Cuisine(s) Michel Troisgros
A scion of the famed French cooking family sets up base at the Century Hyatt

Photos courtesy of the Century Hyatt Tokyo

Michel Troisgros, the third-generation chef of the renowned Roanne family, offers a cooking style that combines French, Japanese and Italian influences. The Troisgros family has created what it calls cuisine acidulée, which features the fruity, palate-stimulating tastes of yuzu, sudachi, kumquat, apple and other “acidic” flavors, paired with the savory tastes of meat, fish, and vegetables. The results are delicious.

At Cuisine(s) Michel Troisgros in Shinjuku, the best way to sample cuisine acidulée is the four-course prix fixe lunch (¥4,000). Reserve a table near the window. Relax in the comfortably upholstered chair. Choose either fish or meat (or both if you’re ravenous), then let the attentive staff and kitchen take over. You will be in very good hands.

First to arrive on the crisp ecru table linen will be a delicate wood tray arrayed with a selection of tidbits to whet the appetite: a gougere of Gruyere capped with a sliver of red beet and a melba crisp with cumin-spiced chickpea puree topped with a paper-thin strip of green apple and a leaf of fresh chervil.

While you nibble, peruse for your amusement the wine list, which is the size and heft of a smallish city phonebook, perhaps Cincinnati. The list offers bottles starting at the foothills of ¥5,500 for a white Limoux and climbing to the heights of a ¥140,000 La Taché. Wines by the glass, of course, are available, such as a fine white Pernand Vergelesses (¥1,800) or a good Cotes Roannaise red (¥1,000).

Bread and butter will arrive next with a choice of freshly-baked rolls flavored with bacon, or basil, or walnut. Even a mundane detail like butter is carefully attended to: it’s presented as a leaf with the pattern of veins inscribed by hand.

The menu, of course, changes with the season and the market. The progression continued with a cool consommé of dashi and wakame ennobled with diced Taraba crab and kumquat, followed by a piquant risotto of Piedmont rice, pink with fresh tomato, and crowned with a dollop of crème fraiche infused with bits of purple olive and fresh thyme, which is then stirred into the al dente rice.

The meat of the day was beef cheek, cooked slowly for 10 hours until meltingly tender, served in a rich sauce of shallots, coriander and basil, brightened with strips of fresh mango. The fish was a perfectly grilled sea bream filet served on a cushion of mashed potato with a curry-spiced apricot sauce dotted with capers and batons of tart rhubarb. Beautiful.

Then a pause, a palate cleanser, was served in a shot glass—a refreshing concoction of tomato, mango, lemon juice and black pepper.

Dessert was a spoonful of chocolate mousse paired with stewed and fresh strawberries with balsamic vinegar on one side of the plate and tiny, fresh strawberries dusted with lime zest and paired with a spoonful of goat cheese ice cream and strawberry gelée on the other side. Coffee or an herb infusion rounds off the meal together with another delicate wood tray arrayed with petits fours of yuzu marshmallow, a tiny madeleine and morsel of chocolate.

Consider a meal at Michel Troisgros as a spa treatment for your taste buds and a two-hour respite from Tokyo stress, and you’ll agree, like I did, that the ¥4,000 lunch course is a bargain.

Century Hyatt Tokyo, 2-7-2 Nishi-Shinjuku. Tel: 03-5321-3915. Open daily 11:30am-2pm and 5:30-11:30pm. Menu in French and Japanese. Nearest stn: Shinjuku, west exit, or Tochomae (Toei Oedo line). www.centuryhyatt.co.jp

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