After spending an hour wandering around the Ijinkan district, I headed back to the Kitano Hotel in time for my reservation. A wedding was in full swing. Watching the young bride and groom and their guests all smiles, the thought flashed through my mind for a moment that maybe someday I’d have mine in a place like this..
For now, though, I’m hungry, so food comes first ^_^
Igrek is a French restaurant produced by Chef Yamaguchi, who is also the hotel’s general manager. It has a good reputation in the area, and like Il Ghiottone in Kyoto, it has even opened a branch in Marunouchi. (The word on the branch seems to be that it’s not bad, but nothing special either.)
Maybe because Igrek itself has a slightly casual feel, there wasn’t anything really expensive on the menu. That day they had a special renewal menu including an aperitif and dessert, so I went for it. It came to about 4,400 yen.
First, the aperitif
It’s an unusual color; apparently it’s ginger ale mixed with rosé wine. Light, a little bitter, yet fresh and sweet. There’s a bit of sweetness, but it’s light enough to be a nice palate opener before the meal. It felt like I was being welcomed to Kobe.
Marinated mackerel and sea bream from Kochi Prefecture / beets, served salad-style
with a white wine vinegar jelly
The fish is perfectly fresh and so are the vegetables. One bite and I thought, this is going to be a textbook example of Japanese-style French, Japanese ingredients reinterpreted the French way.
Bread and tomato jam
I remember it came out warm. As for the taste.. you could say bread is practically this place’s specialité. ^_^
Walnut bread
It might look a little sparse on the add-ins, but with a meal this was just right
Spinach pasta with almond-scented rapeseed blossoms
Both the ingredients and the colors feel like spring. But you don’t eat it just like this..
Poêlé of fish shipped directly from Sukumo Port in Kochi Prefecture, with a country-style soup in a cocotte
Fresh ingredients, sparkling ideas and flawless cooking skills all come together here.
Only when you combine the two is the dish finally complete.
I could feel the gentle warmth of spring in this dish.
It’s dishes like this, with so much work and care put into them, that make it worth going out to eat. At places that compete on ingredient quality, like galbi or sashimi, I often end up thinking that for this money I could buy the ingredients and make something tastier at home, so even after a delicious meal I feel like I’ve lost out somehow. I think that getting-my-money’s-worth instinct is part of why I’ve come to love French food. ^_^
The main: wagyu sirloin steak
The steak I had at Trattoria Molto really moved me, and the grilling here is every bit as good. Maybe because it’s a lunch course, the beef quality was a notch lower, but the dipping sauce was so superb it more than made up for it. It was like eating a soft chocolate cake. It made me curious what they’d serve if I came for dinner.
The salad that comes with it
No need to say anything about freshness. I’m always so busy with work that I just eat salad that’s been sitting in the fridge for days, so eating salad this fresh, like it had just been picked, seemed to startle my mouth. ^_^
Finally, the dessert time I’d been waiting for.
A scene to make any cake lover’s heart race. You get to pick one of the house’s signature cakes. A truly tough decision. On top of that, since I came alone, sadly, I could only choose one.
Orange juice, my drink
And here’s what I chose: strawberry cheesecake and mango sherbet.
You get the richness of the cheesecake and the fragrance of the berries at the same time. I don’t usually like cheesecake much because it tends to be heavy, but this was so refreshing I had to give it credit. This would hold its own nationally. It’s top-level even compared with shops in Tokyo, and I doubt you’d easily find a place in Kobe or Osaka that does better.
From start to finish, from the aperitif to the dessert, it was a satisfying meal. As the hottest restaurant in Kobe lately, I had high expectations from the start, and the wonderful food didn’t fall short of them one bit. It completely wiped away the bad memory of coming to Kobe once before and being let down by a really odd restaurant. It made me want to hit the jackpot soon and come live in Kobe..