Having come all the way to Karuizawa, I could hardly skip its most famous restaurant. Auberge de Primavera is a French restaurant well known among Tokyo gourmets. It has even appeared in Drops of God.
I had thought about coming for dinner, but since we’d booked a pension for the night, we went for lunch instead. Lunch means eating light, of course.
Aperitif: omija (schisandra) juice topped with champagne
I had no idea omija existed in Japan. Our server said it’s a very famous berry in Korea too. It tastes wonderfully refreshing, perfect as an aperitif. The presentation was great fun as well: they wheeled over a big bowl brimming with omija juice on a cart and ladled it into champagne glasses right in front of us. The berries left at the bottom of the glass somehow capture the feel of a restaurant in the woods. Who knew there was such a special way to drink omija… I feel like I learned something.
Butter and pork pâté
Brought out to spread on the bread. It looks great, but the taste was just so-so. My palate has been spoiled by the ham spread at Mitachi Triangle and by Echire butter, sadly.
Flan of green asparagus from Miyuki in northern Shinshu, with a morel jelly
Asparagus at this level deserves to be called art. As you’d expect from Nagano Prefecture, the vegetables taste outstanding.
Uni
I ordered the sweetfish (ayu) rillettes, but they were out, so they swapped it for uni. I was a little disappointed since I’d been looking forward to the ayu, but when the dish actually arrived my jaw dropped. How can a presentation be this charming? It brought out the rich, creamy taste of the uni beautifully. I scraped the bowl clean.
Bread
It was so good that I asked, and they said it comes from Asanoya, a famous bakery in the area. Asanoya has a branch at Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi, so I’ll have to go there some time and try a few things.
Vegetable soup
There was a special vegetable soup for 900 yen. At any other restaurant I’d never order it, but this is Nagano Prefecture and it would surely be made with their own home-grown vegetables, so I figured it had to be good. It was made with carrots, cucumbers and so on, and I never expected it to be this fresh and bright. I’d have really missed out if I hadn’t ordered it.
Suzuki (Japanese sea bass)
The dish itself was well made, but I’d eaten so much sea bass on this trip that it didn’t leave much of an impression. That’s the problem when you cram fine-dining restaurants together.
Pork main course
It was decent enough. I guess the pork I had at Sant Pau earlier has raised my standards quite a bit.
Herbal tea
An herbal tea made from sakura, they said. Not just the presentation, the taste was good too.
Chocolate dessert
I wasn’t expecting much from the desserts, but this was pretty tasty. The long stick in the middle turned out to be candy.
Seasonal fruit dessert
The cherries were clearly American, whichever way you looked at them, and fell a little short of expectations, but I ate them anyway. Well… you can’t judge a very expensive fine-dining restaurant on its relatively cheap lunch course, but it’s worth dropping by once as part of a Karuizawa trip.
Front entrance
The place was packed. It might be nicer to go when it’s a bit quieter. If they do gibier in winter, I bet it would be really delicious.
After the meal we did a bit of light sightseeing around central Karuizawa. We’d done all the shopping we wanted and our stomachs were full, so all that was left was to head home.
Asanoya
There was plenty of tasty-looking bread, but since they have a branch in Tokyo there was nothing I particularly needed to buy.
The end of Kyu-Karuizawa Ginza street
It was a shame it rained a bit. It was cloudy and even cold. You’d never have guessed it was midsummer. The wind was strong too, so in the end I pulled out the winter clothes I’d bought at the outlet and put them on. If the weather had been nice, it would have been pleasantly cool.
The shop where I stopped for souvenirs
It’s a shop selling all kinds of ham, including something called the “Prince of Ham” or the like; they really had a huge variety. I bought a few as souvenirs and headed straight back to Tokyo.