⚠️ As noted in the comments below, since August 2022 the menus have been revised again and a new chef installed, so this review is no longer current.  Koga-san reprised Hortensia in 2023.

Plaiga Tokyo

⭐⭐⭐⭐

🇫🇷 French / 📍 Marunouchi

📓 Visits: 4 (2020-2021)

Plaiga Tokyo had been one of my favourite restaurants and was the best French restaurant to open in Tokyo in 2020.

The restaurant opened with two ambitiously-priced course menus at JPY 15,000 and JPY 24,000 (18,150 and 29,040, inclusive, respectively) offered only at dinner and holiday lunch and with no cheap lunch menu.  Since 2022 the menus have been revised with only a single course menu offered at dinner priced at JPY 22,990 inclusive and a lunch menu priced at JPY 14,520, inclusive.  There were previously 9-10 courses on each menu, the difference between the menus being the expense of the ingredients.  The dinner menu now has only 8 courses while the lunch menu has 6.  All my visits were prior to 2022 and I always had the 15K 'Degustation' menu.

The restaurant occupies the space that was vacated by Heinz Beck just a few weeks earlier, purportedly due to the pandemic.  Chef Tetsuji Koga previously ran Hortensia in Azabu-Juban which opened in 2010.  Hortensia was featured in the New York Times in 2012 and was a busy restaurant.  I only ever managed to visit it once and remember it being excellent.  Prior to Hortensia, Koga-san worked at Edition Koji Shimomura which has held 2 Michelin Stars ever since the Tokyo Guide was published.  Despite the acclaim, Hortensia never won a Michelin Star and closed in 2015.  Since then, Koga-san has been working for KPG, who own various hospitality venues across Japan, including Plaiga Tokyo and previously Heinz Beck.

The food at Plaiga Tokyo is opulent and elaborate.  Koga-san combines expensive Japanese and French ingredients, classic cooking with modern techniques and modern presentation.  No amuse, pre-dessert, petit fours or bread are included in the meal - you get exactly what's on the menu.  Menus change every few weeks and are on their Website.

The dining room is very comfortable with white tablecloths, carpet and upholstered seats.  Tables are generously-spaced and partitioned to give a degree of privacy.  The restaurant is adjacent to the Palace Hotel.  Only two tables are in the window, which have a view of the Wadakura moat, somewhat restricted by trees and the fact the restaurant is only on the second floor.  There is no open kitchen.  Staff can speak reasonable English and menus are bilingual.

Plaiga Tokyo is very much under the radar and should be doing a lot better.  All 13 Tabelog reviews in 2020 were 4.0 or higher but in 2021 there was just one review and this was just 3.8.  This isn't enough for the overall score to get near that magic 4.0 and it currently laggers at 3.17.  The restaurant has just 6 tables but across all my visits I don't think it's ever been full.  On my 2nd and 3rd visits I think I was the only diner.  On my most recent visit, when restaurants were a lot busier in Tokyo again during a lull of Coronavirus cases and approaching the end of the year, only one other table was taken.  I had always wondered how long they would be able to keep this operation afloat and thought the restaurant might close.

Prior to the revision in menus I'd rated Plaiga Tokyo 5/5 on value.  There's a huge amount of work in every dish and even with the cheaper menu (which felt anything but a compromise), every dish features generous amounts of expensive and quality ingredients.  9-10 courses (the vegetable dish is really 5 mini courses in itself) at this price was never sustainable.  You could easily be charged 30K for a meal like this elsewhere and it might not be as good.  So it was inevitable that prices would go up (or the restaurant would close).

The structure of the course has essentially been the same across my visits: 2-3 starters, foie gras, composition of vegetables, fugu/royale, fish, beef, pilaf/risotto, dessert.  The dishes were very different between visits 1 and 2 but too similar between visits 2 and 3.  My most recent meal was the least satisfying: I'm not sure why but the course felt less substantial.  The final savoury dish was beautifully presented but didn't contain that much food.  The vegetable dish comprised just three plates instead of the usual five.  If every dish was a knockout I wouldn't mind eating them all again but not every dish has the same balance or depth of flavours as the best and there hasn't been that much change in the main course.  So after this visit I knew I wouldn't be going back again for a while and now that dinner will cost 5K more and contain one less course I don't see myself going back at all.

Two of my reservations in 2021 were canceled due to the States of Emergency so had it not been for those I would likely have visited more.  For me, Plaiga Tokyo is on par with the 2-star French restaurants in Tokyo.  Michelin passed it the 2022 Tokyo Guide but Michelin can often be slow off the mark.  So if you've never been I would still recommend a visit.  23K for this quality of cooking at dinner is still good value, but it's no longer insane.  But note that my review is prior to the change.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1302/A130201/13246834/ 

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.4

📱 Booking:  🟩 Easy.  You can book via Tabelog or TableCheck at least a day or day and a half in advance or via phone.  Staff can speak English.

📍 Location:

Nippon Life Marunouchi Garden Tower, 1-1-3 Marunouchi.  Down the side of the Wadakura moat and directly connected to Otemachi station, D6 Exit.  Enter through Trattoria Creatta on the 1st floor.  Not the easiest to find and Otemachi station is a real rabbit warren so allow plenty of time.

Map data ©2021 Google.

📅  Visit 4 - November 2021

Foie gras seven ways this time!

