Florilege

Florilège

⭐⭐⭐

🇫🇷 Modern French / 📍 Kamiyacho

📓 Visits: 6 (2015-2023)

I can still remember the dessert I had the one time I ever made it to the original Florilege: warm souffle pancakes filled with strawberry jam.  The pastry chef?  Natsuko Shoji, owner of Eté and now a contemporary international culinary icon of Japan.  Only ever going there once, where a three course lunch was JPY 4,200, is one of my biggest fine dining regrets.

Florilege 2.0 opened in 2015.  I guess I liked it because I had four meals there between 2015 and 2020, though when I look back through copies of the menu now I don't remember any of the dishes.  After a three year gap I went back in July 2023, just before they were to move again, and it was not a good experience.  There was only really one good dish in the 7/8-course meal and even that could only manage 8/10.  The main dish of roast pork had no taste.  Every other dish you could describe as over-engineering of cheap ingredients.  The worst part was the service.  Two menus are served at lunch: a lunch menu and a longer dinner menu which comprises all the courses on the lunch menu plus another four.  The restaurant batched dishes to serve several customers simultaneously.  My neighbour arrived after me and had ordered the dinner course so I had to wait between my courses while he and other guests ate their extra courses.  In the end the meal took two and a half hours.  I asked them to speed up my dessert once the main course had been served as I was already impatient and noticed the pastry chef setting up to plate about 10 portions at the same time.  Had I not done this, the meal would have taken even longer.

How much my lack of enthusiasm for the food is due to me eating in more expensive restaurants or due to a genuinely poorly-composed menu I don't know but prices at most restaurants in Japan have increased in recent years.  Lunch at Florilege 2.0 only increased by 500 yen to JPY 7,500 between 2019 and 2023.  This meal did not feel worthy of the second Star the restaurant was awarded in the 2018 Michelin Guide and I put this down cost control.

On 24th November 2023 the 20-acre Azabudai Hills officially opens and will be home to Japan's tallest building, the 35 billion (yes, billion) yen Aman Residences penthouse and will eventually (as they open through 2024) have more of the top restaurants in Japan in a single space than anywhere else.  These include: Tempura Niitome, Tominokoji Yamagishi Tokyo restaurant, Aca 2nd restaurant, Sushi Sho 2nd restaurant, Sushi Saito 2nd restaurant and Florilege, which (along with Niitome) opened ahead of the official Hills opening.  Despite my last meal being so poor I couldn't discount the meals I'd had in the past, I wanted to visit Azabudai Hills and I wanted to see the new restaurant and see if there had been any improvement.  I visited in October 2023 while the restaurant is in "pre-opening".  Prices have increased with the move: lunch is now JPY 10,000 and dinner JPY 20,000 with service at 10%.  The dinner menu is available at lunch.

There was a definite set-up from my last meal.  Two kinds of bread are now served instead of one: one wholewheat and one flavoured with sake lees.  (Bread is refilled on request, so don't be afraid to ask.)  The celeriac dish was topped with white truffle, which added a needed hit of umami.  The main dish of lamb (Australian) was much better: two meat components and good sauces, the nasu dish was very good and filling and included a very generous portion of excellent ikura.  I also preferred the desserts this time.  I'm not a massive chestnut fan but I appreciated the technique in the "mont baba" and I love warm desserts.  There were still a few "misses" for me.  The sweet potato ice-cream served as an amuse I'd score 8/10 if were a pre-dessert but I'm always going to be perplexed if a meal starts with something so sweet.  I don't really like tofu so it would have taken something really special for the soy chawanmushi with gobo pottage to impress me but it didn't: it tasted exactly how you'd imagine it and there must have been 50 (fifty) yen worth of ingredients in this dish: this is not a 2-Star dish.  Apart from the white truffle the celeriac dish was mostly cheap ingredients and it tasted more of the ricotta than the deep flavour you can get with a roasted celeriac.  The grated celeriac on top had no taste and all the flavour was in the sauce.  The balance wasn't right and the dish would have been much better hot.  Overall, while the food was better than last time, there were still too many poor dishes and the meal fell below my expectations for such a highly-rated restaurant.

As I mentioned the restaurant is in "pre-opening", which could mean anything (or nothing) but it's the same team and it didn't feel like a pre-opening.  On their website they mention they are aiming to serve less meat and this was one of reasons they won a Green Star.  You are required to specify "veggie" or "meat" when you book now.  I specified "meat" and there was one pescatarian and one carnivoran dish on the menu, as before.  If you specify "veggie" it's only the main dish that will be changed from meat to veg.  The rest of the menu may still contain meat and/or fish and the restaurant cannot accommodate vegetarians: consommes are made from meat, dashi contains katsuoboshi and desserts may contain gelatin.

