Sezanne [Tokyo] [**]

Apologies for the formatting, Android reddit mobile seems to be weird about adding individual dish descriptions, sorry for the worse reading experience:

1. 48 month Comte gougere. Deliciously cheesy, not much more to say. If it had had ham it’d displace the Kato uni doughnut for best hot filled round thing I’ve had on a tasting menu, but as it stands it’s a very close second.

2. Radishes in butter. The white one is regular butter with caviar, the green is herb butter. The herb flavor was impressively pronounced in the butter and it was my girlfriend and I’s preference of the two.

3. Sakura shrimp tart filled with shrimp paste. This was my girlfriend and I’s favorite bite of the meal, and possibly our favorite bite of the whole trip. The shrimp paste on the bottom was creamy and rich, while the raw shrimp on top still gave us the experience of having raw shrimp. Brilliant.

The bread and butter was very good, and I appreciated that the slices came out noticeably hot. The butter was from Bordier, my first time trying it, and outstanding.

4. White asparagus, green pea, and clam soup. One of the less mind-blowing dishes, I still thought it was quite tasty. Savory with some nice variety from the different pieces of vegetable and clam.

5. Firefly squid stuffed with piperade, garnished with green sauce with crunchy breadcrumbs. Super dramatic presentation, and really enjoyable to eat. The firefly squid being stuffed with piperade was almost gusher-esque (I wish I’d come up with a more appealing way to describe that…), while the breadcrumbs in the sauce stayed remarkably crunchy throughout eating the dish. Plus it’s super luxurious to receive this many firefly squid in one go.

6. Scallop wrapped in buckwheat crepe, with white beer sauce. A close second to the shrimp tart on meal highlights. Saucework was exceptional on the beer sauce and having the crepe as it went from crispy crispy soft was really nice. They left the pot of the beer sauce and we had a good bit more of it but couldn’t quite finish the full pot since it was so rich.. Holkaido scallops were, of course, delightful, and cooked flawlessly. I was really impressed with how evenly distributed the scallops were to form a consistent layer within the crepe – I asked Chef Calvert later and he explained that they wrap the scallops into a large tube with plastic wrap and the natural proteins cause it to bind, which I thought was really cool

7. Venison with juniper sauce (bottom) and… I forget the other sauce (top). Perfect cook on the venison and really excellent saucing again. They left the pot of the rest of the juniper sauce and we finished most of it again.

8. Grape palate cleanser. Is it just me or is grape a little underrated as a dessert ingredient these days? There was grape granite on top, some chunks of grape underneath, and I think a cream on the bottom with some champagne jelly in the middle. Really refreshing

9. Our main dessert – mango topped with mang sorbet, and rum cream with some tasty crunchies in it (my memory isn’t perfect so I’m paraphrasing some descriptions 😅). This did a great job of letting us try the mango in a few forms, and the top layer of sorbet totally tricked us. In some ways though, we were almost disappointed it wasn’t just the whole mango with whipped cream. Also between this and the firefly squid dish, creamy sauce + crunchy bits is quickly becoming a favorite thing of mine.

I got an espresso before petit fours, which was pretty tasty!

10. Petit fours. Chocolate layer cookie, pistachio cream, and black currant Madeleine. All very tasty, the pistachio was my preference. Also appreciated the Madeleine coming out hot!

Going into it my girlfriend and I hadn’t had much experience with higher end French fine dining and weren’t sure what to expect. While the service and room were bit more formal than we were used to, the food was outstanding and I gained a new appreciation for French sauces. Would highly recommend if you’re in Tokyo, especially since it’s not that hard to book!

Amusing coda to the story: as we paid they invited us back to chat with Chef Calvert. This wound up being slightly awkward; not because of Chef Calvert, who was super friendly, but because we weren’t sure how long we could chat with him, so we kept expecting him to be like “anyways I have to get back to the line, thanks for coming!” As a result we wound up consistently scrambling to come up with questions we thought had kind of short answers and then panicking a little bit when we realized he was still good to chat longer. Would have asked him more in depth questions about his background or more technical questions about the dishes if we’d known we’d had more time 😅. That said it was amusing when we asked him if he went to the Noma Kyoto popup and he described it as “fun” without much elaboration.

Did you happen to see Sean Brock while you were there? Just saw he was there on his IG.

How did you get a reservation? I’m going end of September and am confused by how the food scene works for travelers in Tokyo. Any tips?