    Monaka (as before)
    Millefeuille
    Confit (as before)
    Truffle, PX jelly
    Terrine (as before)
    Sable (as before)
    Vanilla pudding

Vegetables (only) three ways today:

   Turnip, white chocolate
   Kabochya, sour cream
   Hot chestnut, truffle

Dish of the day was the snapper.  Dessert was excellent.

💴  Damage: 19,360 (15000 + 1 drink at 1000 + 10% + 10%)
⏱️  Time taken: 2h5m

📅 Visit 3 - June 2021

Cold starter of pasta, botan ebi, caviar and excellent tomato.

Parfait packed with abalone, perfectly cooked and full of flavour.  Good karasumi, uni and shiso.  Very moreish.

Foie gras six ways:

    Pudding (as before)
    Monaka - kaki, Iberico
    Terrine (as before)
    Sable (as before)
    Confit (as before)
    Ice-cream, blueberry, seri pancake

Vegetables:

    White asparagus (as before)
    Green peas (as before)
    Cauliflower (as before)
    Corn soup, corn ice
    Okra salad
    Tomato (as before)

This was a little disappointing.  4/6 of the components were identical to the last visits'.  The Hollandaise that came with the asparagus was sickly with too much lemon and the new dishes I did not enjoy - corn element was too sweet and I really dislike okra.

Anago, deep fried fugu, truffle sauce, fugu roe pudding.  Umami bomb.  Very small but very rich.

Kinmedai and hamaguri with two sauces: beurre blanc, basil; tomato beurre blanc.  Dish of the day.

Beef not as good as Wellington last time.  Sauce better last time.

Crab 'omu pilaf' - best ever.

Improvement in dessert.

So much food - already pretty full before main!  Visited too soon after my last visit.

💴  Damage: 21,780 (15000 + 2 drinks @ 3000 + 10% + 10%)
⏱️  Time taken: 2h

📅 Visit 2 - May 2021

The first dish was a cold starter of uni and celeriac bavarois with large pieces of lobster.  Good temperature control (not fridge cold) and a lavish start.  Next was foie gras five ways.

All five elements were pretty sweet:

    Salted caramel pudding
    Terrine on toast with a port reduction
    Rum raisin sable sandwich (sugary and salty back notes)
    Confit, strawberry, white miso, myoga
    Ice-cream, black olive, fukinoto pancake

I ate the ice-cream last and somehow it had not melted.

The next dish was asparagus and abalone pan fried with a fukinoto sauce.  Following this was a huge surf clam with uni, shiso, nori and beurre blanc.  This had really good depth of flavour and was the best dish so far.  And then a combination of vegetable dishes served Pierre Gagnaire-style as 5 separate plates.

This comprised:

    White asparagus two ways: boiled with Hollandaise and soup encased in a faux stem made from cocoa butter
    Cauliflower, Gorganzola, truffle
    Fruit tomato ice cream, blood orange red and pepper sorbet, olive oil
    Green peas, lemon meringue
    Green beans, baby turnips, nanohana, Emmental and Parmesan espuma

All the veg were fresh.  What looks like a slice of tomato in the tomato dish was actually the sorbet and melted away as soon as it hit your tongue.  Peas had been peeled and had a huge amount of flavour.

Next was torafugu confit in butter with crab sauce, squid ink, hotaru ika and peas.  Hotaru ika has a very strong flavour and the squid ink tended to kill the flavour of the fish.  While all the elements alone were very good, there were a few too many on a single plate.  I would have been happier with a larger piece of the torafugu, which was amazing and not something I'd eaten that way before, and just the crab sauce.

The main course was Hida beef fillet served as a Wellington.

This was very rich.  The pastry was made with lard.  This was a proper main course with a proper sauce and a potato element.  This made me hum.

As I mentioned, no bread is served but, in an allude to a Japanese meal, the final savoury dish is always a rice dish.  Tonight this was suppon 'risotto', a huge piece of fugu shirako, omelette and truffle consomme sauce.  When mixed together this had depth after depth or flavour and I ate it very slowly, partly to savour it and partly because I was so full.  The risotto came with excellent pickles on side.

Dessert was a small carrot sorbet, yoghurt, wheat beer jelly, yuzu meringue, and citrus fruit.  This was good but was more like somewhere between a pre-dessert and dessert proper.  No matter how full I am, in French fine dining I want the dessert to be a cuddle and this wasn't.

Looking back there was one less course on my second visit but I didn't miss it.  Portions are very generous as far as fine dining goes and the food is pretty rich, particularly the final rice dish.  I was very full when I left.

There was some real wizardry in this meal (how did chef stop that foie gras ice-cream and orange and red pepper sorbet from melting before you ate it?) but not every dish had the same balance and depth of flavour as the best dishes and the desserts are not rich enough for me.

💴 Damage: 19,360 (15k + 1 drink @ 1000 + 10% + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h

📅 Visit 1 - November 2020

Few notes from this meal.  Highlights included the salmon and celeriac tarte with very short and buttery pastry and the suppon royale.  It's very rare to find such classical and indulgent French cooking so perfectly executed in Japan.  The crab 'omupiraf' or omelette pilaf was the kind of dish I don't think you can find anywhere else and it would take some chef to surpass it.  It was also white truffle season and two dishes featured generous amounts.

💴 Damage: 19,360 (15k + 1 drink @ 1000 + 10% + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h