There's no drink menu.  If you ask for the non-alcoholic options they aren't very appealing but the restaurant has a barman so just tell them what you'd like and they'll make a mocktail to your preferences.

Other than for drinks, service still leaves a lot to be desired.  The restaurant will seat all the non-Japanese guests together so they can serve these customers and explain the dishes once but the translations are a bit ropey.  You'll be given a menu at the end but it's one of those single word per course jobs and not very useful.  Instead of the large U-shaped counter at the Jingumae restaurant in the new restaurant there's a single communal table seating up to 22 split by the (smaller?) kitchen and chef Hiroyasu Kawate in the middle.  If you were expecting some interaction with chef then you might be disappointed.  The Michelin Guide is currently being updated due to the restaurant move but prior to that it said "He brings out each dish to the table himself and explains it enthusiastically".  The World's 50 Best states "The Florilège experience has always blurred the gap between front and back of house, opening up face-to-face interactions with guests throughout the meal, and the new location puts even more focus on this aspect."  Their own website states "Please luxuriate in our food and wine while enjoying conversation with chef".  Except on all of my visits none of this is true.  This time I noticed Kawate-san introducing dishes a couple of times but not consistently and not to every group.  Indeed, at my end of the table (which had Japanese and non-Japanese guests) he didn't introduce any dishes.  If you watch the kitchen there's no communication with Kawate-san and no communication between the chefs: they all work independently.  Once the last main dish of service has been served Kawate-san disappears and desserts are prepared by sous chefs.  On the other hand, I believe chef Kawate cooks at most, if not every service, and he does all the meat cookery.

As I mentioned I visited twice in the space of 4 months just prior to the move and just after but there was no "welcome back" from any of the staff.  I can't think of another restaurant at this price point I've been to this many times where none of the staff welcome you back.  I guess that in a 22-cover restaurant there's going to be a lack of intimacy but it wouldn't take a very much to make some sort of effort.  I've no idea who the restaurant manager is.

The meal was again very slow: 8 plates over almost 2.5 hours.  Dinner would take longer.  I kid you not, my neighbour was sleeping between courses.  That's definitely a first for me in a restaurant.

Azabudai Hills is still mostly a building site with most areas roped off.  It looks better from the outside than the inside right now and Florilege 3.0 could just as well be in any multi-tenant building in Tokyo.  The complex could be quite something when finished over the coming weeks and months though.

tl;dr: should you visit Florilege?  I think it depends on your experience with fine dining in Japan.  If you've been to Tabelog Gold-level restaurants and can taste the difference in ingredient quality then I think you're going to be disappointed at Florilege.  If you're looking for something that rivals the experience at the best modernist cuisine experiences in the the Basque country I think you're going to be disappointed.  If you have little experience with fine dining in Japan then you might very much enjoy Florilege but if you're looking for modern/innovative/Japanese French, and can afford the extra, then I'd recommend dinner at Sincere, Crony or even Maz instead.  The one thing that might lure me back to Florilege is if they went full vegetarian and it would be remarkable for a 2-Star restaurant in Japan to do that, but right now I would not go back.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1307/A130704/13289651/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 3.65 (food: 3.8, service: 3.3)

📱 Booking: 🟥 Difficult right now.  Per their homepage, seats are released daily at midnight via TableCheck.  If you check during the day they're nearly always full but they do get cancellations.  I'd expect bookings to be easier in the coming months when initial demand subsides and the "pre-opening" phase ends.  Advance purchase only.  100% penalty if canceled on day of reservation.

📍 Location: 

2F Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza D.  1 min from Kamiyacho Station Exit 5.  Note that Azabudai Hills is massive and Garden Plaza D is 10 mins walk from Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower.  2F multi-tenant building.
Map data ©2023 Google

📅 Visit October 2023

🕛 Lunch

12:32 Sweet potato ice-cream
12:39 Soy chawanmushi, gobo soup, daikon
12:49 Celeriac, ricotta, white truffle, hojicha jelly
13:13 Roast nasu, ikura, green tea oil
13:38 Australian lamb, pastilla, green bean, fig jam, red wine and black garlic sauce; togarashi
14:01 Shine Muscat, peanut blancmange, frozen apple powder
14:21 Brioche, marron cream, meringue
14:39 Candied hozuki, yokan, financier

💴 Damage: 14,520 (10k + 2 drinks @ 1600 each + 10%)
⏱️ Time taken: 2h25m