Food

Joel Robuchon Fine Dining Experience in Tokyo, Japan!

April 10, 2024 / 0 Comments

Get ready for another image heavy post! I was lucky enough to try Joel Robuchon in Japan, and just like the Vegas location, it was practically in a mansion! There were many Joel Robuchon dining spots in this area of Tokyo, but we went to the main fancy one to go all out and to compare it to the Vegas location. 

Ebisu! Fancy spot in Tokyo. The header photo is where the restaurant is located, and this was the view before we got to Joel Robuchon Tokyo.
Our reservation was confirmed and we were seated promptly. The setting here in Tokyo was modern, but not quite as modern as the Vegas interior. A lot more gold here, whereas Vegas had some of that purple to balance things out.
Our menu for the evening. All these courses!
We each got a wine recommendation. We wanted red and they recommended a good light red wine. Though it wasn’t a Cabernet, it was still lovely.
The amuse bouche. I forgot what this was, but it was delicious! Great start for my tastebuds.
Bread cart! They automatically give us their signatures - a small baguette and a rye-like bread. We get to choose other breads to try. They have a Japan exclusive seaweed bread that is gluten free, which was surprisingly really good - chewy texture from the rice flour!
These are the breads everyone gets by default. Comes with some oil and they give you some amazing butter on the side as well. The bread you choose comes later.
Le Caviar Imperial de Sologne - caviar and crab with crustacean jelly and light cauliflower cream. The only “repeat” dish in Vegas! I don’t mind this is a repeat because it’s AMAZING. So fancy and a work of art. This one did taste more of crab though.
1st Service - they break out their menu by service and each service contains several items. The Vegas location did most individually as listed, so this was rather different.
Part of 1st Service - La Daurade - sea bream tartar and avocado cannelloni with fresh coriander. Wow this was refreshing and amazing. Great flavors and textures. Got us talking about avocados in Japan!
Part of 1st Service - Le Haricot Vert - green beans in mimosa style salad served with lightly smoked duck liver shavings. Wow, pretty pretty good for a salad! That foie gras? Smooth.
Part of 1st Service - Le Homard European - European lobster and vanilla flavored lemon jelly presented with fennel cream. They said pick it up and eat it in one bite, and that’s what we did. Explosive of flavors, party in the mouth right there! Similar feel to the amazing tomato dish (diff in flavors, but similar concept) from Vegas.
Our various breads came! They just stacked them all in a basket for us, whereas the Vegas location gave them to us individually. The breads were a bit not so impressive in flavor overall, but I did enjoy the seaweed bread.
2nd Service - Le Pied de Cochon and L’Oignon Doux.
Breading pig trotter accompanied with parsley and mustard seeds. This was probably one of our least favorite part of the meal. A lil oily, lots of pig flavor here. Looked really pretty, but my mouth didn’t really enjoy it.
Sweet onions custard presented in a light creamy velvety with crispy Sakura Ebi. So shrimps too. Pretty, has some fun textures here. OK tasting.
3rd Service - La Soupe de Poisson, L’Oursin, L’Akagai
Fish stock soup served on floating meringue. So rich in seafood flavor here! Good heavy and concentrated flavor, but texturally, it was a bit grainy. Was it supposed to be that way?
Creamy organic spelt wheat risotto served with sea urchin and green peas. Wow, so fresh and delicious!
Braised Akagai shellfish presented in a light white butter sauce. Shell was on to keep this dish warm, so it was fun to take it off to see the actual dish! Pretty good, but not my fave.
4th Service - Uchiwa Ebi and Le Hirame.
Steamed turbot in a shellfish broth sauce with braised cabbage. Very light fish dish here. I’d prefer if the fish was a bit more tender as it ate a lil dry IMO, but everything around it was refreshing and much needed.
Roasted Uchiwa Ebi served with bamboo shoots in Chateau-Chalon sauce. Is it just me or are a lot of the dishes here this colored? Properly cooked, good, but didn’t stand out as some others.
Main Course - Le Plat “Tradition.” La Cote de Veau - roasted veal chop escorted with white asparagus and morel mushrooms gratin. See that Robuchon potatoes on the side? That part paired so well with the meat, similar to how it paired so well with the duck in Vegas. I suppose the potatoes is a repeat, but c’mon, it’s a must at Joel Robuchon restaurants! They first showed us the actual chops (large) and they made and cut them tableside… so sad to see most of it go to waste (perhaps they do something else with the rest of the chops?) as the end product is just a couple slices each. Not my favorite, but I did enjoy the mushrooms portion of the dish.
OMG OMG Cheese cart time! I was so bummed we didn’t get the cheese cart when we tried Joel Robuchon in Vegas, so YAY CHEESE!! They asked if we had room for cheese, and heck yes, always have room for cheese.
I was unfamiliar with the cheese names, so I asked them for their recommendations and this was what I got - a soft cheese, a super soft cheese (epoisse- not in the US?), a blue cheese, and a hard cheese. So funky, but delicious. They also had items that goes with cheese to choose from, such as nuts, fruit stuff, etc.
Dessert is starting! The main dessert for the night was their strawberry and cheese cake symphony with lime zest scent and Tahiti vanilla mousse. Pretty good! The desserts in Japan were better than the ones in Vegas!
Dessert Cart number one… cakes, mini pastries, ice cream, etc.
We also got coffee or tea. Since I tried a cappuccino from the Vegas location, I decided to try a tea here. Pretty nice camomile.
Dessert cart 2! Wow, another dessert cart? So awesome! Mini pastries here to choose from, including more of the candied stuff.
I didn’t want to get too uncomfortably full, so I just chose the rum brioche cake and some pistachio ice cream from the first dessert cart. Wow, def tasted the rum, and the ice cream was really nice as well.
I just chose 3 things from dessert cart 2 - a canele (wished I had the ice cream to go with this!), a sakura treat, and a blueberry treat. All were amazing.

Our Joel Robuchon Tokyo Experience is Coming to end End…

Pretty good classy vibes here. The main person that explained things to us definitely knew a lot of languages! French, Japanese, English, etc. Some others didn’t speak too much, but that was alright. We overall had a good time here, but I think we agree that other set menu places are more worth it in Japan and are much cheaper than Joel Robuchon. I didn’t love everything I ate here, but there were definitely some stuff I’d like to have again. The cheese and the dessert were amazing though… +1 for Joel Robuchon Japan on that part! One thing that did bother me was the water service here. It’s the fancy Evian for still and Perrier for sparkling, and they really do charge by the bottle. In Vegas, we were just charged for one, though we had more. They just kept refilling here, and the one in Japan, they stopped once the bottle was empty and asked if we wanted to add another one.

The damage LOL
Joel Robuchon Tokyo is so fancy that their toilet paper in the women’s restroom had their signature ribbon!
Just like the Vegas location, they gave us a bread to go.
We got banana bread in Vegas, and I’m not so sure what this one was, but we weren’t really impressed by it.
Cheers!

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