Treis

⭐⭐⭐

🎁 Innovative French 🇫🇷 / 📍 Tokyo

📓 Visits: 1 (2024)

Treis is a membership-only restaurant from the ex-Bon.nu chef Hideaki Kawashima.

First up tomokoroshi soup made from just sweetcorn, salt and water.  A very pure flavour of sweetcorn but I've had sweeter versions of this in Japanese restaurants.  9/10.  Next shio foie gras.  The foie was delectable but the bread could have been higher quality.  8.5/10.  The next dish was enoki pasta.  This was delicious, an umami bomb.  9.5/10.  Next up scrambled eggs.  Where to start?  Literally a bowl of unseasoned scrambled eggs and no other element in a restaurant charging 30,000 yen.  4/10.  Next deep fried pigeon instead of chicken.  Of course, it was delicious.  8.5-9/10.  After that tomato pasta.  Same as the dish at Bon.Nu, the red sauce made from fresh tomatoes only and the green sauce from the leaves.  Still just tomato pasta, and pasta from a packet.  5/10.  Next shredded asparagus spring roll.  Yes, deep fried food is good but you have to season it.  6/10.  After that ayu soup.  Very good.  You could really taste the bitterness of the ayu.  But rather than make you sigh like the ayu veloute at Chiune, it's more like you respect it rather than fall in love with it.  9/10.  Before the main dish, tomokoroshi risotto.  This was probably the best dish of the night.  The sweetness of the corn really came through this time.  It didn't matter that an ingredient had been repeated when the dish was that good.  9.5/10.  The main dish is Kenran beef.  Close to Ozaki beef in flavour, a little less gamey and a little less oily.  The crust was excellent and I loved the fact the meat is served with the crust on the underside was well.  9/10.  First dessert was milk ice-cream made without egg yolk.  Very good, but didn't have the indulgence a frozen custard has.  8/10.  Finally pudding.  I prefer the pudding at Patous for flavour but the variation in textures was an amazingly accomplished piece of cooking: rare in the middle, firmer as you go outwards.  8-8.5/10.

The food looks amazing in pictures, mainly due to clever lighting and minimalist tableware (chosen to match the food).  But the flavours are very hit and miss.  Eight out of twelve plates I scored 8+/10, which is good, but there were no 10s and all those 9s were not enough to make up for the 4, 5 and 6.

If you've been to either Treis or Bon.Nu and you liked it then you might be thinking "this person doesn't get it".  I do get it, I understood the concept behind Treis before I went: it's "minimalist French" using the least number of ingredients and seasonings possible.  With a debut Tabelog Silver Award in 2022, which it has since retained, and rating of 4.49 clearly it works for many people, but this Kyo-ryori approach to French food just didn't work for me.  Food having "no taste" is a common complaint from overseas diners after their first kaiseki experience.  "Too salty" is a common complaint from Japanese diners eating in Europe.  It took me years to adjust my palate to fully appreciate Japanese kaiseki.  Perhaps you could wean yourself off cream and butter if you only ever ate French food at Treis and Bon.Nu but, for me, the whole point of French food is butter and cream.

How it compares to Bon.Nu now I can't tell you because it's years since I've been and (as I alluded to) there's been a chef change.  For nostalgia, check out this excellent 2018 review of Bon.Nu from when Kawashima-san was still there.  Note also that the original Bon.Nu pastry chef went independent and opened Okashiya Ucchi.

The other problem, which I had not anticipated, was how long the meal took.  Doors open at 6 with the "start" at 6:15 but the first dish doesn't arrive until 6:25.  None of the savoury dishes are particularly large and with the exception of the enoki pasta and the beef (which maybe take three) don't take more than 1-2 minutes to eat.  There's then an average 15 minute gap between each dish with a 20-23 minute gap between three dishes.  Now this isn't because the chef is sitting on his arse it's because he believes that the least amount of advance preparation is the best way to cook food.  At the end it takes 20 minutes to pay so in total the meal takes over three and a half hours.  And by the way, you're not asked if you'd like larger portions of anything and no bread is served.

Instead of leaving elated I left mad at how slow and underwhelming everything was and still a little hungry.  Well, at least I didn't purchase a membership.

📌 https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1307/A130703/13246316/

❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 3.6

📱 Booking: ⬛ Members and their guests only.  Membership is JPY 120,000.  If you dine once a year your membership is renewed for another year, free of charge.  Availability of memberships is announced on the chef's Instagram and these are snapped up very quickly.

📍 Location: Private.

📅 Visit Summer 2024

Tomokoroshi soup, salt water
Shio foie gras
Enoki pasta
Scrambled egg
Fried pigeon
Tomato pasta
Asparagus spring roll
Ayu bisque
Tomokoroshi risotto
Roast Kenran beef
Milk ice
Pudding

💴 Damage: 39,985 (33k + 2 drinks @ 1675 each + 10%)

⏱️ Time taken: 3h30m