Sunday, April 25, 2010

Benoit and Two Rooms

More Tokyo restaurant coverage. Today, just in time to mentally prepare me for my trip to Paris next week, I had brunch with friends at a French bistro in Aoyama. It was the first nice day in a long series of crappy wet ones, so Peter decided it would be a good day to rally the troops. We all met at Benoit, up on the 10th floor of the La Porte building. I was the first to arrive and, while I waited in the library-themed bar area, got to really admire the beautiful interior of this restaurant. The bathroom alone is incredible.

After being led up the spiral staircase, past the amazing view coming from the floor to ceiling glass windows, we settled into our seats to peruse the menu, which had both prix fixe and a la carte offerings.

We all went for the three-course set meal. For the first course, Yuki went with the pea soup and I had the Pate en croute that I was so darned excited about, I forgot to take a picture of it. For the main, I opted for the ray wing with heavenly sauteed fennel (hard to find here), leeks and kalamata olives.



For dessert, 6 out of 7 of us decided to have the house specialty of chocolate and caramel with a sprinkling of fleur de sel. Despite looking like something dredged out of the pool in caddyshack, it was out of this world delicious! Then we all took a stroll down Aoyama dori to check out some art, do some shopping and decide where we wanted to go next. It was too lovely out to go home.

We ended up at Two Rooms, a little hidden oasis on the top of the AO building. The second best part about this space is the attitude of everyone there. No one is in a hurry. Everyone is lounging and appear to be on holiday time and the waitstaff does nothing to discourage that vibe. The best thing, of course, is the great view and the shiso mojitos aren't too shabby either. We stayed way too long, but it was a great way to start off my vacation (albeit a couple days early).



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