I was a little disappointed with the desserts at Joël Robuchon, where I went recently, but a chance to make up for it came along. A dessert café called La Patisserie Pierre Gagnaire has opened on the 4th floor of the Takashimaya department store in Shinjuku, serving some of the desserts offered at the main restaurant. A dessert café from Pierre Gagnaire, a chef who takes desserts incredibly seriously? There was no way I wasn’t going, so I made time on the weekend and went.
The entrance
There’s no standing sign, so check the map carefully to find it. I couldn’t take photos inside, but it’s decorated with care right down to the fine details. The place just oozes luxury. Maybe because it was the weekend, I had to wait a bit to get in. Most of the customers were young women and ladies who’d come shopping. The 4th floor itself is all luxury women’s fashion boutiques, so the concept fits nicely.
It’s inside Takashimaya, which is right next to Shinjuku Station, so it’s easy to get to. The prices, though, are pretty jaw-dropping. A small slice of cake is 1,000 yen and a single drink is 600-800 yen or more, so only go if you’re really keen ^_^
The water glass
Not even the food yet, and I’m already impressed by a mere water glass. Making a glass thin lowers its durability and it breaks easily, but it feels nice against your lips. When I pick glasses for home, I never choose thin ones. Put a little pressure on them while washing up and they crack. Most places hardly ever use glasses like this because of the cost (see Joël Robuchon), but this place, not even a restaurant but a café, pays attention to details as small as the water glass. My mood suddenly lifted.
Today I ordered the three-dessert assortment, a selection of desserts served at the main Pierre Gagnaire restaurant. It’s 2,100 yen, or 2,600 yen with coffee or tea. You can’t swap the coffee/tea for anything else. If you do, they charge the full à la carte price, and the drinks worth having were 840 yen, so I just had it with water.
Table setting
They change the cutlery every time a dessert comes out. Another impressive bit of service. It feels like being at a French restaurant.
Here comes the first dessert.
Carrot confit / carrot meringue / carrot ice cream / carrot biscuit / carrot sauce
I never imagined carrots would show up as a dessert. I loved the feast of flavours from the combination of different carrot preparations, consistent yet varied, and the delicately expressed sweetness of the carrot was wonderful. In a way, it could almost feel like a starter. That kind of thought in the menu structure gets a pass from me too. But maybe because the flavours are so delicate, I think you might not really pick them up if you’re not in good shape. These desserts are originally meant to close a full course meal, so you enjoy them differently from ordinary sweets. If you’re expecting the usual sweetness, you might end up saying, “Why is this so expensive?”
Pistachio biscuit Mont Blanc with lavender sauce
The Mont Blanc itself is very restrained in sweetness. It’s the lavender sauce that adds the accent and completes the dessert. The server sets down the plate and pours on the lavender sauce, and a sweet, subtle fragrance rises right up to your nose. When I let out an impressed “Ooh,” the lovely server explained the dessert to me in detail. That spirit of service impressed me once again. When I took a bite of the Mont Blanc, with chestnut and pistachio, together with the sweet-and-sour sauce, it turned into something completely different from any Mont Blanc I’d had. The sweetness is thoroughly held back, so the flavour could easily feel flat, but it comes vividly to life. In particular, the tangy aftertaste of the lavender sauce, sour almost like vinegar, gives it a charm no merely sweet dessert could have.
Fromage cheese / chocolate cake with Kahlúa / coffee ice cream
Eating the fromage cheese and the Kahlúa chocolate together is like drinking very strong coffee with fresh milk in it. But the flavour was lighter than I expected. It was so-so. The coffee ice cream beside it was very ordinary too. The sweetness was nicely restrained, but there wasn’t any new flavour in there either. I suppose the last one is there for people who want an ordinary dessert like cake and ice cream rather than anything special.
It was a good experience. Not just the taste but the service and the interior were first-class too. It’d be nice to eat a meal nearby and then come here for dessert. (Though the dessert would probably cost more than the meal…) Still, I was glad to get even an indirect taste of a super-famous chef like Pierre Gagnaire. The other items looked good too, but I went alone today, so this is all I’m posting. If I get the chance, I’d like to try the other items next time. Ah… before that, maybe I need to make a lot of money first…