sushi and he wouldn't desecrate the art of sushi-making with unqualified ingredients. We remark a similar pernickety at Hoshinoya Tokyo, the city's first urban ryokan whose award-winning chef categorically refuses to serve vegetarians, because dashi fish stock is indispensable to authentic Nippon cuisine. Woe to the vegetarian! For this super-talented chef's creations are as arty as  the decorative paraphernalia around the arresting museum-like subterranean restaurant. But even a vegetarian can extrapolate from the continental breakfast (the only vegetarian meal dispensed) to the marvels of this chef's cuisine. As for the continental breakfast, it's exiguous and expensive but perhaps Tokyo's best breakfast– not for the gourmand but for the gourmet. Served in your room, in ryokan-style, it comprises dew-drop-fresh salad that feels like it was picked just that morning. The gleaming lettuce seems a piece of Murano glass. Freshly-baked rolls are as good as in France. Homemade Japanese granola with all-Japanese seeds and grains and Japanese black sugar is something worth checking into this ryokan for. Only in-house guests allowed!

Motif Restaurant & Bar, Four Seasons Tokyo: Fine pin-head bubbles ooze up within the champagne flute young sommelier Wataru Ueba poses at our table, all dressed up for dinner, like the guests in lounge suits and cocktail dresses descried through towering flower arrangements and hushed lighting at Tokyo's most romantic restaurant. Ueba insists we discover this champagne from a small producer. And this little Legras & Haas Tradition Brut 1er Cru thrills. As does lean young Chef Hiroyuki Asano  who plays with ingredients from Hokkaido and nimbly fashions them into Frenchified chic. From chilled corn soup to deftly herbed vegetables through roasted lily root with yuzu  to d&eacuteclinaison of mushroom it's a parade of unmitigated perfection. Flavours, textures and presentation combine in nuanced and elegant creations as light as your head after all the wines paired with the zeal of youth. You'll need many many replenishments of the warm breads, each time fetched fresh from the oven. Intersperse selections from an impressive cheese trolley before dessert of tea souffl&eacute with grapefruit sorbet. Remy Martin Louis XIII brings down the curtains on this marvellous  culinary show.
If the fine dining restaurant is a refined precinct, a more gregarious ambience reigns at the lounge-bar. Sit at the bar knocking down Tokyo's best-crafted cocktails including signature cocktail Trufflytini comprising truffle salt, truffle oil and truffle slices. Top-notch bar snacks herald the excellences of the dinner menu. Minestrone soup beggars fare at Italian speciality restaurants. The green salad is freshness in a bowl. How would you like your pasta? We've just been swigging Trufflytinis so fancy takes us to have truffle butter pasta. It's not on the menu. "But everything is possible at the Four Seasons..." And we get satiny streams of linguine curled like a nymphette on a silken bed of truffle butter with ivory-hued, pert al dente legs of pasta revealed under a flimsy coverlet of black truffle shavings. This is what you'd find at an Italian, em, "Michelin-starred" restaurant in Italy. And the portions are appropriately minuscule. You're allowed but 100 g of that paradisal pasta!

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon: The iconic chef recently passed away from cancer but his Tokyo restaurants didn't shut. South African Manager Arn Moorcroft says, pouring out Veuve Cliquot, that the show must go on. The lively champagne reflects the ebullient spirit of the chef. Perched on high stools at the counter around the kitchen you overhear some Frenchmen say they're here to pay the great man homage. The signature chocolate dessert,  perhaps the only truly French dessert in Tokyo, keeps the show going.

Peter, The Peninsula Tokyo: THIS is the bar to start your evening at. Think vast, swank glass-wrapped interiors in mauve and pearl grey and lights like crushed ice. Watch the sunset over the Imperial Gardens as you sip signature cocktails. Mocktails are just as good. But Peninsula House Champagne is the order of the evening once you move to the restaurant, seamless with the bar. The restaurant specialises in grills and aged everything from 40-day aged cattle stripling to 12-year aged balsamic. The crowd, however, is young and hip and by midnight is throbbing. THIS is the bar to end your evening at.