When you think of good food in Kobe, the first thing that comes to mind is the cluster of French restaurants in Kitano. These places, with that cute, polished Kobe sensibility showing in both the food and the interiors, are popular with people visiting Kobe on a date or just as tourists. My friend asked me to pick a good place regardless of budget, so I went to the nicest one of the bunch.
Graciani from the outside
It used to be the mansion of a Duke Graciani, and it has been converted into a restaurant. It isn’t as big as I expected, and the stairs up to the second floor were narrow. On interior alone it falls short of Tokyo’s glitzy French restaurants, but there’s a waiting area and a bar, so you can use it for more than just a meal, and the staff are friendly and the service is top-notch, so it more than deserves to be called a grand maison.
The front entrance
True to its grand maison status, a staff member welcomed us warmly at the door. The thought crossed my mind that it would make a great date spot. The area around the restaurant is Ijinkan, a neighborhood where lots of foreigners used to live. It’s also the center of Kobe sightseeing. There are the English House, the French House and the Dutch House, and there’s even a mosque right nearby, so you could say all sorts of cultures lived side by side on one street. French food eaten in such exotic surroundings has a charm of its own.
The charger plate
We were shown to a nice window seat on the second floor, already fully set. Even the charger plate is pretty. The patterned glass reminded me of my visit to Boschetta a while back. The dishes that came later were lovely too, every one of them. At grand maison level, this is the kind of care you’d expect. Still, it felt a bit wasted on two guys. And everyone around us was a couple… Ah, this is exactly the kind of place I should have come to on a date… My scouting-trip phase keeps dragging on longer than planned.
Butter
It looked like cheese, but one taste and it was just butter after all.
Bread
Warm bread comes out. Taste-wise, just so-so…
Starter: mushrooms and tuna
The mushrooms were Japanese, and pretty ordinary. Not bad, just not up to expectations. I think they said the tuna was a young tuna; it was fresh, but it just tasted like tuna.
Edamame blanc-manger with fish with Paris soir (vichyssoise, chilled potato soup) and consommé jelly
In a word it was potato soup.. but served cold, which made it perfect for summer. From here on, my opinion of the place shot up.
House wine, a Chardonnay from the south of France
Lovely nose, but like every wine at this price point it lacked body.
Foie gras poêlé with fried round eggplant and grilled corn, red-miso red wine sauce, topped with summer truffle
I’m not a big fan of foie gras. Why? Because I’m sick of it.. Whenever you go to a Western restaurant with a bit of a reputation, foie gras always shows up, and the cooking and the quality are all much the same. Keep eating it and at some point you just get tired of it. Same goes for the steak mains. My wish is that places would skip dishes that have nothing special to that restaurant, because otherwise there’s no point in coming all that way. This one wasn’t bad either, but it didn’t rise above ordinary. If I’d come here on a first date I’d have been very happy, but sadly that wasn’t the case.
Grilled kochi with a bagna cauda-style herb salad of summer vegetables and a warm vinaigrette of reduced tomato jus
Kochi is a flat-bodied fish, a bit like a flounder. This one suited my taste much better, and the fish was very fresh too.
Roast Brittany duck with black sesame, topped with seared peach and fromage blanc, pain d’épices flavor
The black-sesame-coated duck dipped in the sweet sauce was pretty good. Not premium ingredients, but a good way of cooking them.
Roast special-selection black wagyu sirloin, Graciani style (+800)
For an 800-yen supplement, this was another very ordinary steak. The steak at Igrek, where I went before, was far better. The food falls a little short of the atmosphere and service. That often happens when you order a cheap menu at an expensive restaurant, but this lunch course came to 10,000 yen with the wine… (Well, I suppose 10,000 yen at a grand maison counts as cheap.)
Avant-dessert
A little palate-cleanser dessert before the dessert. The ice cream was very good. Around here the dessert wagon comes. I really thought an actual wagon would roll up, but not quite; they just brought out a big plate with a dozen or so kinds of cake on it. The cakes looked so ordinary that I thought, what is this.. a total flop on the very first day?
Tea set
The deer-antler shape left an impression.. not that I drink tea, of course..
Dessert 1
My picks: crème brûlée, and a quiche-like cake with butterbur in it. But once the desserts arrived, my verdict on this place flipped completely. Sweet, silky custard under crunchy caramel: never in my life have I had such a perfectly balanced crème brûlée. The polish on this ordinary-looking item was so astonishing it moved me more than the desserts at most French restaurants. The cake next to it was even softer than castella-like Japanese rolled omelet. I vowed never again to underestimate Kobe’s desserts.
Dessert 2
Cherry pie and chocolate cake. The cherries were ridiculously fresh. Half cake, half cherries. I didn’t know a cake this good could exist.. The chocolate cake was perfectly balanced too, neither too bitter nor too sweet. A grand-maison-level restaurant usually keeps a dedicated pâtissier and spares nothing for the best desserts, so I figure it’d be fine to go just for the desserts. The real pity is that because they didn’t look like much, I only ordered four from the dessert wagon. Had I known, I’d have tried every single one. I regret it, but it’s too late now.
Petits fours
An ordinary restaurant would probably just buy store-bought sweets and serve those. But every one of the petits fours here was at a level you couldn’t get even at most specialist shops. I wanted to take some home.. It was a bit pricey for lunch, but I was fully satisfied all the same. Next time I go for lunch, though, I think I’d order a cheaper course and focus on the desserts. Or else go all in and order the expensive course.