Tokyo Day 4 - Joel Robuchon L'atelier and Tokyo Tower

One of the meals I planned for before leaving for Tokyo was Joel Robuchon. The lunch at L'atelier is very affordable, ranging from 2900 yen up to 5400 yen. However, the 5400 yen lunch had lots of foods which I didn't eat like orange (no. 1 most hated food on my list) as well as beef.

Here's the menu we had - it's either in French or Japanese, but since we could read neither, they had a very nice waitress to explain everything to us in English.

Amuse Bouche - some pork thing on a baguette

The butter rolls were nice - I ate 2.5 pieces Olive oil with 4 drops of balsamic vinegarScallops with celeriac puree and celeriac salad
I quite like the pureed celeriac - it's quite creamy and has a slight acidic taste. The salad was crunchy and had a light, oil based dressing. The scallops were sweet and tender, but not spectacular or mind blowing.

Curried eggplant
I quite liked this dish, especially with the pretty colours on top (looks like a little vegetable patch!). And eggplant is one of my more favourite vegetables. But greedy me wanted scallops :P

Cauliflower soup with iberico ham
The ham had a very light smokey taste, and went really well with the cauliflower soup. The soup wasn't overly creamy, but it was very tasty and frothy.

The French do their foie gras very well, so I thought it'll be a waste if I didn't order it. It's a whopping 1600 yen extra (on top of the 2900 yen) for the foie gras choice, but it didn't dissappoint. It was a pretty large, wobbly piece of foie gra As I sliced my foie gras and ate, the lovely foie gras oil oozed out and mingled with the rich, pearly risotto rice, forming an extremely tasty, creamy sauce for the rice. The portion of rice looks deceivingly small, but I was really quite full after this dish.

The grilled snapper was really delicious, considering how I don't like snapper. I must say this is probably one of the better snappers I've had (but then again, it doesn't say very much cos I don't go out of my way to order snapper). The skin was grilled to a delicious crisp and lightly marinated, while the flesh was white and flakey.

For dessert, we all chose the chocolate since it sounded so good on the menu. Basically, it's a really interestingly presented dish, with chocolate in various forms.

So there's a chocolate lid with a hole in the middle, covered in gold dust...

And under that, there's chocolate mousse, chocolate rice balls and a ball of chocolate ice cream, sprinkled with powdered oreos. And under all the mousse, there's some more chocolate fudge.

Yummy chocolate ice cream. It was a bit too overwhelming after a while. I think the Japanese like their desserts really sweet -couldn't finish this dessert. But then again, maybe I was super full from eating all that delicious soft breadrolls (must learn to control myself when it comes to the bread department! I really like eating restaurant bread!)I really enjoyed the whole lunch experience, from the classy yet relaxed feel of the restaurant, down to their spick and span toilets (which had automated opening lids!) and I was really sorry when lunch ended. It's casual yet chic, and since red and black is one of my favourite colour combinations, I really liked how the whole place was designed.

They have an open concept kitchen, so you can see all their chefs, all smartly dressed in red and black uniforms, preparing your meal.
Joel Robuchon L'atelier is coming to Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore somewhere in the second half of this year - I didn't know about this until the staff asked us where we were from... Ok I think I have been living in a hole for the past few months -_- and would probably continue living in another hole for the next 4. SIGH! My eyebags are exploding.

The Mori Tower building has some interesting structures including a huge metal spider with huge legs (didn't snap a shot of that) and you can also see the Tokyo Tower (and the matching cranes in the construction sites behind it).

The Tokyo Tower looks much better at night cos it's lighted up... We took a monorail which went past Odaiba bridge from Shiodome, and we had a nice view of the Tokyo Skyline, but the monorail isn't like Sentosa's placid and slow monorail. Instead, it feels like you're rushing from one stop to the next, because the monorail travels at quite a high speed, with lots of noise from the tracks. Somehow, I felt so stressed during the monorail ride cos the monorail was speeding away, and its not very sound insluated so you can hear all the air rushing past and the wheels moving along the track.

A tip from Lonely Planet (which I found online, cos I didn't bring my Lonely Planet - luggage bag was exploding already) is to take a walk from ____ station (crap I forgot what station already! but I found this tip online, and the person quoted lonely planet).